Prognostication in the Medieval World: A Handbook [1] 9783110501209, 9783110499773, 9783110498479, 2020940018

Table of contents :
Contents
In gratiam et in memoriam
Volume 1
Introduction
Part I: Introductory Surveys
Divination in Antiquity
Early Medieval Perspectives on Pre-Christian Traditions in the Celtic World
Pagan Traditions of Prognostication in the Germanic Languages
Prognostication in Pagan Beliefs among Slavs in the Middle Ages
Prognostication in the Medieval Western Christian World
Prognostication in the Medieval Eastern Christian World
Prognostication in Medieval Jewish Culture
Medieval Traditions of Prognostication in the Islamic World
Prognostication in Early Modern Times – Outlook
Part II: Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages
Eschatology and Millenarism
Traditions and Expectations in the Medieval Western Christian World
Traditions and Expectations in the Medieval Eastern Christian World
Jewish Traditions and Expectations in the Medieval World
Traditions and Expectations in the Medieval Islamic World
Prophecy and Visions
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World
Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World
Dream Interpretation
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World
Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World
Mantic Arts
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World
Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World
Astral Sciences
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World
Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World
Medical Prognostication
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World
Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World
Calendrical Calculations
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World
Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World
Weather Forecasting
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World
Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World
Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World
Quantifying Risks
Traditions and Practices in Medieval Western Christian World
Volume 2
Part III: Repertoire of Written Sources and Artefacts
Calendars, Astronomical Tables, and Easter Tables in the Eastern Christian World
Calendars, Astronomical Tables, and Easter Tables in the Western Christian World
Culture of Prognosis in the Medieval Western Christian Tradition of the Mirror-of-Princes
Debating Astrology in the Renaissance: Pierre d’Ailly (1351–1420), Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494)
Didactic Poems on Prognostication in the Islamic Middle Ages
Divination and Prognostication in the Cairo Genizah
Doubts and Criticism on Astrology in Western Traditions from Antique to Early Modern Literature
Dream Books and Treatises on Dream Interpretation in the Medieval Western Christian World
The End is Near: Medieval Mappae mundi and the Apocalypse
Games and Prognostication: The Examples of Libro de los Juegos and De vetula
Gematria and Prognostication
Geomancy in the Islamic World
Geomantic Artefacts in the Medieval Islamic World
Hagiography in the Medieval Eastern Christian World
Hagiography in the Medieval Western Christian World
The Importance of Thunder: Brontologia in the Medieval Eastern Christian World
Introductions to Astrology
Journeys to the Other World: Medieval Jewish Traditions
Journeys to the Other World: Medieval Latin Traditions
Karaite Objections to Prognostication
Late Medieval German Texts on Superstition
Legal Sources in the Medieval Eastern Christian World
Lekanomanteia in the Medieval Eastern Christian World
Libro de las Suertes: an Example of Inter-Cultural Exchanges in Late-Medieval Iberia
Mantic Alphabets in the Medieval Western Christian World
Mantic Practices in the Collectio Hispana
Mathematical Instruments in Astrology
Medical Plates in Astrological Medicine
Medieval Latin Liturgical Commentaries
Novels and Poems in the Medieval Western Christian World
Ornithomancy in Medieval Jewish Literature
Papal Prophecies in the Middle Ages
Physiognomy among Medieval Jews
Physiognomy and Chiromancy: From Prediction and Diagnosis to Healing and Human Correction (Zohar 2, 70a–78a; Tiqqunei Zohar, Tiqqun 70)
Prognostics in Medieval Byzantine Fictional Literature
Prognostication in Latin Commentaries on the Book of Revelation
Prognostication in Latin Historiography (ca. 400–1300 CE)
Prognostication in Medieval Jewish Law and Legal Thought
Prognostication in Learned Magic of the Medieval Western Christian World
Prophecy and Prognostication in Visual Art of the Medieval Western Christian World
The Pseudo-Aristotelian Sirr al-asrār/ Secretum secretorum
The Shoulder-Bone as a Mantic Object
Sortes
Three Images of Celestial Phenomena in Sixteenth-Century German Illustrated Broadsheets
Tractates on the Division of the Sciences in the Medieval Western Christian World
Treatises for Predicting hora mortis in the Medieval Eastern Christian World
Zījes
Index

Citation preview

Prognostication in the Medieval World Volume 1

Prognostication in the Medieval World

A Handbook Volume 1 Edited by Matthias Heiduk, Klaus Herbers and Hans-Christian Lehner In collaboration with Avriel Bar-Levav, Charles Burnett, Michael Grünbart and Petra G. Schmidl

ISBN 978-3-11-050120-9 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-049977-3 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-049847-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020940018 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Typesetting: Dörlemann Satz, Lemförde Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Contents Volume 1 Matthias Heiduk, Klaus Herbers and Hans-Christian Lehner Introduction   1

Part I: Introductory Surveys David Engels and Alex Nice Divination in Antiquity   15 Elizabeth Boyle Early Medieval Perspectives on Pre-Christian Traditions in the Celtic World  John McKinnell Pagan Traditions of Prognostication in the Germanic Languages  Leszek P. Słupecki Prognostication in Pagan Beliefs among Slavs in the Middle Ages  Matthias Heiduk Prognostication in the Medieval Western Christian World  Michael Grünbart Prognostication in the Medieval Eastern Christian World  Avriel Bar-Levav Prognostication in Medieval Jewish Culture 

 109

 153

 175

Petra G. Schmidl Medieval Traditions of Prognostication in the Islamic World  Ulrike Ludwig Prognostication in Early Modern Times – Outlook 

 243

 189

 67

 85

 55

VI 

 Contents

Part II: Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages Eschatology and Millenarism Hannes Möhring Traditions and Expectations in the Medieval Western Christian World  Wolfram Brandes Traditions and Expectations in the Medieval Eastern Christian World  Natalie E. Latteri Jewish Traditions and Expectations in the Medieval World 

 300

Delia Cortese Traditions and Expectations in the Medieval Islamic World 

 314

 269

 284

Prophecy and Visions Anke Holdenried Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World  Michael T. Miller Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World 

 342

Delia Cortese Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World 

 356

 329

Dream Interpretation Albert Schirrmeister Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World 

 371

Steven M. Oberhelman Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World 

 386

Annelies Kuyt Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World 

 404

Contents 

Delia Cortese Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World 

 413

Mantic Arts Stefano Rapisarda Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World  Michael Grünbart Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World  Shraga Bar-On Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World 

 453

Anne Regourd Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World 

 468

 429

 446

Astral Sciences Charles Burnett Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World  Anne-Laurence Caudano Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World  Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World 

 516

Petra G. Schmidl Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World 

 532

 485

 502

Medical Prognostication Luke Demaitre Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World 

 551

Glen M. Cooper Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World 

 567

 VII

VIII 

 Contents

Dov Schwartz Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World 

 585

Glen M. Cooper Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World 

 588

Calendrical Calculations Philipp Nothaft Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World  Jean Lempire Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World  Ortal-Paz Saar Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World 

 633

Daniel M. Varisco Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World 

 636

 605

 619

Weather Forecasting Barbora Kocánová Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World 

 651

Ioannis G. Telelis Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World 

 665

Dov Schwartz Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World 

 686

Charles Burnett Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World 

 689

Quantifying Risks James Franklin Traditions and Practices in Medieval Western Christian World 

 697

Contents 

Volume 2 Part III: Repertoire of Written Sources and Artefacts Jean Lempire Calendars, Astronomical Tables, and Easter Tables in the Eastern Christian World   713 Philipp Nothaft Calendars, Astronomical Tables, and Easter Tables in the Western Christian World   718 Bee Yun Culture of Prognosis in the Medieval Western Christian Tradition of the Mirror-of-Princes   723 Daniel Canaris Debating Astrology in the Renaissance: Pierre d’Ailly (1351–1420), Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494)  Montse Díaz-Fajardo Didactic Poems on Prognostication in the Islamic Middle Ages  Ortal-Paz Saar Divination and Prognostication in the Cairo Genizah 

 730

 742

 746

Stefano Rapisarda Doubts and Criticism on Astrology in Western Traditions from Antique to Early Modern Literature   752 Maria Jennifer Falcone Dream Books and Treatises on Dream Interpretation in the Medieval Western Christian World   760 Alessandro Scafi The End is Near: Medieval Mappae mundi and the Apocalypse 

 768

Matthias Heiduk Games and Prognostication: The Examples of Libro de los Juegos and De vetula   777

 IX

X 

 Contents

Moshe Idel Gematria and Prognostication 

 785

Matthew Melvin-Koushki Geomancy in the Medieval Islamic World 

 788

Glen M. Cooper and Petra G. Schmidl Geomantic Artefacts in the Medieval Islamic World 

 794

Wolfram Brandes Hagiography in the Medieval Eastern Christian World  Klaus Herbers Hagiography in the Medieval Western Christian World 

 798

 804

Michael Grünbart The Importance of Thunder: Brontologia in the Medieval Eastern Christian World   811 Margaret Gaida Introductions to Astrology 

 814

Michael T. Miller Journeys to the Other World: Medieval Jewish Traditions  Andreas Bihrer Journeys to the Other World: Medieval Latin Traditions  Daniel J. Lasker Karaite Objections to Prognostication 

 818

 821

 828

Marco Heiles Late Medieval German Texts on Superstition 

 831

Wolfram Brandes Legal Sources in the Medieval Eastern Christian World  Michael Grünbart Lekanomanteia in the Medieval Eastern Christian World 

 841

 846

Contents 

Helena Avelar de Carvalho Libro de las Suertes: an Example of Inter-Cultural Exchanges in Late-Medieval Iberia   849 László Sándor Chardonnens Mantic Alphabets in the Medieval Western Christian World  Cornelia Scherer Mantic Practices in the Collectio Hispana 

 857

Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas Mathematical Instruments in Astrology 

 861

Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas Medical Plates in Astrological Medicine 

 874

Miriam Czock Medieval Latin Liturgical Commentaries 

 884

Stefano Rapisarda Novels and Poems in the Medieval Western Christian World  Avishai Bar-Asher Ornithomancy in Medieval Jewish Literature  Alberto Spataro Papal Prophecies in the Middle Ages  Irmi Dubrau Physiognomy among Medieval Jews 

 852

 888

 895

 899

 908

Ron Margolin Physiognomy and Chiromancy: From Prediction and Diagnosis to Healing and Human Correction (Zohar 2, 70a–78a; Tiqqunei Zohar, Tiqqun 70)   915 Carolina Cupane Prognostics in Medieval Byzantine Fictional Literature 

 925

Hans-Christian Lehner Prognostication in Latin Commentaries on the Book of Revelation 

 932

 XI

XII 

 Contents

Hans-Christian Lehner Prognostication in Latin Historiography (ca. 400–1300 CE)  Ephraim Kanarfogel Prognostication in Medieval Jewish Law and Legal Thought 

 937

 944

Bernd-Christian Otto and Matthias Heiduk Prognostication in Learned Magic of the Medieval Western Christian World 

 948

Daniela Wagner Prophecy and Prognostication in Visual Art of the Medieval Western Christian World   960 Regula Forster The Pseudo-Aristotelian Sirr al-asrār/Secretum secretorum  Stefano Rapisarda The Shoulder-Bone as a Mantic Object 

 965

 971

Marco Heiles Sortes   978 Daniela Wagner Three Images of Celestial Phenomena in Sixteenth-Century German Illustrated Broadsheets   984 Alexander Fidora Tractates on the Division of the Sciences in the Medieval Western Christian World   991 Michael Grünbart Treatises for Predicting hora mortis in the Medieval Eastern Christian World  Margaret Gaida Zījes   999 Index 

 1003

 998

In gratiam et in memoriam Many people have wholeheartedly supported this handbook project over the years. They deserve great credit, and the editors would like to express their profound gratitude to all of them. The first word of thanks goes to the authors and the editors’ collaborators Avriel Bar-Levav, Charles Burnett, Michael Grünbart, and Petra Schmidl whose contributions in written form as well as during discussions have added substance and color to the texts of these volumes. The generous resources made available to the ICRH by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research provided a secure financial framework for the project, covering not only personnel costs, but also expenses for workshops, work sessions and research stays. The ICRH administrative staff, above all Petra Hahm in her capacity as coordinator, have kept the background of the project running smoothly throughout the years. ICRH Fellows from various disciplines as well as members of the advisory board have provided input into the discussion and offered generous assistance. The editors would like to acknowledge their colleagues from Sinology and Tibetan Studies at the ICRH, who have been valuable dialog partners and interested supporters of the project, particularly Yung-Yung Chang, Martin Kroher, Michael Lackner, Zhao Lu, Michael Lüdke, Rolf Scheuermann, and Matthias Schumann. The editors are deeply grateful to the de Gruyter publishing house, above all to Laura Burlon, Robert Forke, Elisabeth Kempf, Jacob Klingner (†), and Kathleen Prüfer for their patience and commitment and for publishing this handbook. A particular word of thanks goes to Eric Schlager for his assistance in preparing the typescript and to Sue Casson for her tireless English proofreading. The editors are deeply indebted also to the libraries and museums for granting them the right to use pictures of their manuscripts and objects. While it is a great joy for the editors to express their heartfelt gratitude to so many people, they also mourn the loss of a colleague who did not live to see the publication of this handbook. In March 2020, our dear colleague and friend, Miriam Czock, passed away. This handbook is dedicated to her memory. Matthias Heiduk, Klaus Herbers, Hans-Christian Lehner

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-202

Matthias Heiduk, Klaus Herbers and Hans-Christian Lehner

Introduction

The Development of a Handbook-Project The Tanakh, the Bible, and the Quran are rich in prognostics: From Late Antiquity onward, the three major monotheistic religions, including their internal variations (especially Sephardic and Ashkenazi Judaism, Latin and Byzantine Christianity, and Shiite and Sunni Islam), established their own emphases and characteristics of prognostication. However, these did not arise independently of one another. Their development resulted, in fact, from the lively exchanges and relationships between them. Whether directly or through reputation, the members of these religious cultures knew each other, despised or feared each other and regarded their colleagues as ideological opponents or allies. Knowing the teachings of another religion often led to an opposing position or to reflection on one’s own position. Some areas of anticipating the future, like apocalyptic thinking or political prophecy, belong to traditional topics of research in the field of Medieval Studies, besides that prognostication remained a marginal field until now. This handbook on prognostication in the Middle Ages now brings the different facets of prognostication together comprehensively for the first time. It emerged from a series of workshops held between 2016 and 2018, each dealing with prognostic elements within the Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions. This project was, in turn, prompted by in-depth research carried out at the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities (ICRH) “Fate, Freedom and Prognostication. Strategies for Coping with the Future in East Asia and Europe” in Erlangen, established in 2009 by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The way in which people deal with issues of the future is analyzed across epochs and cultures under the leadership of the core disciplines of Sinology and Medieval Studies. As one of the largest interdisciplinary research projects on prognostication worldwide, studies in multiple disciplines were funded. A large number of international visiting fellows presented relevant work on the theme. At numerous events – workshops, conferences, seminars, and lecture series – individual aspects were deepened and their results published. The spectrum of this research ranged from astronomy and astrology to apocalypticism, from the history of science and philosophy to questions of divination and manticism in secular and canonical law, from hermetic tracts to personal preventive medicine, prophecy or observing favorable and unfavorable days, to name but a few areas. An annotated list of the most important relevant publications can be found in the publication by ICRH deputy director Klaus Herbers (Herbers 2019). After the mutual exchange between Sinology, Medieval Studies and other disciplines was consistently sought and implemented, it seemed obvious to bring the https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-201

2 

 Introduction

results together. This endeavor was carried out separately by the two leading disciplines, but approached in close exchange with one another, not least in order to discuss and decide on the various theoretical, methodological and structural issues within the dialogue. The respective volume is now available for the field of Medieval Studies in its religious and cultural diversity. In this introduction, the three editors wish to outline the approach, reflect on the central terms “Prognostication, the Middle Ages, and the Medieval World,” and explain the compilation, structure and usage of this volume.

The Varied Forms of Prognostication in Different Societies – Uniform Western Traditions in the Middle Ages? In 2013, Léon Vandermeersch argued (Vandermeersch 2013), with regard to Chinese history, that the Chinese pictographic scripture of the thirteenth century BCE was not invented in order to state the facts, but rather to record “divination.” This language, he wrote, had developed from manticology. By relying on the examination of divinatory equations, the author concludes, among other things, that there was something like a divinatory rationalism, characterized rather by a “raison manticologique” than by a theological rationality (as in the European West). Confronting this thesis with the Christian-Latin development, one aspect is striking: although, in the Christian world, the prophet was highly appreciated, fewer calculations were made to fathom the future. This more personal approach has been common in Christianity since the prophet figure was introduced in the Old Testament. Max Weber was so impressed by this concept that he even spoke of a “prophetic charism” (Weber 1922, III, 4 § 10). He was referring to persons who possessed supernatural gifts that others lacked. The charism of the prophet was different from that of the magician or priest. In the Latin West, however, prophecy gained importance above all when, in contact with Byzantium, the ancient Sibylline traditions became relevant. This resulted in the dichotomy between prophets and false prophets. But what was typical for future visions? For a long time, it was claimed that utopian ideas were barely projected in the Latin Middle Ages (Cf. Hartmann and Röcke 2013, 3–9). Nevertheless, there were also scattered phenomena, directing hope toward the arrival of an earthly realm of peace. Especially the messianic chiliasm aimed at a real reform “in this life.” The word “chiliasm” is derived from the Greek term χίλια chilia for “thousand” (years), and can be traced back to the twentieth chapter of the Revelation to John, which deals with a “millennial”/thousand year realm of peace, preceding the end of all things. Probably the most impressive example of Christian chiliasm is provided by Joachim of Fiore. His ideas provoked a sustained impact. The philosopher



Matthias Heiduk, Klaus Herbers and Hans-Christian Lehner 

 3

Ernst Bloch (Bloch 1959, 590) called Joachim’s reflections the “most effective social utopia of the Middle Ages” (“die folgenreichste Sozialutopie des Mittelalters”). Joachim built an ideal by making use of biblical symbolism; his most essential source of know­ ledge remained the Bible. He illustrated this in his Book of Figures, the Liber Figurarum. Conceptually, a third aspect should be emphasized: it is related to the structuring of earthly time. The historical ideas dominant in the Latin Middle Ages followed the doctrine of successive realms, which were finally, at the end of days and in certain forms, raised to another level. Classically, Karl Löwith (Löwith 1953) spoke of “world history and salvation” (“Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen”) and thus of the “theological foundations in the philosophy of history” (“Die theologischen Voraussetzungen der Geschichtsphilosophie”). Apocalyptical thinking, ideas concerning the Antichrist, but even the calendrical determination of the Christian salvation and far more belong, therefore, to the great prognostic designs of the Christian-Latin tradition. Apart from these aspects – prophecy, utopia, the world ages and apocalypticism –, there were also traditions, that recalled mythical knowledge, developed further practical methods such as the use of lots or resulted from various practices (partially clinging to tradition). These include the position of the stars and their interpretation in astrology, the existing horoscopes, the reading of entrails in the ancient tradition, games and numbers, and many other procedures regarding medical and meteorological prognoses – some of which reached the West as part of cultural exchange. However, time and space need to be defined more precisely for the large-scale overview intended in this handbook. To date, mainly the Christian-Latin traditions have been the focus but an increasing amount of medieval research is underlining the influence of the Arab-Muslim, Jewish, but also the Greek-Byzantine influences in Medieval History. Focusing solely on “Occidental” conceptions that only concern the Latin-Christian area not only risk absolutization, but they also ignore the crucial exchange between the different worlds (cf. above all Borgolte et al. 2011; Herbers and Jaspert 2007). Many works on medieval prognostics have already pointed out that Antiquity had a huge influence on medieval practices (e.  g. Tuczay 2012). In the Greek-Byzantine East, prophetic traditions strongly evolved. One has only to recall the prophecy of Pseudo-Methodius, or the Sibylline writings which, in their later Latin versions as well, reveal strong references to the Eastern Mediterranean. After all, both the Jewish and Arab-Muslim traditions are of special significance, for they intermediated Ancient and Eastern knowledge to the Latin Middle Ages (primarily in the Late Middle Ages). In the present handbook, as stressed at the beginning, these different traditions are taken into account. In the face of the new discussions arising about the Middle Ages (recently Bauer 2018; cf. also the review article by Lehner 2020), it is indeed challenging to define larger areas with uniform temporal boundaries for these varying geographical regions. The Islamic World for instance included large parts of Spain in the Middle Ages, but in very different ways and intensities during different periods.

4 

 Introduction

For this reason, the difficult decisions in this context were allocated to the in­volved experts. We wish to express our sincere thanks for their manifold support! We operated with linguistic and religious criteria equally, because these overlap to some extent, too. The differentiation in the Western World is based not only on systematic considerations, but also on the evidence that the “Large Areas,” the Western Roman Empire, Eastern Roman Empire as well as the Islamic and Jewish worlds, emerged from Antiquity (cf. for example Pitz 2001). The structure we have proposed does not suggest homogeneous cultural areas or periods; but without these “soft” geographical boundaries, this handbook would hardly have been achieved. The respective deviations from a scheme familiar to many at the same time reflect the state of research and the research opportunities within the corresponding disciplines.

Prognostication, the Middle Ages, and the Medieval World – the Evidently Non-self-evident Why prognostication? This handbook explores the views of the future in the Middle Ages. The emphasis is placed on the term “prognostication,” whereas other publications highlight “prophecy” or “divination.” This requires an explanation. The future can be anticipated in many different ways, as reflected in the vocabulary of the European languages and its abundance of terms, with all of their semantic ambiguities and overlaps. Many of these terms are loan words derived from ancient Greek and Latin (see also the etymologies in ↗ Demaitre, Medical Prognostication Western Christian World). The future can be foretold and predicted (predicere), foreseen (providere), forethought (prognoscere), and known beforehand (precognoscere). Prognosis, fore-knowledge, has proven to be the central term in this semantic field. When the processes required to gain that fore-knowledge are taken into account, the semantic field widens to include related terms such as prophecy (propheteia), the gift to communicate the knowledge revealed. Inspired by divinity, the prophet or prophetess interprets this knowledge, which may or may not be related to the future. Divination (divinatio) is the ability to recognize and interpret the signs sent by divine powers. It encompasses the past, present and future. In Hebrew and Arabic, the historical terms used for looking into the future are more or less the equivalents of prophecy and divination (↗ Bar Levav, Prognostication Jewish Culture; ↗ Schmidl, Medieval Traditions Islamic World). In European cultural history, however, the term “divination,” originally neutral, acquired a different connotation. The Christian doctrine associated divination with magic, which consequently became a negative term, smacking of superstition (↗ Heiduk, Prognostication Western



Matthias Heiduk, Klaus Herbers and Hans-Christian Lehner 

 5

Christian World). Unlike the other terms, prognostication is a neutral expression, that clearly relates to the future and also points to both observation and calculation (see also ↗ Grünbart, Prognostication Eastern Christian World). In this handbook, prognostication is, therefore, used as the standard term for anticipating the future, free of all connotations. It includes the future-oriented forms of prophecy and divination, but also purely mathematical-calculative methods, without any metaphysical or cosmological framework. If prognostication indicates gaining foreknowledge, the handbook places the focus on how people looked into the future, with which expectations and using which methods. That implicates the fears, hopes, desires, and daily problems that made them want to know the future. People wanted to know what would happen to them and their loved ones  – who was the best person to marry, what were the chances of their children surviving, what could be done to stay healthy, when was the best moment to make a journey, and which business transaction would yield a profit. People also wanted to know what was in store for their community, country, and the whole of humankind: good fortune or hardship – would the harvest be good, the political situation stable? Was disaster looming, war, or even the end of time? Which conclusions the knowledge-seekers might have drawn from the wide range of possible answers in order to be prepared for what was to come, is, however, not covered by the subject of prognostication. There are merely a few references in this handbook to whether a prediction was, supposedly, right or wrong; for instance when the narratives of medieval commentators are cited. This handbook pays equal attention to all forms of prognostication: prophesies inspired by a divinity, interpretations of dreams and visions, calculations of opportune or less opportune days or the influence of stars and constellations, the drawing of oracle lots, the summoning of spirits, or the calculations of assurance risks and the odds of gambling. To this end, the expertise of many different research disciplines was collected and summarized. Until now, the access to prognostication in each discipline is defined by the specific characteristics of the historical evidence, so most publications on the subject are limited either to a “history of prophecy,” a “history of astrology,” or, under the heading of a “history of magic,” the history of divination, while this handbook presents the sum of what is known about the history of all forms of prognostication in the Middle Ages. The equal treatment of those different forms also breaks with a still widespread, traditional point of view which ranks, openly or implicitly, the subject on the basis of hierarchies of rationality, so the various methods of knowing the future are evaluated according to their degree of progressiveness or backwardness, dull superstition or enlightened spirit, scientific value or irrelevance, religious probity or insubordination, sophistication or primitiveness, or, quite simply, their degree of supposed truth or falsehood. Neither narratives of teleological progress nor accounts of the history of development based on such dichotomies form part of this handbook.

6 

 Introduction

On the contrary  – its content and conception may serve as an antidote to certain current forms of prophecy, such as economic forecasts, trend research or future technologies. Still, in spite of the editors’ best efforts to present prognostication in all its diversity as a form of cultural achievement, they must admit that, on occasion, the reader may catch a glimpse of a certain rationality-based hierarchy in some of the articles. This is due to the academic diversity and different scientific cultures of the scholars involved in this project, which the editors did not wish to limit by imposing a compulsory vocabulary.

The Concepts, Practices, and Contexts of Prognostication The purpose of this handbook is to provide a comprehensive view of prognostication, to shed light on its functions and structures in the social fabric, its significance for customs and the social order, but also to examine the concepts of prognostication prevalent in the medieval world and their practical application. Special attention is paid to the circumstances under which prognostication was practiced in daily life, the habitus of the people involved and their milieu. The particular emphasis which this handbook places on the practical aspects of prognostication is the result of an interdisciplinary dialogue at the IKGF. It became apparent that, more than any other aspects, practical applications allow hands-on comparisons between different cultural environments over the course of history, whereas the comparability of concepts quickly reaches its limits due to their enormous diversity. The focus on practices leaves sufficient room for relatively unconventional approaches to prognostication such as the study of images and artefacts. It also places the normative and classifying text genres in perspective. They represent the largest part of the historical legacy available for research and have, therefore, long been its main focus of attention. The conventional approach to research into prophecy and divination often builds upon the academic classifications of the Middle Ages – such as Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae – and the definitions they provide. Often, however, these works are examined out of context, without regard to the associated academic and theological discourse, and interpreted as a universal mirror of the medieval worldview. Comparable misconceptions are usually based on the assumption that daily life faithfully reflected the standards set in the legal texts. The genres of normative and classifying texts undoubtedly provide important historical sources, due to the classification schemes they offer and also their sheer abundance, but they usually describe things according to specific discourses or even from an outsider perspective. They rarely contain information about the daily practices of prognostication or the practitioners’ perspective. Ideally, research should focus on the different settings in which prognostication was practiced – from the ruler’s court, the places of learning and monasteries to the households of ordinary people – to convey an overall impression of its role within medieval life.



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The editors are keenly aware of how difficult it is to carry out this type of research. The material available is scarce to begin with: the historical tradition offers little evidence in terms of a material legacy, and the written sources are usually limited to the aforementioned standards and classifications. The research is also influenced by the traditions and priorities of the various disciplines, so the degree of accessibility of the historical material varies considerably. An expert in astrological treatise literature, for instance, would not necessarily know what else the archives of a sovereign’s court or a city state contained, and so might find it difficult to piece together instructions on the practice of prognostication and the accounts of the services related to it to create a coherent picture of daily astrological practice in the Middle Ages. The focus which this handbook places on the practical application of prognostication is, nevertheless, important, as it brings out surprising facets of what seemed familiar and points to the gaps in our knowledge and the research.

Which Time Period is Covered by the Term “the Middle Ages”? In academic and everyday language, the Middle Ages traditionally denote a period in the history of Europe which spans the millennium between 500 and 1500 CE. This handbook, too, follows this convention and aims to provide an overview across this millennium. The editors understand – as mentioned above – that this timeframe is by no means self-explanatory. In the millennium between 500 and 1500, there was no such thing as a culturally coherent European continent, nor were there any common characteristics which would have clearly delimitated this millennium from its preceding and ensuring periods. In terms of the history of development, Europe in the seventh century is closely linked to Europe in the fourth century, and Europe in the fourteenth century to Europe in the seventeenth century, whereas the seventh and fourteenth centuries have very little in common. If, therefore, as in this handbook, the term the “Middle Ages” is used in the conventional sense and applied to the whole European continent over the millennium between 500 and 1500, this is done for the purpose of spatial and chronological delimitation and is not to be understood as a political statement, claiming that a homogeneous occidental Europe existed at the time. By exploring the historical roots of “medieval” prognostication in Antiquity and pointing at further developments in the Early Modern Age, characterized by both changes and continuities, two detailed surveys in this handbook illustrate the flexibility of those period boundaries. The editors chose to adopt a very broad approach to provide a better understanding of prognostication in “Europe in the Middle Ages.” As explained in the following section, the history of prognostication in Europe as such emerges only in its transcultural context, i.  e. only when the history of Christian-Western Europe, Christian-Eastern Europe and non-Christian Europe as well as the history of Europe’s neighbors, who were part of the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic empires, are taken into account. It

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 Introduction

is important to emphasize once more that the term “Middle Ages” is used as a means of chronological delimitation, and is not to be understood as a period in Jewish, Islamic or Byzantine history. The use of both the term “Middle Ages” and the dates indicated according to the “common era” notation system in this handbook have been agreed upon by all participating research disciplines for the purpose of practicability. The fact that this handbook presents different cultural regions with different calendar systems and, consequently, different historical periodizations under the heading the “medieval world,” does not mean that these differences are being ignored. The articles about calendars, for instance, address this subject.

What Exactly is the “Medieval World”? In view of the above, it has already become quite clear that the medieval world, as the focus of this handbook, is neither limited to a specific – however defined – cultural region such as “Latin Europe,” nor to the geographical continent of Europe (which was defined differently in Antiquity and the Middle Ages and ended at the banks of the Don in the East). With regard to the subject of prognostication, the editors consider it necessary to highlight the transcultural relations between the different regions. These relations result from the shared cultural heritage of Antiquity, which was transmitted, transformed or received again in a variety of philosophical concepts, scientific methods and the practice of prognostication in daily life in a Christian, Jewish or Islamic environment. Part of this common heritage found its expression in the prophetical revelations of the monotheistic religions. The fact that the medieval world did not end at the boundaries of the European continent is reflected in the history of prognostication, which has always been characterized by knowledge transfer between the Jewish, Greek-Byzantine, Latin-Western traditions and those of the Islamic world. The West profited most from the flow of this knowledge transfer. In many areas  – including prognostication –, the foundation for many fields of knowledge was laid, starting with mathematical observation and calculation methods to empirical nature observation and cosmological interpretation methods, such as astrology. Knowledge transfer in the Middle Ages was more than simply the rediscovery of ancient wisdom, although this misconception is postulated repeatedly, even in academic publications. The knowledge which the West received above all from translations from Arabic was not a linguistically deformed version of the wealth of knowledge from the ancient Hellenistic world, but an amalgamation, further processing and enrichment of different concepts and traditions, being a post-antique cultural achievement in its own right. Catchphrases, such as statements about the presumably pure Aristotelianism of scholastic philosophy or a medieval renaissance of Antiquity, oversimplify and distort these historical facts. But how can this complex and culturally interconnected medieval world be best described? The editors decided to divide the individual thematic blocks on prognosti-



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cation into four parts, dedicated, respectively, to the Western-Christian, Eastern-Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions, and to present them as equal to provide the reader with a tool for drawing direct comparisons. This “quadrinity” appeared to be the most pragmatic way of including the academic disciplines of Medieval Studies, Byzantine Studies, Jewish Studies and Islamic Studies in the project, each in their own right. Even this subdivision of the medieval world, however, is simply a means to providing a transparent outline of the subject which follows the cultural dominants Latin-Christian, Greek-Christian, Hebrew-Jewish and Arab-Muslim. It is by no means to be understood as a postulate claiming that there were four homogeneous cultural areas in the Middle Ages, because each of these areas is in itself highly heterogeneous. Many parts of Europe, for example, were only Christianized late in the Middle Ages, and Christianization has always been a lengthy process, sometimes stretching over the whole medieval millennium. This handbook attempts to do justice to “pre-Christian” Europe as well. Three overviews address the Celtic, Nordic and Slavic traditions of prognostication. They illustrate a recurring problem: these civilizations did not leave behind any first hand testimony in written form. What little is known about them is based on the outside perception of Roman writers or Christian missionaries and chroniclers, or on testimonies such as the Nordic sagas, which were either written by Christian authors or carry the distinctive marks of contact with Christianity. These historical sources do transmit a rather deformed image of “indigenous” worldviews and cultural practices. Pagan civilizations, like those of the Avars or Sami, whose testimonies related to prognostication are almost entirely either archeological artifacts that are difficult to interpret or post-medieval references, could not be included in the handbook because of the immensely difficult research situation related to these. The differentiation between pagan and non-pagan is just one aspect of the cultural heterogeneity of the medieval world that all of the articles contained in this handbook are committed to represent. In the Christian West, there are not only sources in Latin but also in vernacular languages; the Christian East covers not only Byzantium, but also the Eastern European Slavic world; while the Jewish traditions come from the Mizrahi, the Sephardi, the Ashkenazy, the orthodox mainstream and the mythical branches. The authors of the articles on the Islamic world will have found it particularly difficult to develop an overview of the cultural and religious heterogeneity of the area between Andalusia and South-East Asia. The extremely difficult question of how to define and delimitate this Islamic world and relate it to Europe could only be answered by putting the focus on points of orientation in or near the Mediterranean region or concentrating on particularly influential traditions. In the end, the desiderata in many fields of research assisted the actual selection which allowed the authors to refer mainly to their own subjects. This handbook does not present the medieval world within clearly demarcated borders, but this vagueness has its own appeal, as it offers the advantage of facilitating the investigation of a large number of historical phenomena and the equally

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 Introduction

large number of traditions in the humanities devoted to their studies, free from any arbitrary restrictions.

How to Use this Handbook This handbook is divided into three major sections. In the first part, as already mentioned, the legacy of antiquity, the developments in the pagan world, as well as an overview of the continuities and innovations of the early modern period are examined in separate survey articles. There is also an overview of the prognostics in the Latin-Christian, Greek-Christian, Hebrew-Jewish and Arabic-Muslim traditions. The findings from the individual studies in the following two sections are brought together here and supplemented at certain points. In addition, the functions of prognostication are analyzed, such as their social contexts, the role of experts and clients, or their occasions. The second section forms the core of the handbook. Nine areas were identified in which medieval prognostication manifested itself. These are illuminated from the perspective of the four mentioned traditions. This includes the area “Eschatology and Millenarism,” already mentioned above, with the various eschatological scenarios. In the second subchapter “Prophecy and Visions,” the division into four traditions was abandoned, since this topic could not be separated from the eschatology in the Byzantine context. Explanations of special forecasting techniques follow. First of all, there is “Dream Interpretation,” which can be seen as an anthropological constant up to the present day. The distinction made here between visions and dreams has nothing to do with the transcendent status (of the dreamer/visionary), but rather refers to literary genres: while visionary reports emerged in the Middle Ages, particularly in monastic contexts, tracts on dreams look back to a tradition dating back to ancient times. Various techniques, which differed in the different traditions, are the subject of the “Mantic Arts” chapter. The other sub-chapters refer to “Astral Sciences,” “Calendrical Calculations,” and “Weather Forecasting.” It concludes with a contribution on “Quantifying and Managing Risks,” the forecasting of risks, now the basis of modern insurance. This is presented exclusively from a Latin-Christian perspective, since the research situation in the other areas has so far failed to illustrate this phenomenon clearly. Each of these contributions follows an internal structure. A five-part system was developed and proposed to the respective authors. This envisaged the individual areas as: (I.) “Definitions and Terminology,” (II.) “Written Sources and Artifacts,” (III.) “Techniques and Manifestations,” (IV.) “Developments, Historical and Social Contexts,” and (V.) “Medieval Classifications and Discussions.” The authors adapted this proposal to the respective circumstances for largely understandable reasons. This is due to the research situation and research tradition: the individual traditions



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can access diversely detailed arrangements of the respective topic. This also means that some contributions are shorter than others. Aside from that, of course, not every topic can be optimally represented by the intended internal structure. This applies in particular to the “Mantic Arts.” Cross-references between the individual chapters (represented by: ↗ author, chapter) refer to similar developments or to the fact that individual considerations in the different traditions were of comparable importance. In most cases, source citations are reproduced in English, and transliterations from Arabic and Hebrew were conducted in accordance with the respective standard transliteration systems. Names should be given in a standard form but, given the sheer number of cases, errors should be pardoned. The articles are intended to reflect the current state of research and offer further literature in short references in the text as well as in an attached “bibliography.” Editions of classical works (such as Thomas Aquinas or Cicero) were not included, as these passages are standardized in every edition. The third section offers a “Repertoire of Written Sources and Artifacts.” This consists of detailed representations of text genres, text corpora, individual works or descriptions of certain objects as concrete manifestations of prognostication. The articles, which are concise in comparison to the chapters of the previous sections, are equipped with a bibliography which is divided into “Primary Sources” and “Secondary Literature.” In this section, the division into the different traditions has largely been abandoned. Therefore, space was created to undertake a closer examination of the special phenomena of individual traditions. Wherever necessary, this is indicated by cross-references both in the chapters of part II and in the repertoire itself. The repertoire benefited particularly from the research environment at the ICRH. Most of the visiting fellows of the past few years contributed a short entry here. On the one hand, this leads to a certain focus due to the competences of the contributors, while, on the other, it is the reason why the Christian West is most present in the repertoire. The handbook concludes with an extensive register of names and places.

Bibliography Bauer, Thomas. Warum es kein islamisches Mittelalter gab. Das Erbe der Antike und der Orient. München, 2018. Bloch, Ernst. Das Prinzip Hoffnung. Frankfurt am Main, 1959. Borgolte, Michael et al. (eds.). Integration und Desintegration der Kulturen im europäischen Mittelalter. (Europa im Mittelalter, 18). Berlin, 2011. Hartmann, Heiko and Werner Röcke. “Das Mittelalter – ein utopiegeschichtliches Vakuum?” Das Mittelalter 18 (2013): 3–9. Herbers, Klaus and Nikolas Jaspert (eds.). Grenzräume und Grenzüberschreitungen im Vergleich. Der Osten und der Westen des mittelalterlichen Lateineuropa. Berlin, 2007. Herbers, Klaus. Prognostik und Zukunft im Mittelalter. Praktiken – Kämpfe – Diskussionen. Stuttgart, 2019 (see also http://ikgf.fau.de/publications/featured-books.shtml).

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Lehner, Hans-Christian. “Review of ‘Thomas Bauer, Warum es kein islamisches Mittelalter gab. Das Erbe der Antike und der Orient, München 2018.’” H-Soz-Kult, January 30, 2020. http//:www. hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-28267. Löwith, Karl. Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen. Die theologischen Voraussetzungen der Geschichtsphilosophie. Stuttgart, 1953. Pitz, Ernst. Die griechisch-römische Ökumene und die drei Kulturen des Mittelalters. Berlin, 2001. Tuczay, Christa Agnes. Kulturgeschichte der mittelalterlichen Wahrsagerei. Berlin, 2012. Vandermeersch, Léon. Les deux raisons de la pensée chinoise. Divination et idéographie. Paris, 2013. Weber, Max. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Tübingen, 1922.

Part I: Introductory Surveys

David Engels and Alex Nice

Divination in Antiquity Introduction Divination in Antiquity As Cicero observed, there was no ancient civilisation which did not practise divination. The Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Iranians, Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans all had their own systems in accordance with their geographical location and expertise. His predecessor, the Greek Stoic philosopher Chrysippus, defined mantike or divinatio succinctly and precisely: [It is] the ability to know, to see, and to explain the signs which the gods send as warnings to men. Its duty is to know in advance the will (the mens) of the gods towards men and what it indicates, how this may be expiated, and atoned for. (Chrysippus, fr. 1189 = Cicero, De divinatione, 2.130, trans. Alex Nice)

Prognostication in the ancient world, therefore, was not simply a desire to know what would happen in the future, although this was, of course, an important concern, but a desire to understand the very will and mood of the gods. The processes of divination included not only the ability to recognise divine signs, but also the ability to interpret them, and, further, to know which ceremonies of propitiation or atonement were necessary, regardless of whether those signs were good or bad. In other words, it did not distinguish elements of prophecy and sacrifice from divination; they were features of it. Even when no express pronouncement about the future was required, these processes were closely connected with the desire to understand the will of the gods. This understanding of the gods’ will was achieved through a variety of divinatory practices. In his De divinatione, the only fully extant treatise from Greco-Roman ­antiquit on the subject of divination, Cicero (speaking through the persona of his brother, Quintus) famously partitioned ancient divination into “artificial” (or “technical”) and “natural” practices: For there are two kinds of divination, the one involving a technique (ars), the other involving nature (natura). What nation or what state is there that is not influenced by the prediction of those who examine entrails or interpret prodigies and lightning or of augurs or astrologers or lots (these are the kinds which as a reule involve a technique) or by dreams or prophecies (these are the two classed as natural)? (Cicero, De divinatione, 1.11–12; trans. David Wardle)

In the case of the former, divination was very much a human endeavour, dependent on human skill and artifice (ars). It relied on the inductive or deductive methods employed by a priest or diviner through their observation and interpretation of sachttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-001

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rificial entrails (extispicy and hepatoscopy), omens from birds (augury) or portents, sometimes in their allegorical readings of written prophetic texts. In the case of natural practices, divination was inspired directly by the gods through dreams, oracles, and prophecy. A further distinction could also be made, often with regard to specific types of divination (for example, in Roman augural practice), between those signs which had to be sought and those which occurred spontaneously in the technical language of divination, these were respectively called impetrative signs (signa impetrativa) and oblative signs (signa oblativa). Cicero’s De divinatione provides an understanding of the general scope of prophecy and prognostication, and helps frame some of our discussion. However, the philosophical framework of the dialogue, which sets out the case for and against divination and, in the manner of the New Academy avoids a definitive conclusion, does not cover the full range of divinatory experience available in a variety of public and private contexts. For example, many of the details regarding the exact praxis of divination are lacking even when we are able to provide reconstructions from other sources. References to divination in private are rarely fleshed out in detail and often referred to with intellectual contempt. Cicero’s schematic organisation also does not do justice to the interactions of divination with medicine or magic nor does it help the modern reader understand certain types of “fringe” divination such as necromancy (summoning the dead), cleromancy (divination by lot), lecanomancy (divination by the observation of the mixing of oil and water), or libanomancy (divination by smoke). The challenge in this chapter has been to showcase the enormous range of divinatory methods employed in antiquity and how divination was practised in both public and private, while demonstrating the ways in which individual societies had their own particular solutions for discerning the will of the gods.

Scope of the Chapter This chapter then covers a grand scope, both geographically and historically, from the lands of ancient Mesopotamia and Iran in the East to the provinces of the Roman Empire in the West, from the third millennium BCE to the fourth century CE. The earliest written evidence that the heavens were routinely consulted can be securely dated to the twenty-second century BCE when King Gudea, the ruler of Lagash in Mesopotamia, consulted the gods prior to building a new temple. The variety and significance attached to prophecy and prognostication continued to be a vital concern into the high Empire when rival divinatory systems became a focal point in the contest between paganism and Christianity. In a broadly synchronic manner, we survey the worlds of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Ancient Iran, Greece, Etruria, and, finally, Rome. Each section, by necessity, is more diachronic and attempts to present practices of prophecy and prognostication in their geographic milieu. Thus, the section on Mesopotamia includes the Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian empires, covering a historical period from around 3100 BCE to the



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fall of Babylon in 539 BCE. We discuss how the societies of ancient Mesopotamia treated divination as an exact science and how, in empirical fashion, they precisely recorded omens and the outcomes they predicted (for example, the celestial omen series Enūma Anu Enlil or the terrestrial omen series Šumma ālu); or developed a science of hepatoscopy working from, and recording their observations on, clay models of sheep livers. The history of Ancient Egypt likewise begins in the late-fourth or third millennium BCE but continues well into the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. In contrast to the civilisations of ancient Mesopotamia, we discuss the emphasis placed on oracular consultation, in particular, the role played by the divine skiff. Egyptian divination also placed considerable emphasis on dreams and dreaming, especially in a political context. The section on ancient Iran views divination from a Median and an Achaemenid perspective, a period lasting roughly from the seventh century BCE to the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE. The evidence points to an interest in cleromancy (lot divination), prodigies, and types of celestial divination, including astrology. Our knowledge about divination in Ancient Greece is mainly derived from the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, although glimmers of earlier practice can be discerned in works as early as Homer. This section emphasises the transition from practices in the Near East which focused on the person of the individual to those which concerned the whole community. Sacrifice and augury were the pre-eminent forms of divination on a day-to-day basis, although oracles played an important role for major political decisions. This section also discusses the role of divination in private life where we find a range of divinatory practices (omens, dreams, oracles) pertinent to the individual and which impacted the daily lives of the ancient Greeks. A further subsection discusses the place of divination in philosophical works and in Greek historiography. Such works help to shed light on the ways in which the ancients contemplated divination and its influence on their lives, even if only with respect to the intellectual élites. The section on ancient Rome, for which the evidence is somewhat firmer and richer, has been separated into sections on the Republic (510–531 BCE) and Empire (31 BCE–ca. CE 400). Here we study the importance of public divination at Rome through its major priesthoods (the pontifices, augures, and (quin)decemviri sacris faciundis) and contrast that with practices in private life. The chapter also traces the development and changes in divination at Rome from Republic to Empire: in particular the ways in which divination, including methods once only the preserve of private citizens, could be used to legitimise imperial rule from Augustus onwards. Subsections on Roman theoretical approaches to divination demonstrate the continuing importance of divination as a subject for philosophical enquiry from Cicero to the neo-Platonists. In contrast to the Greek philosophical sources, these works were often written by those who practised divination both publicly and privately. They, therefore, have a pragmatic concern to justify or deny the importance of divination in the everyday lives of the ancient Romans.

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The advantages of such an approach are to privilege divination as a significant cultural phenomenon; to highlight the different ways in which divination developed in these societies; and how those societies employed prophecy and prognostication. However, this is not to underplay the extent to which there were elements of diffusion and dissemination of divination from one society to another. A particular case in point is the spread of astrology (and astronomy). Ancient sources and modern investigations suggest that it moved gradually eastwards from Babylonia, where it was practised by the Chaldaean priesthood, perhaps to Egypt, then Greece, and, finally, to Rome. There the term Chaldaeus could be used of any diviner who practised astrology and, sometimes, of those philosophers who studied astronomy. Transmission of divinatory practice seems apparent in other areas too. The conditional prescriptions in the Mesopotamian texts dependent on protasis (“if x”) and apodosis (“then y”) recur in the Etruscan brontoscopic calendar faithfully transcribed by Cicero’s friend and polymath, Nigidius Figulus. Greek and Etruscan sacrificial practices may have been influenced by Mesopotamian hepatoscopy. Clay models of livers from ancient Mesopotamia, literary texts, and a bronze liver from Piacenza inscribed with Etruscan names for the gods and regions of the sky, suggest a direct correlation between Etruria and Mesopotamia. The Etruscans also acknowledged a special relationship with ancient Greece. Greek myth is a recurrent figure in their art. Images of divination include Greek prophetic figures such as Calchas and Orpheus. Roman sources allude to Persian origins for divination by water and fire. Recent scholarship suggests that traces of the Mesopotamian omen series may be present in Roman works on religion and divination, such as Cicero’s De divinatione. In one tradition, augury was introduced to Italy and thence to Rome through the activities of the Lydian king, Marsyas. A different, and more likely explanation, was that augury was transmitted to Rome from Etruria. The Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus explicitly refers to the training of the founder of Roman augury, Attus Navius, as taking place in Etruria under the guidance of the haruspices. Certain individual rituals such as the establishment of the pomerium (the sacred city boundary) or difficult religious questions concerning orientation, water, and unnatural births can also be traced to an Etruscan origin. In sum, this chapter encourages the reader to consider the ubiquity of prophecy and prognostication in ancient societies, their vital importance for the political, military and economic functioning of the state, and their role in encouraging the hopes and allaying the fears of ordinary citizens.



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Ancient Near East Mesopotamia The sources for Mesopotamian divination are manifold. They range from references to divinatory practices in historical chronicles, through prophetic texts and lists of omina, to comprehensive manuals covering the most diverse techniques for predicting the future. Divination in Ancient Mesopotamia seems to have covered a series of techniques broadly corresponding to those well-known from Classical Antiquity. Thus, the initiative for communication between gods and men could come from the former or the latter; a difference later called oblative and impetrative divination. In the case of oblative divination, the divine message itself could be more or less clearly articulated, for example, through prophecies, dreams or oracular utterances, or be rather symbolic. The last category was clearly the most frequent and diversified case, and covers a variety of different forms such as meteorological or astronomical phenomena, the behaviour of animals (in particular, the flight of birds), teratological incidences, and others. Some of these oracles, such as the Marduk-, Shulgi-, Uruk- or Dynastic Prophecy, also served as tools of political propaganda. They enabled certain political groups to announce (or justify) their own advent in the form of vaticinia ex eventu, where past rulers and diviners were credited with having announced current (or ongoing) events and, thus, with lending them the authority of pre-determined divine resolutions. In the case of impetrative divination, the divination specialists used a certain number of techniques producing more or less guaranteed responses. Thus, one popular technique was cleromancy; others, mostly attested in the early Babylonian period, involved lecanomancy (the observation of the mixing of oil and water), libanomancy (the analysis of smoke), aleuromancy (the scattering of flour), or hydromancy (the observation of ripples on water). In some way, the continued use of the ordeal, the single combat between two rival claimants, as a method for defining juridical responsibility, may also be considered as a specific form of divination. However, the most popular and refined form of impetrative divination was extispicy: the analysis of the inner organs of sacrificial animals, generally, but not exclusively, the lambs’ livers. In the lore of the Babylonian seers, all possible shapes, colours, or deformations of an animal’s liver (and sometimes also the lung, spleen, and intestines) were assigned a certain positive or negative value. The sum of these observations provided a positive (or negative) answer to the question posed to the relevant divinity (generally Šamaš or Hadad) at the beginning of the procedure. The result could sometimes be crosschecked by submitting the question to a parallel round of examination or rephrasing the question in a negative way. It was also appropriate to submit the same question to the gods but, simultaneously, to use different, although complementary, divinatory techniques (for example, relating to signs from the earth and from the sky). The div-

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inatory manuals even explicitly advised this procedure because it corresponded best to the complex nature of the world itself. Although there is rich evidence pointing to the existence of private practices, our sources mainly deal with public divination. Thus, each royal court seems to have employed the service of one or multiple divination experts (bârû) who enjoyed a high status and counselled the ruler on all important matters and decisions. Initially, the Mesopotamians employed a very broad array of divinatory techniques, then, during the third millennium, they specialised in extispicy, until this was somewhat displaced during the second millennium by the newly ascendant art of astrology. Astrologers were gradually considered as general experts in the lore of tradition and history. They were often simply called “scribes” (ṭupšarru), perhaps because of the close link between the recording of astrological and historical events. Aside from the bârû and the ṭupšarru, in neo-Assyrian and neo-Babylonian times, we also find augurs (who generally came from Syria: dâgil iṣṣûrî), experts in unsolicited omens (ašipu), dream-interpreters (often women: ša’iltu), or prophets (mahhu). In Ancient Mesopotamia, divination was considered an exact science, based on observation, verification, and an ever-growing wealth of parallel cases. Thus, the specific characteristics of livers examined during important acts of divination were conserved through the fabrication of clay models and may have had didactic as well as self-legitimising functions. Similarly, lists (iškaru) established the correlation between divine signs (ittu, under the form: “if x”) and the events to be expected (pišru, under the form: “then y”), these events were often separated according to the social status of the questioner (for example, ruler, noble or commoner). They sometimes provided stereotyped answers, sometimes even concrete historical events linked to a previous occurrence of the sign. A typical example from an extispicy-series runs: If there is a Hole in the centre of the top of the Presence: A high priest will die, fall of a chief temple administrator, he for whom the extispicy is performed will die at the beginning of the year, or his son will die; or, one of his eyes will go blind, for warfare: Defeat of the leader of the army. Eclipse of the evening watch, for the king: Revolt. Or, a weir will collapse during the damming of its canal and take me away. (Manzāzu, tablet 6, A 15 D 15; trans. Ulla Koch-Westenholz)

These lists frequently focused on one type of sign, for example, extispicy, astrology, teratology, everyday-life omens, or dreams. They also served as an ever-growing archive of precedents with as many as 10.000 case-studies. Even after their slow canonisation in the second millennium, the resulting corpora were gradually enlarged by commentaries. In this context, it should be noted that the aim of Mesopotamian divination was not necessarily to discover an immutable, pre-determined future, but rather to ask the gods about their general attitude towards the future. If the gods seemed unfavourable, there was always the possibility to enquire about the reasons of their wrath and/or to try to placate them through rituals of atonement, or, if the problem was linked to the malign involvement of a demon, through exorcism.



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During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, alleged or real “Chaldaeans”, who were generally associated with astrology, were popular. At Rome, they were considered as so troublesome that they had to be officially expelled from the city in 139 BCE and on several later occasions. However, their connections to the divination practices of ancient Mesopotamia are difficult to establish. This is even more true of the “Chaldaean Oracles”: a series of prophecies and theo-philosophical speculations based on Platonic concepts, written down or compiled by Julian the Theurgist (second century CE), son of Julian the Chaldaean. These “Oracles”, which rejected traditional divination and focused on the soul’s quest for virtue, were of tremendous importance to the evolution of Middle- and Neo-Platonism and were commented upon by Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, and Damascius. Although lost in late Antiquity, the “Chaldaean Oracles” were partly reconstituted through quotations from other sources and edited by Michael Psellus (eleventh century) and Georgius Gemistus Pletho (fifteenth century). Erroneously attributed to Zoroaster, they were long considered as the original source of later Jewish and Greek wisdom literature and continue to remain influential in Theosophy.

Egypt Divination in Ancient Egypt is essentially associated with the oracles attached to its numerous temples and shrines, most prominently those of Amun at Thebes or Siwa. The most popular form of oracular consultation seems to have been to submit written questions to the divine skiffs which transported the image of the god during the many processions of the Egyptian religious year. The oracle could also be consulted outside of these processions at the temple, although this may have essentially been a royal privilege. The movements of the heavy skiff, uneasily borne by many carriers, were then interpreted as expressing assent or refusal. It was not infrequently that the questioner submitted the same problem to two or even three oracles in order to maximise the chances of receiving a satisfying response. Divination in Egypt then seems to have dealt less with the precise prediction of future events than with the gods’ attitude towards essentially binary decisions. It, therefore, appears that in many cases, ranging from the punishment of rebels to the setting-up of last wills, oracular consultation simply served to acquire the more-or-less formalised consent of the divine to pre-established decisions. Similarly, oracles were also used to legitimise important personnel decisions, for example, Ramses’ II confirmation of the nomination of the High Priest of Amun. The growing importance of temples in the country’s economy from the Middle Kingdom onwards probably explains why the official consultation of oracles with regard to administrative or juridical matters became gradually more frequent. The importance of the temples in decision-making also helps to explain why, in the 21st dynasty, the oracle of Amun in Thebes became the country’s official regent.

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In addition to the binary responses of the divine skiff, there were other techniques permitting the gods to express themselves in a more complex way through verbal utterances, mostly in the context of consultations by high-ranking persons. A variety of methods through which the gods were considered to communicate with men were possible, including drug-induced visions, ventriloquism, and speaking tubes, but the exact techniques used are only imperfectly understood. As with the oracular consultations, the questions addressed to the gods generally did not concern a predetermined future, but rather the gods’ specific attitude towards a decision already planned, or their help in clarifying past events. Dreams also played a significant role in the divination of Ancient Egypt. They were thought to contain a message sent by the divinity. They could occur spontaneously but were often sought by sleeping in, or near, a holy place, a process known as “incubation”. Their symbolism needed professional interpretation. Therefore, from the Middle Kingdom onwards, the Egyptians compiled dream-books, perhaps influenced by similar Mesopotamian dream-compendia, and as suggested by a dream-book from the Ramesside period of the thirteenth century, these provided precise interpretations of specific situations experienced in the dream, for example: If a man sees himself in a dream dead – Good. It means a long life. If a man sees himself in a dream, his bed catching fire – Bad. It means driving away his wife. If a man sees himself in a dream drinking warm beer – Bad. It means suffering. If a man sees himself in a dream looking out of a window – Good. It means the gods hear his cries. If a man sees himself falling off a wall – Good. It means the issuing of a favourable edict. If a man sees himself looking after monkeys – Bad. It means change awaits. (P. Chester Beatty III r.; trans. K.M. Szkapowska)

As most of these dream-books were quite limited in their explanatory scope, there must have been professional dream-interpreters from very early times, although our sources concerning these mantic specialists, with the notable exception of Joseph, come only from the Hellenistic period. Dreams were also important to justify political acts which challenged traditional institutional procedures or which were linked to spectacular events. Thus, Thutmosis IV legitimised his accession by a divine dream; the High Priest Herihor justified his usurpation of power through a dream; and Ptolemy III referred to a dream to justify the creation of the cult of Serapis. The narrative patterns of some of these political dreams, first deploring the current state of affairs, then announcing the restauration of the maat, the divine order, were analogous to those of prophetic texts. These texts were a specific literary form known throughout Egyptian history until the Roman age and show a close similarity to the Mesopotamian oracular texts. In them an ancestral authority is generally credited with having disclosed future events to a ruler or another important person. In their details, these narratives, such as the “Prophecy of Snofru”, the “Lamb of Bokchoris” or the “Potter’s Oracle”, belong to the genre of the vaticinium ex eventu and pursue obvious political goals. Their structure, however, is generally the same and attests to the high malleability, and popularity, of these texts. Normally, the oracle first “predicts”, from



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a past perspective, the many evils which characterize the respective “contemporary” period of the oracle’s readership. It then announces the return of a semi-Messianic rightful ruler or restored social order which correspond to the respective political aims (or achievements) of the party for whom the prophetical text in question has been written or adapted, as demonstrated in the following extract from the “Oracle of the Potter”, predicting the demise of the Greeks and their capital Alexandria: The Girdle-wearers will kill themselves as they also are Typhonians. Then Agathos Daimon will abandon the city that had been founded and enter Memphis, and the city of foreigners, which had been founded, will be deserted. This will happen at the end of the evols (of the time) when there came to Egypt a crowd of foreigners. […] Then will Egypt flourish when the generous fiftyfive year ruler appears, the king descended from Helios, the giver of good things. (P. Rainer 28–41; trans. Stanley M. Burstein)

Apart from oracles, dreams, and prophecies, other forms of divination seem to have played a rather minor role, at least up to the first millennium BCE. Thus, except for occasional mentions of solar and lunar eclipses and very specific omina also known from older texts, our knowledge about extra-oracular Egyptian divination comes essentially from the New Kingdom. There, oniromancy and hemerology are regularly attested, while astrology, augury, and wind-divination are sometimes mentioned as secondary forms. Although such practices have not left a major impact on the Pharaonic sources, it seems likely that the most diverse omina may have played an important part in popular religion. The landscape of divination may have changed by the first millennium BCE, as Herodotus insists not only on the Egyptians’ interest in hemerology and oracles, but also on their alleged compilation of vast lists of prodigies and their respective significance. The growing influence of Mesopotamian, Iranian, and then Hellenistic divination, coupled with the gradual loss of the political power of the temples, sparked interest in diverse new forms of predictions, such as the interpretation of omina and, most of all, astrology, a discipline previously quite foreign to Ancient Egypt. Astrology soon became very important as indicated by the technical treatises from the Hellenistic period ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, the fictional Pharaoh Nechepso, or his alleged counsellor, the prophet Petosiris. Throughout the imperial period, there is evidence of astrological calendars and horoscopes in Demotic or Greek; some horoscopes were even represented on tomb-ceilings. Astrology played such an important role in postPharaonic Egypt that, by Late Antiquity, the Egyptians were considered as the most skilled practitioners of the art.

Iran Divination in Ancient Iran is only poorly attested and mostly filtered through ancient Greek sources. The account of Herodotus implies that the magoi were the principal

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Iranian priestly cast without whom no sacrifice could take place. They were also considered experts in the analysis of dreams and of celestial phenomena, such as solar eclipses. In Sasanian times, the Ancient Iranians were associated with pyromancy. Roman sources also attributed this type of divination to Persian origins. This aspect of their divinatory art is scarcely surprising, given the divine importance of the fire for Zoroastrianism, which makes it quite probable that this form of divination had much older origins. The Greek historian Herodotus provides a lengthy account of a hippomantic ritual to divine the gods’ will concerning the appointment of a new ruler. Despite its probable Indo-European roots, the credibility of the ritual is hard to establish. The Islamic scholar Ibn Qutaybah also related that the Persians inscribed the shafts of their arrows. When they chose one of those arrows at random to shoot at the enemy, the word inscribed was regarded as an omen; a specific form of cleromancy which might well go back to pre-Islamic times given the importance of bow and arrow in the Iranian society. Al-Nadîm (tenth century), in his catalogue Fihrist, attests the existence of numerous (now lost) Persian books on divination. The Samanide vizier Balʿamī, in his expanded Persian translation of al-Ṭabarī’s History, quotes from a “book of divination” (ketāb-e fāl), which allegedly contained prodigies recorded during the time of Persian supremacy. Finally, the Šāhnāma describes an important number of divinatory practices and occurrences in its account of pre-Islamic times (for example, Alexander’s death is predicted by the birth of a monstrous child; Khosrow II Parvēz guessed the downfall of his dynasty from the accidental fall of a quince from the top of his throne). Although many of these stories may reflect pre-Islamic traditions, their authenticity is notoriously difficult to ascertain. Besides these poorly attested forms of divination, there are some hints, such as the “Bundahišn”, as to the importance of astrology in Zoroastrianism, mostly through cosmological accounts. Certainly, the celestial bodies played an important theological role from the earliest Persian origins. They were major actors in the eschatological battle between good and evil and were variously assigned and reassigned, at different times, to one or the other camp. However, astrology is absent in the Avesta, and its presence as a proper divinatory discipline, seems to have been the result of Hellenistic influences. The Parthians and Sasanians translated Greek astrological texts (often influenced by Mesopotamian concepts) into Persian and adapted them to the different cosmological schools of Zoroastrian lore. In particular, they stressed the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn as responsible for many major political and religious events. During the Sasanian period, there also appeared the starôšmâr. They were astrological professionals at the Sasanian court who cast the king’s horoscope. After this, the cosmological and astrological texts, now mostly lost, were translated into Arabic, and later into Byzantine Greek and Mediaeval Latin. This process means that it is difficult to uncover a specific Zoroastrian concept of astrology. The sources contain a few references to the alleged prediction of future historical events by semi-mythical foundation figures of Iranian society, for example Hys-



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taspes or Zoroaster. The poorly attested “Oracles of Hystaspes” seem to have been a series of apocalyptic prophecies ascribed to Vištāspa, the patron and follower of Zoroaster. Legend identified him with the father of Darius  I. There is some debate over the extent to which these prophecies, and the announcement of the coming of a Saviour King, stem from old Zoroastrian traditions or rather from a Hellenistic origin possibly inspired by the similar Egyptian and Mesopotamian oracles and superficially draped in an Iranian style. Similarly, the Zand-i Wahman yasn (sometimes erroneously labelled Bahman-Yašt) relates a conversation in which Ahura Mazda enables Zoroaster, to predict the future: As is revealed in the Stūdgar, Zarduxšt sought immortality from Ohrmazd. Then Ohrmazd showed the wisdom of omniscience to Zarduxšt. And therewith he saw the trunk of a tree on which were four branches, one of gold, one of silver, one of steel, and one on iron had been mixed. […] Ohrmazd said to Spitāmān Zarduxšt, ‘The tree trunk that you have seen, . Those four branches are the four epochs that will come.’ (Zand-i Wahman yasn 1.1–6; trans. Carlo G. Cereti)

The text then further develops a world history divided into various and often inconsistent sub-sections, generally seven or ten periods. The first three ages represent the time leading up to the “millennium of Zoroaster”; the latter ages are compared to a tree which has a number of branches representing the eras of Iranian history. The similarity between the metals enumerated here and early Greek ideas of a gradual decline of world history and of the succession of Empires seems notable, although it is not at all clear who influenced whom, even more so as the last part of the prophecy appears to have been repeatedly remodelled to make it correspond to the respective present. The last branches led to a period of apocalyptic events and the final battles between good and evil.

Greece Public Divination Divination was a major constituent of ancient Greek civilisation and influenced all aspects of its everyday culture, including religion, politics, and economics. Greek divination seems to have shared many points in common with ancient Babylonian divination on the one hand and with Roman divination on the other. There was a bewildering variety of symbols, rituals, texts and experts, and divination existed in both public and private. At both levels, there were numerous techniques of oblative and impetrative divination which sought to foretell the future or at least to understand the mood of the gods. Many of these techniques were inspired by external influences. The Greeks themselves thought that ornithomancy was Carian, and astrology either

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Libyan, Egyptian, or Assyrian. There are also indications that they received extispicy from the Near East. In contrast to the ancient Near East, however, Greek public divination transitioned from a procedure centred on the powerful individual (and, therefore, intimately linked to monarchic or aristocratic power) to a practice involving the whole community. It was, therefore, compatible with, and integrated into, democratic forms of constitution. However, the main divinatory techniques appear to have remained largely unchanged from the earliest periods of Greek history until the advent of Christianity. Practically, the most popular forms of impetrative divination were the observation of the flight of birds and, most of all, the analysis of the inner organs of sacrificial animals. Homer had already stressed the importance of ornithomancy (mostly through eagles, falcons, or hawks). The auguries could either be performed by specialised seers or by private individuals on the basis of certain general rules. In Greek augury, the right side was more favourable than the left, and significance was attached to the number of birds, direction of flight, their appearance or actions in a specific context. By the Classical Age, ornithomancy seems to have been displaced by extispicy. In the Greek city, most acts of public life (for example, legislative or juridical procedures, military campaigns) were accompanied by sacrifices. The subsequent examination of the animal entrails, especially the liver, was carried out by relevant specialists, generally named manteis, sometimes hieroskopoi. In addition to reading the specific characteristics of the organs themselves (form, colour, etc.), the specialist also had to assess the flammability of the sacrificed organs and body parts. Inevitably, the political impact of the seers’ prognostications led to numerous opportunities for ambitious politicians (for example, Tisamenus at Sparta or Lampon at Athens) to gain power by situating themselves as the privileged intermediary between the polis and the gods. Although manteis continued to be employed by military commanders and kings throughout the Classical and Hellenistic age, their importance in regard to the polis itself started to wane. This is clear at Athens, following the catastrophic failure of the Sicilian expedition, which had been largely approved of by the seers and whose failure was partly caused by the general Nicias’ over-credulous belief in divination: For he was one of those who are excessively terrified at heavenly portents, and was “addicted to divination”, as Thucydides says (7.50.4). And in one of the dialogues of Pasiphon, it is recorded that he sacrificed every day to the gods, and that he kept a diviner at his house, ostensibly for the constant enquiries which he made about public affairs, whereas most of his enquiries were really made about his own private matters, and especially about his silver mines; for he had large interests in the mining district of Laurium, and they were exceedingly profitable, although worked at great risks. (Plutarch, Nicias, 4.1–2; trans. Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb)

From this date forward, references to diviners are virtually absent in Thucydides and in public speeches. Diviners only become important again in the Hellenistic period in the context of Philip II of Macedonia and Alexander the Great, who retained diviners, like the Telmessian seer, Aristander, at their court.



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Unsolicited divine signs continued to be of great importance to the public institutions of the Greek city states. In contrast to the formulaic practices associated with impetrative divination, their often spectacular occurrences (for example, earthquakes, solar eclipses, or lightning) or highly symbolic nature (for example, in the domain of teratology) represented a continuous reminder that the gods were closely watching human affairs and cared to warn humankind about imminent dangers or the consequences of divine wrath. In all cases a public response was warranted. The progress of science, especially in the domain of astronomy, gradually divested many prodigies of their miraculous appearance. Nevertheless, the association of uncommon natural events with significant public events, in military and political contexts, continued to impress the ordinary citizen and to further belief in divination. However, in ancient Greece, unsolicited divine signs never acquired a political and collective importance comparable to the annual prodigies reported at Rome. They always remained somewhat on the margin, appearing only on special occasions. In stark contrast to Roman endeavours to identify the underlying divine reasons for prodigies and their careful expiation of them, in ancient Greece, prodigies do not appear to have been systematically collected nor met by any other political response than the termination of the intended action. Another authoritative form of public divination was the consultation of oracles. The Oracle of Delphi, in particular, was regularly consulted throughout the whole of Greek history by the different city-states. It played a vital political role, most notably during the time of the Great Colonisation (seventh to sixth centuries BCE), where it influenced the dispatch of different colonising expeditions. However, as the Oracle’s responses often eschewed any external control, it sometimes complicated, rather than simplified, collective political decision-taking, as its answers could be variously interpreted. After the Persian War, Delphi gradually lost its importance in public divination, because it had played an ambiguous role during the conflict and was accused of Medising (supporting the Persians). Although the oracle of Delphi continued to be a centre for private divination and a symbol of Greek religious unity, many cities increasingly consulted oracles situated within their own borders, for example, in Sparta, the chief magistrates (the ephors) often visited the dream oracle of Thalamai. Only in particularly critical times did oracles have renewed symbolic importance. This is seen in the importance of Siwa for Alexander the Great or Didyma for Seleucus: It is said that while he [i.  e. Seleucus] was still serving under Alexander and following him in the war against the Persians he consulted the Didymaean oracle to inquire about his return to Macedonia and that he received for answer: ‘Do not hurry back to Europe; / Asia will be much better for you.’ (app., Syr. 12.56; trans. Horace White, Loeb)

But the new political form of the territorial state and the ideology of the new Hellenistic king as a theios aner (“a god-like man”) shifted the traditional power of those oracles from the temple to the palace.

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A further important means of consulting the gods with regard to public affairs was in the use of oracular books. Although the Greeks and the Romans had no tradition comparable to the monotheist scriptures, there were many books circulating in antiquity which contained compilations of oracles from diverse origins and of doubtful authenticity. They were generally held under tight control by the state authorities and could only be consulted on specific occasions. They provided a convenient means for seeking divine advice without the risk of much external interference since they were regarded as the authoritative words of the gods. Thus, the Spartan ephors consulted the “skin of Ephimenides”, probably a set of oracular texts inscribed on parchment, while Onomacritus compiled a series of oracles which was kept on the Akropolis for the Peisistratids, so that they could be freer of the influence of the Delphic oracle. These texts always required competent interpretation. Therefore, the city often employed chresmologoi, specialists in the compilation and analysis of oracles. They might practise privately or they could be attached to certain holy places. At times of political crisis, they could acquire considerable political influence, as in the case of Diopeithes in Athens. Along with other divination specialists, their influence started to wane from the fourth century onwards.

Private Divination Private divination practices in ancient Greece are much less well-known than those of public divination, although the situation is marginally better than in Rome. The ritual forms of divination were broadly the same as those practiced in public, but the focus lay, of course, on the individual, not on the state. Therefore, some less conspicuous forms of divination, such as omina (chance words, sayings and deeds which could be allegorically interpreted) enjoyed a greater importance. There was a rich wealth of individual omina. Often attested in the biographies of important individuals, there seems little reason to suppose that they were not also relevant to the general population. Almost every chance action or occurrence could seem relevant, from the slip of a tongue or sneezing to an accidental stumble, as long as it could be symbolically related to an ongoing or expected event. A special category of omens were signs later named by the Romans, as omina imperii and omina mortis. These played an important role in the legitimizing or condemning the power of rulers or politicians, a role which also continued into the Hellenistic age, as exemplified in the numerous omina associated with the rule of Alexander or Seleucus. Omina imperii generally occurred either at the birth of the concerned individual or prior to his accession to power. They indicated that the individual had the special favour of the gods, but did not necessarily imply that the individual had any special moral qualities. It is, therefore, sometimes difficult to attribute these signs to either positive or negative propaganda, such as the following example pertaining to the career of Pericles and his opponent Thucydides:



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A story is told that once on a time the head of a one-horned ram was brought to Pericles from his country-place, and that Lampon the seer, when he saw how the horn grew strong and solid from the middle of the forehead, declared that, whereas there were two powerful parties in the city, that of Thucydides and that of Pericles, the mastery would finally devolve upon one man, – the man to whom this sign had been given. (Plutarch, Pericles, 6.2; trans. Bernadotte Perrin)

Conversely, omina mortis announced the individual’s imminent demise and thus could either be interpreted as a sign of impending apotheosis or, more frequently, divine wrath. Besides omina, another important form of divination in private life was oneiromancy (“dream divination”). Dreams were probably the most popular and widespread form of alleged interaction between the human and the divine. It was practised on an individual basis as well as in ritualized surroundings, for example, at incubation oracles. These were usually linked to the god Asclepius and became very popular in a medical context. There are numerous testimonies as to the context and significance of dreams, enabling the modern scholar to formulate hypotheses regarding the psychoanalytical disposition and psychological concerns of the ancient Greeks. Dreams were considered as a typically human characteristic. They were sent either by Apollo or Prometheus. Although it was generally known that many dreams were linked to an individual’s immediate biographical experiences, nonetheless many philosophers held that the diminution of the individual’s sensory functions and perceptions enabled the dreamer to better perceive messages sent by the gods. This, therefore, allowed the dreamer to gain insight into future events which it was impossible to acquire in a waking state. There must have been, from a very early period, lists containing the divinatory significance of dreams. Later, these were probably expanded into real compendia. Unfortunately, the only extant book on dream interpretation is Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica. The work provides precise details on interpreting dreams with different interpretations dependent on the precise social status and biographical context of the dreamer: But to give you some practice in the concept of similarities, the dream that I have provided shall suffice. A pregnant woman dreamt that she gave birth to a serpent. The child that she brought into the world became an excellent and famous public speaker. For a serpent has a forked tongue, which is also true of a public speaker. The woman was rich, to be sure, and wealth serves to pay the expenses of an education. Another woman had the same dream and her child became a hierophant [a priest]. For the serpent is a sacred animal and plays a part in secret rites. In this case, the woman who had the dream was also a priest’s wife. Still yet another woman had the same dream and her child became an excellent prophet. For the serpent is sacred to Apollo who is the most versed in prophecy. This woman was also a prophet’s daughter. (Artemidorus, Oneirokritika 4.67; trans. Robert J. White)

The level of attention to this kind of detail suggests the potential complexity of the analysis practised by formal specialists in oneiromancy and this work’s importance for later dream-literature into the twentieth century cannot be overstated.

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The rich Greek oracular tradition already mentioned was not just exploited by states and rulers, but also (and mainly so) by individual citizens. There was a bewildering array of Greek oracles geographically diverse and of greatly differing status. They ranged from the more than sixty official and spectacular sites such as Delphi, Dodona, or Didyma, to the most humble oracular rituals practised at neighbourhood shrines or by single priests. The questions asked by individuals were equally diverse. They could concern events such as travel, illness, marriage, infertility, legal problems, and so on. The techniques used were also varied. At some shrines, the medium produced prophetic utterances, sometimes with the help of hallucinogen substances, or inspired by the respective divinity (such as the Delphic Pythia), occasionally through the intermediation of a priest. At others, the priests analysed the sacrificial fire (as in the case of empyromancy at the Altar of Zeus in Olympia), drew lots (for example, the casting of light and dark beans at Delphi), or, the increasingly popular practice in imperial times, of oracles based on the casting of lots with symbolic or alphabetical signs. A final, though much less important category of divination specialists relevant to private divination were the prophetes (“prophets”). The technical differences between the prophets and the manteis are sometimes difficult to ascertain. One key difference lies in the fact that the seers generally employed impetrative techniques, whereas the prophets were associated with spontaneous divination. They were also generally attached to an oracle where they demonstrated their talent by uttering words allegedly inspired directly by the gods. The specialists mandated with providing a professional framework for divinatory practices in the private sphere were essentially the same as those within the context of public divination, as the Greeks, in contrast to the Romans, scarcely employed priesthoods which dealt only with political questions. Thus, prophets, seers, or cleromantic specialists constituted a rich and complex pattern of specialists. They were often ridiculed in contemporary literature, but nonetheless remained active and popular until Late Antiquity. The consultation of these specialists required payment for their services, which attracted additional criticism from philosophers and orators who thought their mercenary activities were unbecoming in the context of true divination. Unfortunately, the organisation of the various divinatory experts is largely unknown to us. However, the most prestigious groups of diviners may have been united by a hereditary aspect, as we know that the manteis of the archaic age often belonged to the aristocracy and later on constituted real family clans such as the Melampidoi, the Clytiadai, the Telliadai, or the Iamidai.



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Theories on Divination In contrast to the ancient Near East which has left little information regarding theoretical, synthetical, and critical approaches to divination, there is a wealth of information from the Greek world regarding theological, philosophical, and analytical understandings of divination. These theoretical interests are perhaps rooted in the fact that Greek divination, as opposed to divination in the Near East as well as Etruria and Rome, was often based on much more determinist conceptions of the future. This, therefore, prompted an early debate regarding divination, fate, and human free will. Already Homer had talked about the implicit competition between seers and poets. His work suggested that there were limits to the credibility of both, even more so as the Homeric gods did not refrain from fooling humans by sending them biased dream messages or by breaking promises. Nevertheless, the period from the “Dark Ages” up to the Classical period must have represented somewhat of a high point of Greek divination, until the rise of philosophy in the sixth to fifth century led to a thorough questioning of divination and the place of seers in Greek society. From the very beginning of the written record, there was a conflict between utter rejection of traditional divination techniques on the one hand and conservative acceptation or philosophical sublimation on the other. A legitimate question that might be asked is which approach was, ultimately, more detrimental to divination itself? The philosopher Xenophanes fully rejected any mantic belief; other writers complained about the obviously ambiguous and unhelpful responses of many oracular utterances; while the Pythagoreans, on the contrary, had a positive attitude towards divination and were probably among the first to differentiate between natural and artificial divination. Similarly, while the sophists were very sceptical about tradition and divination, Socrates and his pupils adopted a more positive attitude. He himself not only consulted the Delphic Oracle but also, through the belief in his own daimonion, furthered confidence in the possibility of inspired communication between man and divinity: You do know what sort of man Chaerephon was, how vehement he was in whatever he would set out to do. And in particular he once even went to Delphi and dared to consult the oracle about this – now as I say, do not make disturbances, men – and he asked whether there was anyone wiser than I. The Pythia replied that no one was wiser. And concerning these things his brother here will be a witness for you, since he himself has met his end. (Plato, Apologia 21a; trans. Thomas G. West)

Therefore, Plato and the early Academy, although they criticised many seers as sham and were opposed to artificial divination, considered spontaneous divination as one of the most beautiful arts. They focused on the idea of mantic inspiration, during which the thinking faculties of the individual were supplanted by the divine. This was regarded as a symmetrical reversal of man’s philosophical endeavour to send his spirit heavenwards towards the sphere of the divine in order to comprehend the true nature of his ideas:

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There is also a madness which is a divine gift, and the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men. For prophecy is a madness, and the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona when out of their senses have conferred great benefits on Hellas, both in public and private life, but when in their senses few or none, […] and in proportion prophecy is more perfect and august than augury, both in name and fact, in the same proportion, as the ancients testify, is madness superior to a sane mind, for the one is only of human, but the other of divine origin. (Plato, Phaedrus 244a–d; trans. Benjamin Jowett)

Aristotle and his school agreed, in the main, that the soul could communicate with the transcendent world, but focused mainly on the phenomenon of sleep. According to Aristotle, dreams were not the results of immediate divine intervention; he argued rather that the soul of man, delivered from the sorrows of the body, could autonomously fully commune with the divinity. This is also why the Peripatetics largely rejected artificial divination, albeit with some significant exceptions, such as Kratippos. Even Democritus and the atomists refrained from fully repudiating divination, despite believing that even the gods were only composed of atoms. They thought the gods were able to share their thoughts with men by sending them (material) images perceived during sleep. Like the Academy and the Peripatetics, the atomists rejected artificial divination. However, they believed that extispicy might work, not because of divine interaction, but simply because extispicy mirrored earthly conditions, for example the quality of the climate or the health of the sacrificial animal. This allowed them to make a number of scientific predictions relevant to these topics. Evidence for theories about divination in Hellenistic philosophy is very fragmentary and indirect. Most of the information is distilled through much later sources: in particular Cicero’s De divinatione and De natura deorum, which both drew heavily on Hellenistic literature, but also imperial compilations such as Diogenes Laertius’ biographies of the philosophers. The main philosophical antagonists of this period, Stoicism and Epicureanism, also contradicted each other in relation to divination. Stoicism intimately linked the existence of the gods with the existence of divination; Epicureanism however denied any divine determinism and accepted only natural law. Thus, the Stoa, in its endeavour to consider the traditional order as divinely pre-established, also tried to legitimise popular beliefs regarding divination, although there were some significant exceptions to this tendency, notably Panaetius who adopted a rather sceptical attitude. In general however, the Stoics held the ideal sage to be, at the same time, a real mantis. His insight into the intrinsically Good was always rewarded by insight into the future. This explains why, in ancient times, royal power, and prophetic talent went hand in hand; a telling re-interpretation of Plato’s philosopher kings. Epicurus, however, thought that the gods, being themselves purely material, were not involved in the creation of the world and had no reason whatsoever to interact with human beings. He believed that there was no common ground for any form of communication, and that all techniques of divination were, therefore, erroneous, a sham, or simply grounded on a misunderstanding of natural laws. Finally, the advocate of the Hellenistic “Middle Academy”, Arcesilas, in line with his sceptical atti-



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tude regarding the possibility of truth, adopted an attitude towards divination which outlined the arguments in favour and against its existence, an approach taken over by Carneades, the founder of the “New Academy”. It seems relevant to mention the important role divination played in Greek historiography. In his Histories, Herodotus included a wealth of information regarding the most diverse forms of divination – Greek and foreign. It seems obvious, given the important conceptual place of oracles and dreams in his work, that divination had a vital role in human affairs. Thus, while human hubris is at the origin of conflicts such as the Persian Wars, the real trigger of the confrontation often consists in ambiguous divine messages, meant to fool those who err in order to hasten their fall. Thucydides criticised excessive believe in divination and explicitly focused on pragmatic and psychological aspects, while leaving out the “wonderful”. However, even he occasionally mentions divine signs, such as the list of prodigies at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. This demonstrates his interest in the importance of divination at times of extraordinary collective tension. Although the importance of public divination decreased during the fourth century, individual authors, such as Xenophon, continued to express their belief in the possibility of communication between humans and the divine. This belief came to full prominence in the Hellenistic period, when the popularity of the new literary genre of the biography and of the figure of Alexander the Great kindled once again the belief in the manifestation of the divine will through human agency. In particular, the biographies of the diverse Hellenistic rulers and politicians assigned an important place to prodigies, omens and oracles. Here too, of course, the philosophical debate on the reliability of divination led individual historians, such as Polybius, largely to exclude divination from their narratives. Nevertheless, following the general artistic orientation of the Hellenistic age, miraculous events seem to have occupied considerable parts of the historical narratives, although it is unclear how far these descriptions matched aesthetic requirements rather than actual religious experience.

Etruria Traditionally, Etruria had a religion revealed through prophecy. The so-called disciplina Etrusca (“the Etruscan discipline”) was taught to the twelve peoples of Etruria by the small boy Tages who appeared fully-formed from a ploughman’s furrow. The words were written down and preserved in the libri Tagetici and the libri Acheruntici. Another myth related the transmission of books relevant to lightning lore by the nymph Begoe (Vegoia) (the so-called libri Vegoici). The Etruscan texts no longer survive and what we know about the disciplina Etrusca must be largely reconstructed from later, mainly Roman, sources. The responsibility for divination lay in the hands of the haruspices (netsvis). At times the terminology ars haruspicina seems synonymous with the entirety of the

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Etruscan discipline. The haruspices were a body of sixty priests drawn from the sons of Etruscan nobility, possibly representing each of the twelve cities of Etruria. Their lore may have been passed down from father to son: there is good evidence for “dynasties” of haruspices and families with inter-generational haruspical expertise. But there are other indications that there was a formalised system of education and a period of apprenticeship in the ars haruspicina for the sons of Etruscan principes. The haruspices were experts in extispicy or entrail inspection. Of particular importance was the liver, although the heart, gall bladder, and lungs could also be observed. In this respect, the significance of the act is attested by its portrayal on Etruscan artefacts, sometimes in prognostic contexts. The discovery of a full-size bronze liver from Piacenza divided into forty-two sections, named with Etruscan and Italic gods, organised according to their heavenly and, perhaps, chthonic functions, indicates that haruspices had didactic models to inform their interpretations. Its similarity to clay models from Mesopotamia may indicate that the Etruscans had been influenced by their near-Eastern counterparts. Roman sources attest to a tendency for the haruspices to make predictions from their sacrificial observations, based on the favourable or unfavourable appearance of the entrails. The bronze liver model suggests that for the Etruscans extispicy was a complex process with multiple potential outcomes and interpretations. The Etruscans were also specialists in fulgural (thunder and lightning) lore. They believed there were nine gods who threw thunderbolts and three types of lightning sent by Jupiter. If the brontoscopic calendar preserved by John the Lydian from an original translation by the Roman polymath, Nigidius Figulus, is a genuine Etruscan document, then it gives some indication of methodology. It is written in a form reminiscent of Mesopotamian omen lists “if it thunders, then y”. The responses reflect a variety of agricultural, social, and political concerns, some of which are mirrored in the haruspical responses to sacrifice. Lightning bolts, on the other hand, seem to have been subject to wider variations in interpretation. They could be advisory, confirmatory, or monitory, with a further hierarchy within this trifecta, whereby the prognostication could be perpetual, limited, or deferred. Furthermore, the haruspices’ response was subject to restrictions according to whether they made their prediction on behalf of the state or in a private capacity. The Etruscan haruspices also had a special responsibility for the interpretation of prodigies. At Rome they played an important role in confirming the responses of the Sibylline Books or when a particularly dire prodigy required their intervention. For example: On a stormy night, while the city was taut with suspense because of the impending war, a bolt of lightning struck and destroyed the columna rostrata;* it had been set up on the Capitoline during the First Punic War to commemorate the victory of the consul Marcus Aemilius (the one whose colleague was Servius Fulvius). This event was regarded as a portent and reported to the Senate. The senators ordered the matter to be referred to the haruspices and also directed the decemvirs to consult the sacred books. The decemvirs proclaimed that the city had to undergo a ceremo-



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nial cleansing, that a supplication and public appeal to the gods were necessary, and that there should be a sacrifice with full-grown victims both at Rome on the Capitoline and in Campania on the promontory of Minerva; in addition, there should be a ten-day festival for Jupiter Optimus Maximus as soon as possible. All these procedures were carefully carried out. The haruspices answered that the divine sign would turn out to be for the good and that it portended territorial expansion and the death of enemies since the ships’ prows knocked over by the storm had been enemy spoils. Other events combined to heighten the atmosphere of superstition: it had been announced that at Saturnia it had rained blood in the town centre for three days in a row; at Calatia a donkey was born with three legs, and a bull and five cows had been killed by a single stroke of lightning; at Auximum it had rained earth. In response to these prodigies too, divine rites were performed, there was a one-day supplication, and a holiday was observed. (Livy, Ab urbe condita 42.20.1–6: 172 BC; trans. Jane D. Chaplin)

The haruspices were particularly implicated in cases where people or objects were struck by lightning, peculiar behaviour by cows or oxen, talking infants, monstrous human births, including hermaphrodites, violent storms, earthly flames and underground rumblings, and swarms of bees. In respect of these prodigia, the haruspices had characteristic patterns of expiation. For example, the disposal of prodigies by drowning or deportation, and burning. They also interpreted what prodigies portended in both a favourable and unfavourable sense. Their responses were typically concerned with military success or civil discord, death, and bloodshed. Haruspical interpretation also demonstrates a concern with position or orientation. This may be relevant to their augural expertise which, amongst other things, involved rituals to establish the boundary of a city. For example, Plutarch records how Romulus set about building his new city: He summoned men from Etruria who were used to giving detailed instructions according to certain sacred laws and formulae, and to act, so to speak, as the agents of holy ritual. A circular pit was dug […]. In it were deposited offerings of all the things whose use is thought proper according to human custom, or is rendered necessary by nature. […] They called this pit the mundus, the same word that they used for the heavens. Then they marked out the city around it, marking out the circle from the point of a compass. And the founder put a bronze blade on his plough, yoked up a bull and a cow, and himself drove them on, drawing a deep furrow around the boundaries, while his followers had the task of pushing back inside the city all the clods of earth the plough turned up and not letting a single one lie outside. It was with this line that they marked out the course of the wall, and it was called the pomerium. (Plutarch, Romulus 11.1–4; trans. Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price)

Etruscan bird lore observed unusual signs from diverse birds: crows, ravens, eagles, and owls. Practical evidence is supplied by the famous painting of the historical figure Vel Saties reading a bird omen, or the depiction of augurs in the “Tomba degli Auguri” in Tarquinii, each one holding a lituus, a symbol of augural authority, used to mark out regions on earth and in the sky. The attention to detail in other tomb paintings to the number, colour, size, and action of birds may further reflect this Etruscan interest in augury.

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Other elements of Etruscan divination can be inferred from archaeological material. The evidence from the linen wrappings surrounding the Zagreb mummy and the Capua tile indicate that religious life was built around yearly calendars which designated the sacrifices, offerings, and prayers to be offered to specific deities on specific dates. Evidence from mirrors and other items suggests too that the Etruscans practised lekanomanteia (divination from bowls of water) or catoptromanteia (divination with mirrors). Moreover, they illustrate not only that Etruria might have inherited divinatory techniques from Mesopotamia, but that it could be a conduit for Greek and Italic divination. For example, this is amply expressed in the depiction of the legendary Greek seer Calchas reading the entrails or of the disembodied prophesying head of Orpheus floating down the River Hebrus. Alternatively another mirror depicts the Italic figure Cacu (Cacus), who appears less positively in the myths surround Herakles, playing the lyre and prophesying, about to be ensnared by the figures Avle Vipinas and Caile Vipinas (the Vibenna brothers from Vulci). Although its exact nature is shrouded in the cross-cultural elements common to both Greek and Roman divination, the evidence which survives from Etruria then suggests a highly complex and developed system of divination. Nonetheless, it is possible to posit from the Piacenza liver or the detailed analysis of Etruscan fulgural lore that they had a particularly analytical approach to divination. Presumably only those trained as haruspices had access to their sacred texts. Those texts provided apparently precise and communication with the gods, but, like other sacred texts, they required expert exegesis by those specially trained as priests. However, this “bookishness” was complemented by a less restrained prophetic tradition which could be traced to the very origins of Etruscan religion. The combination explains why the Etruscan haruspices were freer than their Roman counterparts in offering allegorical and inferential interpretations of supernatural phenomena. It also helps to explain why the Roman state saw fit to utilise the haruspices at times of religious crisis and why, from the second to first centuries BCE, haruspices become more conspicuous as personal advisors to ambitious magistrates.

Republican Rome Public Divination In one succinct paragraph Valerius Maximus, writing in the reign of Tiberius, summed up Roman religion and divination: Our ancestors wanted fixed and sacred ceremonies to be regulated by the knowledge of the pontiffs, authorizations for the successful conduct of affairs by the observations of the augurs, the prophecies of Apollo by the books of the seers, and the averting of omens by the Etruscan dis-



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cipline. Also by ancient practice, attention is paid to the divine: through prayer when anything requires entrusting to the gods; through a vow when a favour is to be requested; through a ceremony of thanksgiving when a vow is to be paid; through receipt of a favourable omen when is necessary to consult either entrails or oracles; through sacrifice by which also the warnings of prodigies and lightning strikes are averted when a customary rite is to be performed. (Valerius Maximus, Facta 1.1.1; cf. Cicero, De haruspicum responso 9.18; trans. David Wardle)

Essential to an understanding of Roman religion, and consequently Roman divination, in the public sphere was the reciprocal concept of do ut des (“I give so that you may give”). In other words, mortals made sacrifices, vows, prayers, and offerings to the gods in order that the gods would grant their favour to the Roman state and populace. A feature of that reciprocal arrangement was the notion of the pax deorum. The “peace of the gods” however was not a fixed concept. It had to be actively sought with due care and attention to the appropriate rituals. This notion was of particular concern at times of political, military, and religious crisis. Such crises could be taken as indications of the ira deorum which, like efforts to obtain the favour of the gods, had to be assuaged through appropriate religious measures, including sacrifices and other ceremonies. In such situations, Roman divination was often not concerned with a more precise understanding of future events but rather to understand the will or intent of the gods and to ensure that the gods would become, or remain, well-disposed to a particular political, military or religious undertaking. This mediation between the human and the divine realm was achieved through Rome’s priests and her magistrates. Four priesthoods had overall responsibility for divinatory matters, in addition to a variety of other religious concerns: the pontifices (pontiffs), public augures (augurs), the decemviri sacris faciundis (the Board of Ten, later Fifteen, in charge of the Sibylline Books), and the Etruscan haruspices. Membership of these bodies was restricted to the upper echelons of Roman and Etruscan society. In the case of the Roman priesthoods, members were chosen for life by their peers, and many were also serving senators. But in terms of the actual praxis of Roman divination, the responsibility for conducting sacrifices or taking the auspices often fell to those officials elected under their own auspices: the consuls, praetors, and censors. Furthermore, although it took advice from its public priests through a process of consultation and debate, the Senate was frequently the final authority on divine matters. Individual senators (and priests) could also play an important role in recognizing when a ritual flaw or other portentous sign had provoked the ira deorum, and reporting that to the Senate or appropriate college of priests. Religious and divinatory concerns were, therefore, never dissociated from the politico-military concerns of the Roman state and its individual magistrates. The pontiffs, headed by the pontifex maximus, were entrusted with oversight of the sacra publica et privata (public and private sacred rituals), the maintenance of ancestral rites and ceremonies, and the adoption of new or foreign practices. They were responsible for ensuring that the populace did not become corrupted either

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through a neglect of religion or through depraved religious practices. They were also to teach which prodigies (including lightning bolts) were to be recognised and expiated. Implicitly, this oversight also gave the pontifices power over the divinatory mechanisms necessary to maintain or to secure the pax deorum. In particular, from 304 BCE onwards, the pontiffs maintained control over the publication of a formal yearly calendar which prescribed those days most suited for religious activities, when they were disallowed, and other rites and festivals intended to maintain the goodwill of the gods. The auspicia were the special concern of the public augurs who were both the conduits and interpreters of the will of Jupiter, the god of the auspices. Like the pontifices, the augurs maintained their augural lore in sacred books only available to those who were members of the priesthood. This lore primarily related to the observation of the flight and call of birds, which were categorised hierarchically. The eagle was most important but others, in particular vultures and crows, were considered important indicators of the divine will. Other signs also fell to the interpretation of the augurs including thunder and lightning (ex caelo), the tripudium solistimum, a special type of augury involving sacred chickens, those concerning certain land animals (ex quadrupedibus), and other overtly ominous events (ex diris). It was often not the augurs who carried out the observations but those state magistrates who held imperium (military authority): the consuls, praetors, and censors. Potentially a magistrate might also be an augur or an augur might be present as an advisor, but the augural college acted, much as the pontifices, as a consultative body who could make a pronouncement on the legality of the religious issue at hand. Augural signs could either be impetrativa (“sought”) or oblativa (“unsought”). Typical of the former were those ceremonies concerned with the inauguration of people, places, and institutions. The fullest and most informative account of what this ritual consisted comes in Livy’s anachronistic tale of King Numa’s inauguration: After Numa was summoned he […] was then escorted to the citadel by an augur […]. Numa was seated on a stone, facing the south, while the augur sat to his left, his head covered and holding in his right hand a curved staff with knots which they called a lituus. Then, looking out over the city and the countryside, he prayed to the gods and marked out an area in the sky from east to west, designating the areas to the south “the right”, those to the north “the left”. He fixed in his mind a landmark opposite him far off on the horizon; then, shifting the staff to his left hand and placing his right hand on Numa’s head, he prayed as follows: ‘Father Jupiter, if it is heaven’s will that Numa Pompilius whose head I am now touching be king at Rome, I ask you to grant it by sending us favourable and clear signs within those boundaries that I have fixed.’ He then enumerated the auspices that he wished to be sent. And sent they were: Numa was declared King and descended from the sacred area of augury. (Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.18; trans. T. James Luce)

Properly regarded as auguria, the presiding augur or magistrate took up a position in a small sacred enclosure called an auguraculum (at Rome, situated on the Capitoline Hill on the very arx, close to the Temple of Jupiter). From there he would mark out



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another, imaginary, templum in the sky specifying a line from east to west and one north to south with his lituus (a special, curved staff of office). With his hand placed on the object of inauguration he would wait for Jupiter to send an indication of his approval or disapproval. The value of the subsequent sign would depend on the quadrant in which the sign occurred. The augural concern for orientation and the demarcation of sacred space also delimited the boundaries between peace and war. The pomerium, a sacred ditch which ran around the city, separated the city auspices (auspicia urbana) from the military auspices. Within the city the auspices were always taken by the presiding magistrate prior to the commencement of public business such as senatorial meetings or public assemblies (comitia). An unfavourable sign from Jupiter before those meetings or a ritual fault (a vitium), during the course of a comitium (for example, if lightning or some other prodigy occurred) would delay or annul the proceedings for one day. Where a political issue was particularly contentious this had the benefit of allowing passions to cool or creating space for considered reflection. However, in the later Republic, rival politicians increasingly made use of obnuntiatio (an announcement of adverse auspicia) to hamper the legislative ambitions of their opponents, as in the case of Bibulus’ infamous observation of the skies in 59 BCE to prevent the legislative programme proposed by his consular colleague, Julius Caesar: So Caesar was chosen consul with Bibulus […]. He brought forward an agrarian law and when Bibulus announced an obnuntiatio, Caesar drove him from the forum by force […] Caesar’s conduct drove Bibulus to such a point of desperation that, until he departed office, hidden away at home, he did nothing else other than announce an obstruction of the auspices through edicts. (Sueton, Vita divi Iuli 19–20; trans. John C. Rolfe)

Such was Caesar’s control over the Senate, however, that Bibulus’ actions had minimal effect. On campaign, the general was accompanied by a pullarius (a chicken keeper) and several sacred chickens retained in cages. Prior to a battle he would call on an auspical expert who would instruct the pullarius to tell him when the chickens began to eat. When some of the spelt fell from the chicken’s beaks on to the ground, the pullarius would announce that there was now a tripudium solistimum and the gods had granted their assent to the engagement. It was widely considered that failure to observe the tripudium solistimum would lead to military defeat and disaster as in the case of P. Claudius Pulcher who, in 249 BCE, lost the Battle of Drepanum or C. Flaminius who was disastrously defeated at Cannae in 217 BCE. The decemviri sacris faciundis and Etruscan haruspices were most clearly implicated in the interpretation of prodigia, although the pontifices, the Delphic Oracle, and even the augurs could sometimes be called upon to give their opinion. Such prodigia were a staple element of state sanctioned divination. Any event which appeared to defy nature and challenged human reason might be considered a sign from heaven: lunar and solar eclipses, two or three suns appearing in the sky, lightning strikes, St.

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Elmo’s fire, mysterious rumblings in the earth, rains of stones, meat, or blood, talking cows, two-headed sheep, five-footed horses, moving statues, interrupted sacrifices, hermaphrodites, Siamese twins, famines, plagues, and floods, occasional dreams and so on. By the third century BCE, prodigia appear to have become the clearest indication that something was amiss in human-divine relations. Their clustering at times of intense political and military stress (for example, during the Second Punic War) reflects too the religious and psychological concerns of the Roman populace during these periods. Such prodigia were reported to the Senate, who had the responsibility for deciding whether they were prodigia publica and pertained to the state. These were then referred to the appropriate priestly body or bodies for interpretation. The decemviri consulted the libri Sibyllini (“the Sibylline Books”), until 12 BCE, housed in the Temple of Jupiter; the haruspices resorted to the lore found in their libri fulgurales and libri rituales. Normally these bodies recommended only those rituals necessary to appease the gods, for example, a lectisternium (a ceremony honouring the gods with wax images), a suovetaurilia (a sacrifice of a sow, sheep, and bull), or a ver sacrum (a sacrifice of new born animals). The priests reported their findings to the Senate for approval who instructed the consuls to oversee the various expiatory ceremonies prior to their departure for their military commands. The fact that consuls were not permitted to leave for their provinces until they had concluded their presidency of the Latin Festival and these expiation ceremonies, underscores the importance of the rituals as a divinatory mechanism intended to secure and to ensure divine favour. At all points of this process regarding prodigia there was an element of negotiation. This can be seen in the Senate’s willingness to refer the prodigia to more than one priestly body, sometimes, for example, summoning haruspices from Etruria to provide further exegesis; or referring the expiation ceremonies to the pontifices for their approval. On two historical occasions, the Roman Senate sent envoys to Delphi which recommended the importation of the foreign gods, Aesculapius and Cybele. The responsa themselves could be a question for debate. This is explicit in Cicero’s speech De haruspicum responsis which argued that the expiation ceremonies required by the haruspices in response to a strange rumbling in the Ager Latiniensis applied not to his own house as his enemy Clodius had alleged, but to a series of events in which Clodius was implicated. Hints of similar debates emerge in 143 and 140 BCE when the Sibylline Books attempted to block the construction of a water course to the Capitol but were overcome by the gratia (“influence”) of the pro-praetor, Q. Marcius Rex who was responsible for the project; or when C. Gracchus proposed colony at Junonia was prevented after wolves were supposed to have disturbed the boundary markers. The deliberative process around religion was also a political process which sought to come to an informed consensus regarding the ambition of individual senators. In the Roman world great importance was attached to sacrifice to secure the pax deorum for a future venture or to atone for prior improprieties. Like other ritual practices associated with divination, there was “a complex diffusion of roles” among indi-



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viduals of different status and rank. The magistrate was assisted by experts in sacrifice (victimiarii, popae) and officials, like their Etruscan counterparts, called haruspices, with responsibility for reading the entrails. While the Etruscan haruspices assisted at some state sacrifices, there appears to have been another, less esteemed, lower class group of haruspices who performed similar duties of interpretation. A fault in sacrifice (for example, the missing lobe of a liver or diseased internal organs) was considered a prodigium. In Roman ritual, especially prior to battle, the sacrificant continued to make further sacrifices until there were no evident vitia and the pax deorum could be assured, a process known as litatio. Failure to reach the point of perlitatio (when the gods had finally accepted the sacrifices) was disastrous and, like the taking of the auspices, would temporarily delay action. None of this, however, is to deny an element of prophecy in Roman ritual. There are occasional glimpses of a richer vein of divinatory experience. For example, in 213 BCE, the Roman populace, gripped by an outpouring of superstitious fervor, began to neglect their ancestral gods, and turned instead to foreign rites and practices. A senatorial order demanded that anyone holding books of prophecies, prayers, or sacrifice should submit them to the urban praetor. During the course of the investigation, oracles by a certain prophet named Marcius came to light. These seemed to have predicted the disaster at Cannae and offered recommendations to drive Hannibal out of Italy. Those prophecies were subsequently included in the Sibylline collection and led to the establishment of the ludi Apollinares. Later oracles suggest that the historical sources have perhaps painted a particularly sterile picture of the Sibylline Oracle. For example, a reading of one oracle in 87 BCE allowed the consul Octavius to expel Cinna and six tribuni plebis to guarantee “peace, tranquility and security” for Rome; in 63 BCE, P. Cornelius Lentulus, the Catilinarian conspirator, had laid claim to a Sibylline oracle predicting power in Rome for three Cornelii; in 56 BCE the Books tactfully thwarted Pompey’s attempt to restore Ptolemy Auletes. They encouraged a warm reception but predicted danger to the state should the Egyptian King be assisted with a multitude.; and in 44 BCE, the quindecemviri were alleged to have found a verse in the Sibylline Books which said that only a king could defeat the Parthians. In other instances, we know of Etruscan texts (the Vegoia text; that of an unknown haruspex) being incorporated into the collection and Cicero relates that the Senate listened to the prophecies of Publicius and Culleolus, or that they reacted to a dream of Cornelia to rebuild the Temple of Juno Sospita. It may simply be the case that for the Roman Senate the process of procuration was far more important than any positive or negative pronouncement on future events conveyed by an oracle and, that the prophecy was not normally divulged publicly. Where the pontifices seem to have provided a mechanism for internal oversight, the Etruscan haruspices provided independent and external expert analysis. This procedure of consulting foreign diviners has little parallel in other ancient societies. The Etruscan haruspices permitted the Romans access to their specialist skills in certain types of prodigy, for example, those concerning thunder and lighting, orientation,

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hermaphrodite births, and sacrifice. In contrast to the inductive processes associated with Roman divination, prediction always seems to have been a feature of haruspical interpretation. From the second century BCE, those prescriptive responses begin to give way to more overtly prophetic indications of the future both on the part of the Sibylline Books and the haruspices. For example, when Cn. Manlius was about to attempt a crossing of the Taurus mountains, he was advised not to test the disaster predicted by the Sibylline Books, or in 152 BCE after a statue before the temple of Jupiter was blown over, the haruspices predicted the death of magistrates and priests; in 130 BCE they thought the crying statue of Apollo indicated the end of Greece. Increasingly too prodigia were related to specific individuals. For example, in 132 BCE a series of prodigies predicted the death of Tiberius Gracchus, in the 40s BCE such prodigia also foretold the ends of Pompey, Caesar, and Cicero.

Private Divination It was once thought that diviners played a very small role in the private lives of Republican Romans and, if they did, only the lower classes were interested in such banal activities. The surviving evidence both literary and archaeological paints a much more vibrant and complex picture. In the second century BCE, Cato the Elder famously forbad his vilicus (“farm manager”) from consulting haruspices, augures, harioli and Chaldaei, not because they were inaccessible to him or that consultation of such diviners was inappropriate but rather that they gave the vilicus access to the type of power of which only his master could make correct and proper use. Other authors give similar rosters of diviners: Plautus’ over-enthusiastic wife wanted money from her husband to give to the praecantrices, coniectrices, hariolae and haruspicae. The collocation of harioli and haruspices recurs in Terence. Quintus Cicero did not recognise sortilegi, harioli or psychomanteis (necromancers) but saved his harshest criticism for the openly mercenary Marsian augurs, village haruspices, circus astrologers, coniectores of the goddess Isis, and the interpretes somniorum. Later Juvenal would complain about the Jewish dream interpreters, Armenian and Commagenian haruspices, and the Chaldaeans. Although Etruscan haruspices could give private readings (Seneca the Elder drew a distinction between their public and private pronouncements), Roman augurs did not. The haruspices and augures mentioned in these sources may have mimicked their officially sanctioned counterparts but they lacked the same status. The village and foreign haruspices consulted inferior victims (frogs, doves, puppies), the terms “Pisidian” and “Soran” (towns in Italy) were used to ridicule Appius’ Claudius’ belief in the predictive power of augury. In addition to being well known for their augural expertise the Marsi had a reputation for snake charming and other dubious practices associated with magic. Such diviners provided the populace with additional outlets for their varied



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religious beliefs. The harioli uttered prophecies in an inspired frenzy, the coniectores interpreted dreams, and the Chaldaeans (or mathematici) gave predictions based on horary astrology. Authors such as Cicero, Livy, and Valerius Maximus critiqued their activities because they demanded money for their services and preyed on the credulous but this is only further evidence for the pervasive presence of divination in the everyday lives of the Romans. Throughout the Roman world, families and individuals retained their own mantic collections as the worldwide searches for books of oracles in 213, 83 and 12 BCE demonstrate. This supposes that such collections belonged in the hands of those who could both read and interpret them, the Roman elite. Not only did famous prophets, like the fratres Marcii, or Publicius and Culleolus, belong to senatorial families but elite Romans could and did have recourse to diviners in a private capacity. Tiberius Gracchus the Elder consulted the haruspices because a snake had appeared in his bedroom; L. Aelius Tubero after a woodpecker had landed on his head. In both cases the individuals were faced with an invidious choice: their own life in exchange for that of their wife or the success of the state. The period from the second to first century BCE witnessed a blurring between state-sanctioned divination and the use of divination to promote one’s own political ambition. Already in the third century BCE, Scipio Africanus had feigned a special relationship with Jupiter to enhance his own status. The tribune Gaius Gracchus consulted the haruspex Herennius Siculus, the general Marius was accompanied by a Syrian prophetess named Martha. The demagogue Cinna appreciated the company of “Chaldaeans, sacrificers, and Sibyllistai”: the list is not meant to be flattering. His opponent, the dictator Sulla was guided by the haruspex Postumius and consulted Chaldaean astrologers. Aside from the obvious explanation that written sources are more plentiful from this period on, the Roman world had also been exposed to a variety of new religious and divinatory experiences, for example, the orgiastic rites of the Phrygian mother goddess, Cybele, the Bacchanalian cult of Dionysus with all its mystical and magical elements, or astrology which seems to have arrived alongside Greek philosophy and astronomical theory in the second century BCE. Furthermore, control over the divine could be viewed as an important feature of an aspirant generalissimo’s claim to power.

Roman Theories on Divination The study of Roman divination invariably begins with Cicero. His work De divinatione (“On Divination”) is the only entirely extant work on the subject from ancient Greece or Rome. Written in 45 or 44 BCE, it is the second of a trilogy of books which dealt successively with the nature of the gods, divination, and fate. The De divinatione has two books, the first devoted to an essentially Stoic understanding of the importance and validity of divination presented by the persona of Cicero’s younger brother, Quintus. In the second book Marcus himself presents arguments which refute the power of

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divination. Schematically the work draws distinctions between divination through ars (artificial divination) and divination through natura (nature). In this scheme haruspicy (including extispicy, the interpretation of thunder (fulgura) and prodigies (ostenta)), augury, omens, lots and horary astrology belong to artificial divination; prophecy through inspiration (spontaneous (vaticinatio) or institutionalised (oracula)) and dreams belong to natural divination. The work is a sophisticated attempt to set out a complex Greek philosophical argument in pragmatic Roman terms. Ostensibly the dialogue follows the rules of the New Academy, setting out both cases while allowing the reader to make up his own mind. Yet the two sides are not equally balanced. Quintus’ approach is more haphazard and more inclined to examples from poetry, not least drawing on Marcus’ own work, De consulatu suo; Marcus’ case, in contrast, is more organised, and more rigorously and pragmatically argued. Neither persona is wholly pro- or anti-divination. Quintus refutes the mercenary, low class characters who inhabited the back streets of Rome. Marcus concludes that superstition must torn up by the root, yet, as he had done in his earlier De legibus, acknowledges the value of augury and haruspicy for the sake of political expediency and popular control. Cicero, however, was not the first Roman to theorise on the validity of divination. Already in the second century BCE the polymath and philhellene, C. Sulpicius Galus, was alleged to have explained eclipses from a scientific, rather than prodigious, perspective. Poetry and prose from the same period demonstrates an understanding of issues of reliability and validity of diviners and different forms of divination, critiquing those paid to divine or poking fun at the overly superstitious. Cato the Elder famously claimed that he was amazed when one haruspex saw another, that he did not burst out laughing. Closer to Cicero’s own time the historian Sisenna had disputed the validity of dreams but accepted the reliability of prodigies. Most significantly Varro’s magisterial Antiquitates rerum divinarum, published just a few years prior to De divinatione, took a very different approach. His work emphasised the human institutions relevant to divination at Rome: pontifices, augures, quindecimviri, but adopted a Greek philosophical model for divination according to the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Other authors tackled the question of divination in different ways. The pontifical and augural lore was a matter for learned exegesis. Already in the third century BCE Numerius Fabius Pictor had composed a work Iuris pontificii, but the most famous attempts to illuminate the lore of the pontifices were the works by the Augustan writers, M. Antistius Labeo and C. Ateius Capito. The grammarian Veranius published a work Pontifical Questions in addition to one on augury. There were further works on augury by Ap. Claudius Pulcher, L. Caesar, C. Marcellus, M. Messalla, Cicero himself and Varro, who had all been members of the augural college. But not all upper class Romans were solely concerned with state practices. Appius Claudius Pulcher was ridiculed for his belief in the predictive power of augury and had a reputation as a necromancer. No doubt, his augural work reflected his more esoteric interests. His contemporary P. Nigidius Figulus (pr. 58 BCE) wrote works on private augury, entrails,



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dreams, published a brontoscopic calendar, and two works on astrology. His erudition reveals an intimate knowledge of Roman, Etruscan, Greek, Babylonian and other Eastern systems of knowledge.

Empire Public Divination In the transition from Republic to Empire, Octavian (later Augustus) was quick to grasp hold of the nuanced semiotic possibilities presented by divination in its various forms at Rome. For Octavian divination became a means to exert his political superiority. When a comet shone for seven nights at the funeral games of Julius Caesar in 42 BCE, the Etruscan haruspex Volcatius interpreted it to mean the end of the ninth saeculum and the beginning of the tenth, an era marked by the ascendancy of Augustus to sole rule. The aspirant Emperor claimed the comet was Caesar’s soul ascending to heaven and, by implication, his own divine birthright. Furthermore, he associated the astral symbolism with his right to rule by legitimising astrology: not only did he later publish his horoscope but also minted coinage which celebrated his zodiacal sign, Capricorn, and the astrum Caesaris. Octavian also deliberately pursued a relationship with the god Apollo to undermine his political rival’s, Antony’s, association with Dionysus. A temple was dedicated and constructed on the Palatine, physically connected to Augustus’ own house. Since the time of Sulla’s dictatorship (83–79 BCE), Apollo and his associated symbols (tripod, Sibyl and cithara) were indications of a bright future. But under Augustus his role as a god of prophecy was emphasised. The Sibylline books were moved from the custody of Jupiter to the new temple and Sibylline prophecy became a feature of the poetics of the new régime. When the Secular Games were celebrated in 17 BCE, Horace’s carmen saeculare (“secular hymn”) connected Apollo with the change in saecula, and coinage depicted Capricorn wreathed with the laurel of Apollo. The appropriation of the very name Augustus recalled the founding of Rome through augury and established a political and religious association with both Romulus and Numa. When the Emperor later assumed the mantle of pontifex maximus in 12 BCE, he had appropriated all the offices relevant to divination and ensured his position as the cornerstone of human-divine relations. Etruscan, Greek, and Roman divination and the populist appeal of astrology all served to emphasise the beginning of a new aureum saeculum the Emperor’s guidance. Res humanae and res divinae would continue to be intertwined: the political well-being of the Emperor and the Empire depended on his satisfactory relationship with the gods. The emphasis on the individual emperor changed the ways in which people viewed divination and the ways in which the ruling authorities could use it. Forms of divina-

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tion previously appropriate only in a private capacity became items for public consumption, and could even influence public behavior. In addition to the public use of his horoscope, Augustus recorded his belief in dreams, omina (chance sayings and happenings), and portents in his own Commentaries. He and his successors consulted divinatory experts of all kinds. Astrologers, such as the neo-Platonists Thrasyllus and his son Balbillus, became indispensable advisors to the Roman Emperors from Tiberius to Vespasian. Their careers prospered if the Emperor prospered: if not, the alternative was often death. Emperors and members of their families consulted oracular shrines throughout the Mediterranean in efforts to demonstrate their claims to divinity: Germanicus at Claros; Titus at Paphos; Trajan at Didyma; Hadrian and Julian at Delphi. While public prodigia were still reported and expiation ceremonies practised until the time of Constantine (for example, one of his edicts established that the haruspices could be consulted publicly if a building had been struck by lightning), they no longer retained the same yearly importance. Certainly they could be indicators of some significant event such as those which predicted the Boudican revolt in CE 60: At this juncture, for no apparent reason, the statue of Victory at Camulodunum fell down – with its back turned as though it were fleeing the enemy. Delirious women chanted of destruction at hand. They cried that in the local senate-house outlandish screams had been heard; the theatre had echoed with shrieks; at the mouth of the Thames a phantom settlement had been seen in ruins. Now the bloody appearance of the Ocean, and the appearance of human bodies left behind by the ebbing tide, led the Britons to hope and the veterans to fear. (Tacitus, Annales 14.32.1–2; trans. Michael Grant, lightly adapted)

Tacitus’ interest is in the psychological impact of the phenomena. But floods, earthquakes, and famine could now be dealt with by human agency and were not necessarily an indication of divine anger. Expiation ceremonies necessary to ensure the pax deorum are all but absent from the imperial written record. The haruspical order was so threatened that the Emperor Claudius wanted it protected by the pontifices lest it fell into obsolescence through lack of use. By the second century CE, the biographer and philosopher Plutarch was lamenting the decline of oracles, although these continued to be consulted well into the fourth century CE. Under the Emperors, sacrifice remained a cohesive social force into the third century CE as the edicts of Decius and Valerian demonstrate. The focus on the persona of the Emperor meant that his religious welfare was of particular concern. Indications of divine favour and displeasure were sought in those dreams, omens, and portents which surrounded the ascendancy of a new ruler (the omina imperii) or predicted his death (omina mortis). In Suetonius, the Emperor Domitian’s death was heralded by two omens: A few months before he was killed, a raven on the Capitol cried out “All will be well,” an omen which some interpreted as follows: “Recently, a raven which was sitting on the Tarpeian rooftop,



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Could not say ‘It is well,’ but said ‘It will be.’  ” They say that Domitian himself dreamed that a golden hump grew out on his back, and he took this is definite omen that the condition of the empire would be happier and more prosperous after his time. Admittedly in a short time it happened through the uprightness and moderate rule of the succeeding emperors. (Suetonius, Vita Domitiani 23.2; trans. John C. Rolfe, lightly adapted)

No doubt many of these omina gained clarity after the fact, but they reflect a propagandistic element on the part of the Emperor to promote his own divine right to rule and on the part of his opponents who tried to undermine that right. Such omina marked moments of upheaval and transition from one Emperor to another, offering a sense of continuity and allowing the Senate to recognise a new ruler as providentially assigned. Nowhere is this more evidence than in the panegyrics in honour of Trajan or Constantine, celebrating their divine descent. Moreover, when the focus of religion was on the Emperor’s standing with the gods, such phenomena also reflected the psychological concerns of the populace at these moments of tension, confirming their worst fears or reassuring them that all was well between the human and divine realms. Individual diviners now became part of the Emperor’s entourage, all the better if they were not confined by the collegiate system of the augures or haruspices. Successive emperors actively and publicly consulted astrologers. Thrasyllus and his son Balbillus advised emperors from Tiberius to Nero. Their careers prospered in line with the fortunes of the Emperors. They had added respectability as well-known philosophers and political theorists in an age when Stoicism was the prevalent philosophy.

Private Divination The willingness of the Emperor to look to other forms of divination also encouraged the populace to expand their own divinatory experience. Under the Empire, experts from Babylonia, Syria, and Judaea were embraced by the Roman populace. They actively consulted Chaldaean astrologers, Commagenian haruspices and Jewish prophetesses. Dream interpretation, as the references to Isiac coniectores or the works of Aelius Aristides and Artemidorus indicate, was an important and viable means of understanding the will of the Gods. It was no longer confined to occasional pronouncements in the Roman prodigy lists but could be discussed by Pliny the Younger and Suetonius Tranquillus as a guide to legal, political, or economic action. Outside of the state apparatus for divination, there had always been other institutional means for approaching the divine. A case in point is the widespread existence of shrines which used sortition (or “lots”). In response to a question, the enquirer drew a stone or piece of wood or metal with an oracular pronouncement, not unlike modern day Chinese fortune cookies. The most famous of those shrines was that of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste (mod. Palestrina) established and maintained by the citizens

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of the town who had become wealthy through trade with the East. Cicero relates its founding: According to the annals of Praeneste Numerius Suffustius, who was a distinguished man of noble birth, was admonished by dreams, often repeated, and finally even by threats, to split open a flint rock which was lying in a designated place. Frightened by the visions and disregarding the jeers of his fellow-townsmen he set about doing as he had been directed. And so when he had broken open the stone, the lots sprang forth carved on oak, in ancient characters. The site where the stone was found is religiously guarded to this day. It is hard by the statue of the infant Jupiter, who is represented as sitting with Juno in the lap of Fortune and reaching for her breast, and it is held in the highest reverence by mothers. (Cicero, De divinatione 2.85; trans. William A. Falconer)

And hints at the process involved: At the present time the lots are taken from their receptacle if Fortune directs. What reliance, pray, can you put in these lots, which at Fortune’s nod are shuffled and drawn by the hand of a child? (Cicero, De divinatione 2.86; trans. William A. Falconer)

Presumably the involvement of a child acted as some kind of guarantee that the lots were not being manipulated. Nonetheless, the role of an intermediary, as with other forms of divination, was a way of mediating the god’s message and gave it validity. In Cicero’s account the temple site had reverence through its beauty and age but was only consulted by the common people. Archaeology, however, indicates the widespread importance of these sacred sites. Similar sanctuaries devoted to sortition are known to have existed throughout the Italian peninsula (for example, at Arezzo, Bahareno, Cumae, Saepinum, Viterbo). Certainly, Cicero’s dismissal of sortition should not be taken too seriously: the goddess Fortuna was essential to the trading and business classes. The new imperial opportunities for economic interactions from East to West saw widespread and itinerant sortilegi making use of ritual implements and oracular texts like the second/third century sortes Astrampsychi to offer learned exegesis and instill confidence in their ability to relay the will of the gods to their clients. Foreignness and eastern esotericism, then, rooted in archaic rites and accompanied by ancient ritual texts, offered a myriad of ways to alleviate the political, social, and economic concerns of a multi-cultural, multi-valent Imperial world. However, none of that was without risk. Divination and its close relation, magic, were also regarded as subversive forces. Accusations of astrology and magic as foundations of treason trials, especially in the early Empire, represented a genuine anxiety on the part of the ruling authorities about the kind of power that individuals might acquire through their consultations. Between 33 BCE and CE 96 there were no fewer than ten praetorian edicts banning astrologers from Rome; Tiberius restricted the secret consultation of haruspices; Claudius forbad Druidic rites. The fourth century saw a renewed interest in controlling diviners. Constantine only permitted haruspices to make public sacrifices but urged their consultation if a building had been struck by lightning. Laws from Constantius onwards, when efforts were made to put an end



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to all types of private sacrifice and divination, became increasingly oppressive and often violent, until the final prohibition against pagan sacrifice and the destruction of temples in CE 435. It is no coincidence that concerns regarding religious boundaries were most marked in the earliest and latest years of the Roman Empire. Each occasion offered the Emperor and his officials an opportunity to refocus and to renew attitudes towards religion and, specifically, towards divination. Through their engagement with, and control of, divination, successive Roman Emperors, from Augustus to Theodosius II, could demonstrate the true location of divine power in the human realm.

Imperial Theories on Divination The scepticism that pervades the second book of Cicero’s De divinatione is largely absent from later, imperial Roman works. But there are no other books from antiquity which present a theory or theories of divination so clearly and precisely. A confirmed Stoic, Seneca the Younger could write about the scientific causes of eclipses but accept that certain signs were sent from the Gods. Pliny the Elder’s Natural History is replete with signs drawn from his sources. The modern scholar must look to compendia such as Valerius Maximus’ Facta et dicta memorabilia or works of paradoxography such as Phlegon of Tralles’, Book of Marvels where examples of divination are given with little explanation, although that, in itself, suggests just how pervasive divination was in both public and private life. The interest and validation of astrology meant that the Empire spawned several astronomical and astrological works: Manilius, Astronomica and Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, perhaps the best known. Although both comment on the scientific circumstances of astronomical phenomena, neither scorns the art of prognostication through the stars. Another area which gained in importance was dream divination. The work of Aelius Aristides and Artemidorus, especially, point to the allegorical interpretations available for dreams. Divination came back into its own with the highly sophisticated narratives of the Neoplatonists. The works of Proclus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and others, reserved a central place for divination in theurgy. In their narratives, human rationality and divine revelation are intimately connected, just as they are in Plato’s Theaetetus or Cicero’s De re publica, precisely because the Neoplatonist’s objective was to assimilate himself to the divine.

Conclusion Divination was embedded into all aspects of the ancient world. Politics, warfare, business, and the daily lives of the ordinary man, woman, and slave depended on a

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carefully cultivated relationship with the divine without which society would scarcely have functioned. It was also, therefore, deeply embedded within the power structures of those ancient societies. In Babylonia, Etruria, and at Rome, the priests responsible for divination also guided the state in more mundane and practical political matters. At the governmental level divination provided a means of delaying decisions and a mechanism for redirecting problems towards further discussion and debate; it could prevent a particular political process or annul magisterial appointments; more positively, it was a means to soothe public anxieties when faced with political, economic, or military hardship, thus helping to soothe both political and social tension; and, further, it legitimated action on the part of the government and leading officials by providing them with recourse to a higher agency. For this reason, modern scholars have often pointed to the unscrupulous use of divination to achieve political objectives. But belief in the gods was not confined to the lower classes; the upper classes were just as credulous even if they understood that divination could be manipulated in their own favour. More generally divination helped the group and individual make decisions which were “particularly difficult, stressful, contentious and consequential” (Flower 2008). Divination helped to validate those decisions and to provide confidence for specific undertakings. It also, much like magic (of which it was a feature), gave society and individuals a sense of control in situations where the causes of disquiet could not be explained by the rational or scientific means at their disposal. For this the ancient populations had recourse to the pseudo-scientific responses of their seers, prophets, and diviners. Although these ancient societies did not have anything which corresponds to monotheistic scripture, the use of written texts was widespread. As we have seen, numerous omen books are known from ancient Mesopotamia, for example, the celestial omen series Enūma Anu Enlil or the terrestrial omen series Šumma ālu or the numerous works on hepatoscopy and astrology. Similarly the Egyptians and Greeks maintained their own records. The Etruscans kept sacred books devoted to augury, sacrifice, and portents, and others which recorded the legendary prophecies of Tages and Vegoia (the libri Tagetici and libri Vegoici). The Romans had their own libri augurales, and the libri Sibyllini (“the Sibylline books”) which preserved the words of Apollo. Another significant text were the Annales Maximi which recorded the prescriptions and responses of the pontiffs. There was an emphasis on divination as a science or, at least, as a rational exercise which could accurately interpret the will of the gods. Their pronouncements give the impression of verifiable outcomes based on empirical observation and analysis. The omen books of the Mesopotamians, for example, often have an analogic structure corresponding to a conditional statement “if x, then y”; in Etruscan lore specific expiation ceremonies were attached to particular portents; the Romans had specific rules relating to the interpretation of bird signs. The knowledge contained in those texts was often jealously guarded. Only those with the right training or members of the priestly body responsible for



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their care were allowed to access their secrets. The alleged antiquity of the sources and their acknowledgement by state authorities added to their aura of authenticity as the words of the gods. Even written records were open to inferential explanation, depending on the circumstances, timing, and location of the prodigious event. All of the texts required expert exegesis whether Chaldaean priest, Etruscan haruspex, or Roman augur. Furthermore, forms of natural divination were always available. Some civilisations, such as the Egyptians or the Greeks, privileged inspired prophecy over artificial divination, deferring to the warnings conveyed by oracles or dreams. The Mesopotamians preferred inductive divination, even insofar as it applied to their individual rulers. Roman practice, in contrast, emphasised the importance of sacrifice and ritual in relation to state matters, but may, nonetheless, still have allowed elements of prophecy, notably through the agency of the libri Sibyllini and the Etruscan haruspices. Alongside the formal state and public contexts, there were plentiful opportunities for the expert to offer private consultations or for itinerant and self-proclaimed divination experts to wander the Mediterranean providing advice to rich and poor alike. Those experts too, for example, the sortilegi or dream interpreters, also had recourse to books filled with “sacred” knowledge to promote their own claims to a privileged relationship with the divine through public displays of their expertise and knowledge. Sometimes those individuals mimicked the practices available at the state level. So, in Greece, there were itinerant dream diviners, in Rome, backstreet haruspices, augurs and Sibyllistai. The ancient Greek and Roman sources, in particular, worried about the exploitation of divination for financial gain. A topical metaphor for understanding ancient religion and divination is that of a “market-place”. The diffusion and variety of divinatory methods available for the average citizen suggest that, in some respects, this was more than a metaphor. The services of one diviner or another could literally be purchased for a price. No doubt reputation, reliability, and the sales pitch of the diviner were important factors in his/her financial survival. Some final observations may be made. A ubiquitous ancient phenomenon, divination, prophecy and other methods of prognostication were diverse and complex. There seems to have been a genuine societal need for wide varieties of engagement with the divine. Ancient societies preferred no one method to the exclusion of all others, whether at the state level or in private. Furthermore, individual methods of prognostication were not constant and subject to fluctuations of interest and engagement. Notably, this can be observed in the varying fortunes of prodigy observation, astrology, or haruspicy across the millennia. This pluralism also lent itself to a certain fluidity and adaptation of divination in response to different or changed political and social circumstances. For the most part, there appears to have been relaxed state regulation and minimal interference until private practices threatened the social order, as occurred on various occasions during the Roman Republic and, more noticeably, with the advent of Christianity. In all cases, the survival of individual rulers and whole regimes depended on their ability to cultivate, appropriate, and actively demonstrate,

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their own special relationship with the divine. This ensured the survival of prophecy and prognostication from one generation to the next both in public and in private.

Selected Bibliography Anderson, Graham. Sage, Saint and Sophist. Holy Men and their Associates in the Early Roman Empire. London, 2004. Annus, Amar. Divination and Interpretation of Signs in the Ancient World. Oriental Institute Seminars 6. Chicago, 2010. Barton, Tamsyn. Ancient Astrology. London and New York, 1994. Barton, Tamsyn. Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomics, and Medicine under the Roman Empire. Ann Arbor, 1995. Beard, Mary, North, John, Price, Simon. Religions of Rome. Cambridge, 1998. Beerden, Kim. Worlds Full of Signs. Ancient Greek Divination in Context. Leiden, 2013. Bouché Leclerq, Auguste. Histoire de la divination dans l’Antiquité. 4 vols. Paris, 1879–1882. Chaplin, Jane D. Livy. Rome’s Mediterranean Empire: Books 41–45 and the Periochae (Oxford World’s Classics). Oxford, 2009. [Marcus Tullius] Cicero. Cicero XX. De Senectute. De Amicitia. De Divinatione. Ed. William A. Falconer. Cambridge, MA, and London, 1928/1933. [Marcus Tullius] Cicero. On Divination Book 1. Ed. David Wardle. Oxford, 2006. Ciraolo, Leda Jean, and Jonathan Lee Seidel (eds.). Magic and Divination in the Ancient World (Ancient Magic and Divination 2). Leiden, 2001. Engels, David. Das römische Vorzeichenwesen (753–27 v. Chr.): Quellen, Terminologie, Kommentar, historische Entwicklung. Stuttgart, 2007. Flower, Michael Attyah. The Seer in Ancient Greece. Berkeley, 2008. Gundel, Wilhelm, and Hans Georg Gundel. Astrologumena, Die astrologische Literatur in der Antike und ihre Geschichte. Wiesbaden, 1966. Halliday, William Reginald. Greek Divination; a Study of its Methods and Principles. London, 1913. Iles Johnston, Sarah. Ancient Greek Divination. Blackwell Ancient Religions. Malden, MA, and Oxford, 2008. Iles Johnston, Sarah, and Peter T. Struck. Mantike. Studies in Ancient Divination. Leiden, 2005. Isager, Jacob, and Robin Lorsch Wildfang. Divination and Portents in the Roman World. Odense University Classical Studies. Odense, 1995. Kessels, Antonius H. M. “Ancient Systems of Dream-Classification.” Mnemosyne 22.4 (1969): 389–424. Linderski, Jerzy. “The augural law.” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 16.3 (1986): 2164–2288. [Titus] Livius. The Rise of Rome. Books 1 to 5 (Oxford World Classics). Ed. T. James Luce. Oxford, 1998. Manetti, Giovanni. Theories of the Sign in Classical Antiquity. Trans. Christine Richardson. Bloomington and Indianopolis, 1993. Mazurek, Tadeusz. “The decemviri sacris faciundis: supplication and prediction.” Augusto Augurio. Rerum humanarum et divinarum commentationes in honorem Jerzy Linderski. Ed. Christoph F. Konrad. Stuttgart, 2004. 151–168. Parke, Herbert W. Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy in Classical Antiquity. Croom Helm Classical Studies. Ed. Brian C. McGing. London and New York, 1988. Pease, Arthur Stanley. Cicero. De Divinatione Libri Duo. Illinois Studies in Language and Literature 6. Urbana, IL, 1920–1923.



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Plutarch. Plutarch’s Lives. 12 vols. Ed. Bernadotte Perrin. Loeb. Cambridge, MA, Reprint ed. 2014. Potter, David. Prophets and Emperors. Human and Divine Authority from Augustus to Theodosius. Cambridge, MA, 1994. Santangelo, Federico. Divination, Prediction and the End of the Roman Republic. Cambridge, 2015. Sordi, Marta (ed.). La profezia nel mondo antico. Milan, 1993. Stoneman, Richard. The Ancient Oracles: Making the Gods Speak. New Haven, CT, 2011. Struck, Peter. Divination and Human Nature: A Cognitive History of Intuition in Classical Antiquity. Princeton, 2016. [Gaius] Suetonius Tranquillus. Suetonius. 2 vols. Ed. John C. Rolfe. Loeb. Cambridge, MA, Reprint ed. 2014. [Publius Cornelius] Tacitus. The Annals of Imperial Rome. Ed. Michael Grant. Harmondsworth, 1956. Trampedach, Kai. Politische Mantik: Die Kommunikation über Götterzeichen und Orakel im klassischen Griechenland. Heidelberg, 2016. Turfa, Jean Maclntosh. Divining the Etruscan World: the Brontoscopic Calendar and Religious Practice. Cambridge, 2012. Valerius Maximus. Memorable Deeds and Sayings. Book 1. Ed. David Wardle. Oxford, 1998. Vernant, Jean Pierre. Divination et Rationalité. Paris, 1974. Vigourt, Annie. Les Présages Impériaux d’Auguste à Domitien. Paris, 2001. Wardle, David. Cicero On Divination. Book 1. Clarendon Ancient History Series. Oxford, 2006.

Elizabeth Boyle

Early Medieval Perspectives on Pre-Christian Traditions in the Celtic World General Remarks This survey considers the evidence from the early medieval Celtic-speaking world, principally sources in Old Irish (ca. 600–900) and Middle Irish (ca. 900–1200), Old Welsh (ca. 800–1100) and Middle Welsh (ca. 1100–1500), as well as some key sources in Latin that were written in Celtic-speaking kingdoms. Due to a combination of factors, primarily the accidents of manuscript survival, but also to some extent the circumstances of literary production, we have far more evidence from Ireland than we do from Wales, Cornwall, Brittany or the Isle of Man before ca. 1200. Welsh sources are far more plentiful from the thirteenth century onwards. The corpora of medieval Cornish, Breton and Manx sources are very small. Pre-conversion sources written by Roman ethnographers which discuss the practices of the “Celts”, or of Celtic Gaul or Britain, cannot be presumed to give a factual account of “Celtic” society, nor can they be presumed to apply to all areas of the Celtic-speaking world. The problematic nature of such external sources, written by non-Celtic-speakers with complex political and cultural agendas, has been well documented (e.  g. Woolf 2011). Literacy developed in tandem with Christianisation in Ireland (probably from the fourth century onwards). Some monumental ogam inscriptions may date from before the conversion period, although this is a matter of debate. We have no pre-Christian textual sources from Ireland. Our earliest sustained Latin textual sources are the writings of Saint Patrick, from the fifth century. Modern editions and translations of these can be conveniently located at the Royal Irish Academy website on Saint Patrick (www.confessio.ie). Our earliest Old Irish sources date from the late sixth or early seventh century. Wales was Christianised during the Roman era. However, aside from the corpus of epigraphic evidence, we have no pre-Christian textual sources from Wales. Our earliest extended Latin source from Wales is Gildas, De excidio Britanniae, from the sixth century (Winterbottom 1978). The date of the earliest vernacular sources is much-debated, with some arguing that the poetry of Y Gododdin may date from as early as the sixth century, although it survives only in a thirteenth-century manuscript. Many of our narrative sources are set in a pre-Christian context, but they were written by Christian authors who were using the pre-Christian setting as a literary device. Christian authors were strongly influenced by the Bible, by Classical authors and other literary texts, and by non-Christian neighbours (such as the first generations of Scandinavian settlers in Ireland) in their depictions of pre-Christian beliefs and practices. These sources tell us what Christian authors imaged pre-Christian belief to be; they are not accurate records of genuine pre-Christian practices. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-002

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Because the pre-Christian religious systems of the Celtic-speaking world were non-literate, and literacy developed as a result of contact with the Roman Empire, we do not have a canon of pre-Christian religious texts or evidence of any centralised moral authority. One explanation for the great variety and inconsistency in depictions of pre-Christian practices in our medieval sources is that it may reflect local variety in pre-Christian belief; alternatively, it may simply be the case that there is little or no genuine information transmitted into the Christian age and the variety therefore reflects the imaginings of the authors of our surviving sources.

Eschatology In the seventh-century collection of writings on Saint Patrick by Tírechán, there is a reference to the fifth-century pagan king Lóegaire awaiting the dies erdathe (day of erdathe), which Tírechán glosses as “the day of the Lord’s judgement”, according to the teaching of the magi (Bieler 1979, 132–133). Magi is a term usually – though problematically – translated as “druids”, but it is perhaps better understood as magi in the biblical sense. Tírechán’s statement has been taken as meaning that pre-Christian beliefs in Ireland included eschatological teachings about the end of the world. John Carey, for example, has argued that Tírechán “preserves authentic traditions from the conversion period” (Carey 1996, 42), and Jacopo Bisagni has (tentatively) described the term dies erdathe as “the unique survival of a remarkable cultural-linguistic fossil” (Bisagni 2011, 18). However, the context for this concept is problematic, because it occurs in a passage where Lóegaire is describing his future burial. Tírechán states that Lóegaire believes that he will be buried in the manner of the pagans “armed in their tombs” on the ridges of Tara (Bieler 1979, 132–133). The problem with this is that the type of burial that Tírechán envisages for Lóegaire is not attested in the archaeological evidence for Ireland. Rather, Tírechán is describing contemporary pagan burials of a kind witnessed in Anglo-Saxon England and continental Germanic societies (↗ Mc­Kinnell, Pagan Traditions in Germanic Languages). He is drawing his ideas of pagan burial from contemporary parallels, rather than preserving a memory of the pre-Christian past. As such, we should be cautious of reading too much into this reference to eschatological doctrine in pre-Christian Ireland. A second passage in Tírechán’s work has also been taken as evidence of eschatological teaching in pre-Christian Ireland. Here, we are told that some “unbelievers” reported that a certain deceased “prophet” had, at the mouth of a well, “made for himself a shrine in the water under the stone to bleach his bones perpetually because he feared the burning by fire” ([…] et dixit increduli quod quidam profeta mortuus fecit bibliothicam sibi in aqua sub petra, ut dealbaret ossa sua semper, quia timuit ignis exustem) (Tírechán, Collectanea, ed. Bieler, 152–153). Again, this has been taken as evidence of pre-Christian eschatological doctrine of a great conflagration at the



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end of time and John Carey has linked it with the Classical account of Strabo (perhaps drawing on Posidonius) that druids in Gaul “say that souls and the cosmos are indestructible, but that sometimes fire and water will overpower them” (cited in Carey 1996, 45). In spite of Carey’s sympathetic view of the reliability of Tírechán’s account, even he concedes that there are many parallels to the idea of “conflagration and deluge” in Judaeo-Christian apocalyptic texts (Carey 1996, 47) and, again, Tírechán may be drawing on other models in his seventh-century construction of paganism, rather than preserving evidence of pre-Christian belief in Ireland.

Prophecy Some Old Irish political prophecies survive, although the more extensive and sophisticated political prophecies date from the Middle Irish period onwards. Baile in Scáil (“The Phantom’s Frenzy”) seems to be derived from an earlier Old Irish narrative, although it only survives in its Middle Irish reworking (Murray 2004). The narrative is set in the reign of the mythical king Conn Cétchathach and purports to list all future kings of Tara descending from him. The last historically identifiable king in the poem is Flaithbertach mac Muirchertaig, king of Ailech, who became king in 1036. Despite being written in a Christian environment, perhaps in the 860s, but reworked in its extant form some time during or after the reign of Flaithbertach, the narrative setting is not overtly Christian. Rather, the author uses the familiar allegorical conventions of the feasting hall, the otherworldly apparition (the “phantom” of the text’s title, who possesses the prophetic knowledge), and the woman who dispenses the ale of sovereignty. One of the future rulers listed is a certain Áed Engach (in later Irish the form of the name is Aodh Eanghach) who becomes, in later medieval Irish texts, symbolic of the ideal ruler: in praise poetry, genealogies and historical writing from the thirteenth through to the eighteenth centuries, contemporary lords and kings are compared to him (Ó Buachalla 1989). In Baile in Scáil the “last ruler of Ireland” is said to be a certain Flann Cinuch, who is not a descendant of Conn Cétchathach. Here, then, we perhaps have the key to the purpose of this purported prophecy, in that it seeks to assert the rights of one particular dynasty – the descendants of Conn, that is, the Uí Néill – to the kingship of Tara (symbolically, if not politically, the high-kingship of Ireland): once the “unbroken” succession of Uí Néill kings comes to an end, so does the prophecy and by implication, since Flann is described as the “last ruler of Ireland”, so will Ireland’s sovereignty come to an end. There are other political prophecies dating from the Middle Irish period, such as those attributed to Berchán (Hudson 1996). However, since these are placed in the mouths of Christian ecclesiastical figures (in the case of Berchán, an abbot), these can be read within the mainstream of medieval Christian political prophecies and do not shed any light on the depiction of pre-Christian practices. For an exemplary case study

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of such prophecies being used to legitimate Middle Irish political-historical narratives see Ní Mhaonaigh (2014). Prophecies, set in the pre-Christian past, which predict the coming of Christianity are very common in Old Irish literature, although the nature and methods of revelation vary from text to text. In many cases, characters are depicted as possessing a sort of “natural inspiration”; in other cases their prophetic powers seem designed to mirror those of the Old Testament prophets. In some versions of the Old Irish Aided Chonchobuir (“Death of Conchobar”), the eponymous character is depicted as having to spend seven years in a proto-penitential state: immobilised by a head injury, he can neither feast nor make love, ride a horse or become angry. However, on the night that Christ is crucified, he enquires as to the cause of the shaking of the elements. He is told (either by a druí “wizard”, in some versions, or by a Roman consul in others) about the Crucifixion. The news of Christ’s execution enrages him, and he launches into a linguistically complex, but very beautiful, poetic utterance about his desire to defend Christ. We are told that his rage caused a brain haemorrhage, which killed him, and that his blood “baptised” him and he was one of the first pagans to go to heaven. The different versions of this text are edited and translated by Meyer (1906). In the Old Irish death-tale of Cú Chulainn, known as Brislech Mór Maige Muirthemni, we see a very different form of prophecy about the coming of Christianity, featuring a host of biblical and apocalyptic images of the “lamb” and the “calf”. Cú Chulainn prophesies the coming of Christianity to Ireland “from the Alps of Europe”, and the Crucifixion, the Harrowing of Hell and the Resurrection: “A sister’s son of men will come; His law will fill every place; He will hinder your deception; Jesus will vanquish Hell for the tribes of Adam’s offspring in a vain realm […]” (Brislech Mór Maige Muirthemni, ed. Kimpton, 46). We have a variety of examples of pre-Christian figures – both human and supernatural – prophesying a general breakdown in social order, sometimes as a sign of an approaching end time. These instances, however, draw heavily from Christian eschatology. For example, in the early Middle Irish text, Cath Maige Tuired (“The Second Battle of Moytura”), the war-goddess, the Morrígan, prophesies the end of world – “her dire predictions are of the breakdown and transgression of social bonds accompanied by the failure of Ireland’s fertility” (Williams 2010, 30). Similarly, the mythical scholar, Cenn Fáelad, is depicted as predicting an end of the world in which “There will be judges without knowledge, without information, without learning. There will be lords without wisdom. There will be women without modesty” (Smith 1929). Multiple pre-Christian figures are depicted as prophesying a more general arrival of Christianity. One shorthand for the coming of Christians is the idea of the arrival of “adze-heads”, so-called because of the shape in profile of the head of a religious with his monastic hood pulled up. For examples of this, see the Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language (EDIL: www.dil.ie), s.  v. tálcend. Another, found particularly in legal texts, is prophesying of the coming of the “pure/white language of the Beati”, in this case using a reference to Psalm 118 as a shorthand for all Christian sacred texts.



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Again, examples can be found in EDIL, s.  v. biait (b). This utilises prophecy to give a false sense of historicity to laws which were relatively recent creations: that the lawcodes were written in the seventh and eighth centuries is well-established, but jurists sought to give them the appearance of having been written in the era of Patrick. For a seminal study, see Ó Corráin et al. (1984). We have a large number of sources pertaining to political prophecy from later medieval Wales. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Prophetiae Merlini, which forms the seventh book of his Historia Regum Britanniae (1136) was hugely popular in Britain and beyond from the twelfth century onwards, and it has been argued that elements of Merlin’s prophecies are derived from earlier Welsh sources. For example, it has been argued that his use of animal symbolism borrows elements from medieval Welsh heroic poetry (Edel 1983/1984; see also Jarman 1991). However, with Geoffrey, disentangling his uses of existing traditions from his own imaginative constructions is a vexed task (on Merlin as prophetic figure see also ↗ Lehner, Prognostication in Latin Historiography). Gerald of Wales, also writing in Latin in the twelfth century, evinces a similar interest in Merlin and in prophecy but this must be understood in its medieval Christian political context rather than being seen as evidence of the continuity of pre-Christian ideas into the Christian era (Padel 2006, 63–64). Modern historians have frequently depicted the Welsh political rebel Owain Glyn Dŵr (d. ca. 1415) as being obsessed with political prophecy, but Helen Fulton has argued that this “is in fact a sixteenth-century English language construct” (Fulton 2005, 107). Fulton demonstrates that, far from being a “gullible Welshman foolishly led by prophecy”, when Glyn Dŵr made reference to political prophecies, he was actually engaging in a mode of political discourse which was dominant among his English contemporaries, many of whom would have read Geoffrey’s Prophetiae Merlini (Fulton 2005, 108). Clearly, however, some Welshmen did in fact continue to dabble (whether or not they believed) in occult practices: in a fifteenth-century Welsh poem by Ieuan ap Rhydderch we find references to both necromancy (igmars) and games of chance (rhagman, borrowed from Middle English ragman) as being amongst the more risqué items of knowledge of an educated gentleman (Breeze 1996, 32–33). We should view this more as a form of intellectual curiosity in the occult, such as was common throughout late medieval Europe, rather than as evidence of continuity of pre-Christian belief.

Manticism Certain characters are depicted as possessing mantic abilities in medieval Irish literature, most notably Finn mac Cumaill (Nagy 1997; Nagy 1985). However, although mantic practices are generally regarded negatively in medieval Christian literature, in the case of Finn his powers are frequently portrayed in positive terms. The author of

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the early thirteenth-century Acallam na Senórach (“Colloquy of the Ancients”) shapes his complex and sophisticated narrative in order to frame Finn as a proto-Christian who uses his mantic abilities to prophesy the coming of Christianity (Acallam na Senórach, eds. Dooley and Roe). The source of Finn’s mantic powers is his thumb – these abilities are depicted as having been acquired in different circumstances in different Middle Irish tales, either because his thumb was trapped in a door to the otherworld, or because he burnt it while cooking a “salmon of knowledge”. In either case, he puts his thumb “under his tooth” in order to access his supernatural wisdom.

Metamorphosis and Transmigration The seventh-century Hiberno-Latin theological tract De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae, by Augustinus Hibernicus, seeks to explain biblical miracles on rational grounds. In one passage, where he discusses the possibility that one thing can be transformed into another, he outlines the importance of the idea that any given thing, at any given time, should “remain firmly within the bounds of its own nature”. Otherwise, he warns, “We would seem, indeed, to give our assent to the laughable tales told by the magi, who say that their forebears flew through the ages in the form of birds” (Carey 1998, 58). In his translation of this passage, Carey translates magi as “druids” and characterises Augustinus Hibernicus’s statement as evidence of the continued activity of druids in seventh- and eighth-century Ireland and of the teaching of a “doctrine of metempsychosis or reincarnation” (Carey 1998, 12). However, nowhere does Augustinus Hibernicus state that the magi he is referring to are Irish or contemporaneous to him: he could be referring to earlier Greek or Latin teachings on physical metamorphosis or the transmigration of the soul. That being said, transformation into animal form is a frequently occurring feature in medieval Irish literature, although these metamorphoses are rarely for the purpose of prophecy or prognostication. Rather, many of the transformations from human to successive series of animals serve the purpose of giving a character a supernaturally long life in order that they can survive into the Christian era as a historical witness to events in the deep past, thus legitimating the account of “history” that is presented in the narrative. A particularly good example of this is the Old Irish Scél Tuáin meic Chairill (“Tale of Tuán son of Cairell”), where Tuán recounts to Saint Finnia the pre-Christian “history” of Ireland, which he has witnessed while in the form of a wild boar, then a hawk, then a salmon. However, even in his function as a historical witness, Tuán still describes himself as a “prophet” (fáith), although his only prophecy in the text is that Finnia’s house will flourish (Carey 1984).



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Astral Sciences, Calendrical Calculation and ­Meteorological Phenomena In seventh- and eighth-century Ireland, scholars produced a large number of computistical texts, some of which represent scientific learning of an astonishingly sophisticated level (Warntjes 2010). Mark Williams has strongly (and rightly) criticised Peter Beresford Ellis for his “intellectual sleight of hand” in stating that computus depended on astronomical observations and “as astronomy and astrology ‘always’ go together, early Irish churchmen were necessarily familiar with a kind of astrology” (Williams 2010, xxvii). It is of course important to distinguish between astronomy and astrology and the two did not, in fact, “always” go together in the early Middle Ages. Certainly where we have a great deal of evidence of calendrical calculations and the scientific study of lunar and solar eclipses in early medieval Ireland, we have very little evidence at all of interest in any form of astrology. It has become a commonplace that druids were interested in astral sciences, although there is little evidence to support this. One fleeting reference, upon which much has been based, is found in the First Latin Life of Saint Brigit, or the Vita Prima. In it, we are told regarding a certain magus that “One night this magus was keeping watch, as was his custom, contemplating the stars of heaven […]” (Nocte quadam hic magus erat vigilans suo more astra caeli considerans […]). Fergus Kelly cited this passage as evidence that Irish druids were “astrologers”; however, Mark Williams has raised several significant objections to this, not least the author’s possible debt to Isidore of Seville’s depiction of magi as astrologers (Williams 2010, 38–39, discussing Kelly 2001). Nélatóracht (“cloud-divination”) is a practice which is clearly described in four Irish narrative texts, of which the earliest is Acallam na Senórach, dating from the first decades of the thirteenth century. The four texts are discussed in detail by Williams (2010, 42–49). However, there is a more ambiguous reference in an earlier source, namely the mid-twelfth-century Irish Life of Saint Columba. As Williams has noted, the fact that this instance of possible cloud-divination does not occur in earlier Lives of Columba suggests an eleventh- or twelfth-century date for the emergence of the cloud-divination topos in Irish literature. In the Columban text, we are told that Columba’s priestly guardian, Cruithnechán, consults a “prophet” about whether it is an auspicious time for Columba to begin his education. After the prophet had examined the sky (O ra fég in fáith nem) he declared that Columba should indeed learn to read (Williams 2010, 49–50). Mark Williams has convincingly argued that cloud-divination by “druids” and “prophets” in late medieval Irish literature is “a high medieval literary innovation” rather than a continuous cultural memory of pre-Christian practices. By contrast, Williams has suggested that conjuring of mist or fog by druids may well be a “genuinely ancient and pre-Christian idea”. It occurs in the seventh-century Vita Sancti Columbae by Adomnán of Iona, and Williams has noted that the “specific

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association with atmospheric vapours is in fact one of the few elements of the early Irish image of the druid which is not traceable to Isidore [of Seville] or the Bible” (Williams 2010, 51). Instances of calendrical calculation only occur in a Christian context. For example, the (probably eleventh-century) hortatory diatribe The Second Vision of Adomnán, though predominantly written in the vernacular, begins with a Latin opening which connects the perceived moral decline of Irish society with the threat of a devastating fire and plague which will destroy Ireland when certain calendrical conditions converge (Volmering 2014). This text has been connected with the year 1096, when a “great fear” is recorded in certain medieval Irish chronicles, due to the convergence of most of those calendrical conditions. The concerns of the author of Adomnán’s Second Vision are mostly generic: the failure to adhere to Christian values; moral decline; the lack of proper provision for churches. It is within this context that the author then berates Irish Christians for backsliding into a sort of paganism “except only that they have not worshipped idols”. He accuses them of using magic and “spells and charms, and divination” (Volmering 2014). The author of the Second Vision seeks a return to an imagined “Golden Age” of Irish Christianity before the perceived decline of his contemporary society. The author also sees a clear connection between unregulated engagement with the supernatural – augury, spells and charms – and the need for the moral reform of society. However, his rhetoric of a return to “paganism” in Irish society needs to be understood as typical of this sort of genre of Christian reforming tract rather than as evidence of spells and charms being used in a consciously non-Christian context.

Prognostication through Flora and Fauna It is often assumed in popular culture  – due in part to the enduring influence of the mythological thinking of Robert Graves’s The White Goddess  – that nature in general, and trees in particular, had a central significance in the religious beliefs of pre-Christian Ireland and Wales. One fascinating source is the Middle Welsh Cad Goddau (“Battle of the Trees”), which is preserved in the fourteenth-century Book of Taliesin. This poem, in which trees and shrubs combine forces as an arboreal army, fighting against a common foe, has attracted a great deal of interest, and its tree-list, which comprises some thirty-four items is of major importance to natural historians. However, Marged Haycock has argued convincingly that this poem is far from the “sacred grove mythology” or “mystical alphabet poem” of Graves and his adherents, but is rather “the first Welsh example of mock-heroic poetry” (Haycock 1990, 302, 306). In her close analysis of the list, she observes that in the poem there is “no correspondence at all with the order of the Welsh legal tree-tracts nor with the order of plants listed in the early nature poetry” (Haycock 1990, 302).



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Tree-lists have often been singled out as a survival from pre-Christian “Celtic” religion, but as Haycock has pointed out, “tree-catalogues (like other lists) were a commonplace in Classical literature and were widely imitated by medieval authors” (Haycock 1990, 305; for a discussion of an Old Irish tree-list see Kelly 1976). Medieval Irish lists of trees have also been interpreted as mystical or quasi-religious survivals from the pre-Christian era. The fact that some of the names of letters in the ogam alphabet (an alphabet used for monumental inscriptions in the early Christian period) are tree-names  – e.  g. “B” is beithe, meaning “birch-tree”; “V/F” is fern, meaning “alder” – caused some early twentieth-century scholars to ascribe to the ogam alphabet some sort of connection with occult tree-lore, but this has since been disproven (McManus 1991). The association with trees is more likely to result from the use of wood as a medium for writing on. Two short Middle Irish texts, preserved by a later scribe filling in blank spaces in Trinity College Dublin MS H. 3.17, tell us something about prognostication from bird calls in medieval Ireland. For example, the piece on ravens begins by stating that “If the raven call from above an enclosed bed in the midst of the house, it is a distinguished grey-haired guest or clerics that are coming to thee, but there is a difference between them: if it be a secular cleric the raven says bacach; if it be a man in orders it calls gradh gradh […]” (Best 1916, 121 (text), 123 (translation, slightly adapted)). The Christian society within which such superstitions operated is clear from these opening lines, and the text cannot therefore be taken as preserving any pre-Christian lore. Similarly, the piece on wrens warns that if one hears a wren call “behind thee from the south, thou wilt see the heads of good clergy, or hear death-tidings of noble ex-laymen” (Best 1916, 122–123 (text), 125 (translation)). The “ex-layman” refers to noblemen who enter religious orders late in life). It is stated that the calls of wrens can also predict such misfortunes as sickness in one’s herds or the abduction of one’s wife.

Medical Prognostication In the (seventh- or eighth-century) Vita Prima of Saint Brigit, it is a magus who interprets the meaning of Brigit’s nausea. He states that he is unclean, but that Brigit “is filled with the Holy Spirit. She can’t endure my food”. He thus sets aside a white cow milked by a Christian virgin for Brigit’s consumption (cited and discussed in McKenna 2002, 68). However, this is a spiritual diagnosis of a medical ailment, rather than an instance of medical magic or prediction per se. Predictions made of the fate of unborn children are widespread in hagiography and narrative literature. For example, a magus predicts that the unborn Brigit will go on to free her mother from slavery and reign over her half-siblings (the passage is discussed in McKenna 2002, 71). In the Old Irish narrative Longes mac nUislenn (“The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu”) a druí predicts that the unborn Deirdre will go on to be

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the cause of bloodshed amongst the Ulstermen (Hull 1949). On a related note, the Old Irish “Book of Ogam” (In Lebor Ogaim), preserved in manuscripts dating from the fourteenth century onwards, describes something called “boy-ogam” (macogam), which is “a method of divining the sex of an unborn child by ‘dividing’ the mother’s name (i.  e. the letters of her name) in two, an uneven division indicating a boy” (McManus 1991, 140). We have some clear instances of medical prognostication in Irish narrative literature. In one version of the Old Irish Aided Chonchobuir (“Death of Conchobar”), we are told that the physician, Fíngen, could identify the number of sick people in a house, and the ailments from which they were suffering, based on the smoke that rose from their dwelling (Meyer 1906, 8–9). The character of Dían Cécht recurs in numerous medieval Irish narrative texts as an archetypal physician with magico-medical skills. The association between Dían Cécht and medical learning clearly exceeds the bounds of narrative literature and we find intertextual references to Dían Cécht in medical, grammatical and Christian religious texts which demonstrate the interconnections between various branches of learning in medieval Ireland (Hayden 2014, 37–40; Hayden 2019). The presence of Dían Cécht in texts of undoubted Christian provenance and worldview exemplifies the complex – and as yet not fully understood – relationship between Christian authors and their depictions of pre-Christian practices in the literatures of the Celtic-speaking world.

Selected Bibliography Acallam na Senórach. Tales of the Elders of Ireland: A New Translation of Acallam na Senórach. Eds. Ann Dooley and Harry Roe. Oxford, 1999. Aided Chonchobuir. The Death-Tales of the Ulster Heroes. Ed. and trans. Kuno Meyer. Dublin, 1906. Baile in Scáil. Baile in Scáil: ‘The Phantom’s Frenzy’. Ed. and trans. Kevin Murray. London, 2004. Best, Richard Irvine. “Prognostications from the Raven and the Wren.” Ériu 8 (1916): 120–126. Bisagni, Jacopo. “A Note on the End of the World: Tírechán’s dies erdathe.” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 58 (2011): 9–18. Breeze, Andrew. “Ieuan ap Rhydderch and Welsh rhagman ‘game of chance’.” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 48 (1996): 29–33. Brislech Mór Maige Muirthemni. The Death of Cú Chulainn. A Critical Edition of the Earliest Version of Brislech Mór Maige Muirthemni. Ed. and trans. Bettina Kimpton. Maynooth, 2009. Carey, John. “Saint Patrick, the Druids, and the End of the World.” History of Religions 36.1 (1996): 42–53. Carey, John. King of Mysteries: Early Irish Religious Writings. Dublin, 1998. Edel, Doris. “Geoffrey’s So-Called Animal Symbolism and Insular Celtic Tradition.” Studia Celtica 18/19 (1983–1984): 96–109. Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language. http://www.dil.ie (11 March 2020). Fulton, Helen. “Owain Glyn Dŵr and the Uses of Prophecy.” Studia Celtica 39 (2005): 105–121. Gildas. “De excidio Britanniae.” Gildas: The Ruin of Britain and Other Works. Ed. and trans. Michael Winterbottom. London, 1978.



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Haycock, Marged. “The Significance of the ‘Cad Goddau’ Tree-List in the Book of Taliesin.” Celtic Linguistics/Ieithyddiaeth Geltaidd. Readings in the Brythonic Languages. Festschrift for T. Arwyn Watkins. Eds. Martin J. Ball et al. Amsterdam, 1990. 297–331. Hayden, Deborah. “Anatomical Metaphor in Auraicept na nÉces.” Authorities and Adaptations: the Reworking and Transmission of Textual Sources in Medieval Ireland. Eds. Elizabeth Boyle and Deborah Hayden. Dublin, 2014. 23–61. Hayden, Deborah. “Attribution and Authority in a Medieval Irish Medical Compendium.” Studia Hibernica 45 (2019): 19–51. Hudson, Benjamin T. Prophecy of Berchán. Irish and Scottish High-Kings of the Early Middle Ages. Westport, Connecticut, 1996. Jarman, Alfred O. H. “The Merlin Legend and the Welsh Tradition of Prophecy.” The Arthur of the Welsh: the Arthurian Legend in Medieval Welsh Literature. Eds. Rachel Bromwich et al. Cardiff, 1991. 117–145. Kelly, Fergus. “The Old Irish Tree-List.” Celtica 11 (1976): 107–124. Kelly, Fergus. “The Beliefs and Mythology of the Early Irish, with Special Reference to the Cosmos.” Astronomy, Cosmology and Landscape: Proceedings of the Societé Européenne pour l’Astronomie dans la Culture 98 Meeting, Dublin, September 1998. Eds. Clive Ruggles et al. Bognor Regis, 2001. 167–172. Longes mac nUislenn: The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu. Ed. and trans. Vernam Hull. New York, 1949. McKenna, Catherine. “Between Two Worlds: Saint Brigit and Pre-Christian Religion in the Vita Prima.” Identifying the “Celtic”: CSANA Yearbook 2. Ed. Joseph Nagy. Dublin, 2002. 66–74. McManus, Damian. A Guide to Ogam. Maynooth, 1991. Nagy, Joseph Falaky. Conversing with Angels and Ancients: Literary Myths of Medieval Ireland. Ithaca, 1997. Nagy, Joseph Falaky. The Wisdom of the Outlaw: The Boyhood Deeds of Finn in Gaelic Narrative Literature. Berkeley, 1985. Ní Mhaonaigh, Máire. “Poetic Authority in Middle Irish Narrative: A Case Study.” Authorities and Adaptations: the Reworking and Transmission of Textual Sources in Medieval Ireland. Eds. Elizabeth Boyle and Deborah Hayden. Dublin, 2014. 263–289. Ó Buachalla, Breandán. “Aodh Eanghach and the Irish King-Hero.” Sages, Saints and Storytellers: Celtic Studies in Honour of Professor James Carney. Eds. Donnchadh Ó Corráin et al. Maynooth, 1989. 200–232. Ó Corráin, Donnchadh, Liam Breatnach, and Aidan Breen. “The Laws of the Irish.” Peritia 3 (1984): 382–438. Padel, Oliver J. “Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Development of the Merlin Legend.” Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 51 (2006): 37–65. Saint Patrick’s Confessio. https://www.confessio.ie (11 March 2020). Scél Tuáin meic Chairill. “Scél Tuáin meic Chairill.” Ed. and trans. John Carey. Ériu 35 (1984): 93–111. Smith, Roland. “A Prophecy Ascribed to Cendfaelad.” Revue celtique 46 (1929): 120–125. Tírechán. “Collectanea.” The Patrician Texts in the Book of Armagh. Ed. and trans. Ludwig Bieler. Dublin, 1979. Volmering, Nicole (ed. and trans.). “The Second Vision of Adomnán.” The End and Beyond: Medieval Irish Eschatology, 2 vols. Eds. John Carey et al. Aberystwyth, 2014. 2: 647–682. Warntjes, Immo. The Munich Computus: Text and Translation: Irish Computistics Between Isidore of Seville and the Venerable Bede and its Reception in Carolingian Times. Stuttgart, 2010. Williams, Mark. Fiery Shapes: Celestial Portents and Astrology in Ireland and Wales, 700–1700. Oxford, 2010. Woolf, Greg. Tales of the Barbarians: Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West. Chichester, 2011.

John McKinnell

Pagan Traditions of Prognostication in the Germanic Languages Introduction – The Problem of Historical Sources This survey covers only traditions in the medieval Germanic languages, principally Old Norse, but also Old English, Old High German and Old Saxon, and relevant related material in Latin. Most of the sources for pagan Germanic prognostication are more recent than those in the other traditions considered within this project. The oldest significant written source is Tacitus, Germania, completed in 98 CE (Tacitus, Germania, ed. Anderson; trans. Rives). The oldest known runic inscriptions (e.  g. Illerup Ådal, E. Jutland, Denmark) date from the late second century (Moltke 1985, 95–99; McKinnell et al. 2004, 43–44). The oldest surviving Old Norse poems (e.  g. Bragi Boddason’s Ragnarsdrápa, Skj. I A: 1–4 and I B: 1–4) were orally composed, probably in the mid-ninth century; and the most informative prose sources date mainly from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, one of the oldest being Ari Þorgilsson’s Íslendingabók, whose surviving (revised) version was completed by 1148 (further see Jónas Kristjánsson 1997). The manuscripts and the prose narratives are all post-Conversion (largely from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, although much of their subject matter is concerned with pagan times). Some inscriptions and picture stones are from the heathen period, but few of them are concerned with prediction (for Swedish picture stones see Jansson 1987; for northern England see Kopar 2012; for the Isle of Man see Cubbon 1977). Some other sources are pre-Conversion but written by outsiders who were likely to misreport or misunderstand some of the traditions they record. In Germania ch. 10, for example, Tacitus is probably roughly accurate in describing casting of marked wooden chips (possibly marked with runes?) as a method of augury, but his assertion that the Germanic peoples predict the outcome of wars through single combat may misunderstand a system like that of the later holmgang, in which single combat is seen as an alternative to battle rather than a prediction of its outcome (Tacitus, Germania, trans. Rives, 81 and notes on 165–166 and 168). In the manuscript tradition, some Eddic poems are probably of pre-Christian origin, but they were not fixed texts (see Eddukvæði I–II and translations in Orchard 2011). Skaldic verse (for which see SP and Skj.) is harder to modify and easier to date, and a good deal of it survives from the pre-Christian period, but most of it is concerned to praise the past achievements of rulers rather than to predict the future. Even when a poem includes what looks like a heathen prediction, the poet may have been a Christian who was merely using heathen mythology as a literary device. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-003

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In Þorfinnsdrápa 24 (Whaley 2009, 128; SP II: 258–259), Arnórr jarlaskáld says that the sun will turn black, the earth sink in the sea and the sky be torn apart before a finer chieftain than Þorfinnr will be born in Orkney. This refers to heathen belief in Ragnarǫk (see below), but Arnórr was a Christian, and this is a rhetorical flourish rather than a serious prediction. In the pre-Christian period the Germanic peoples were not literate except in runes, and their mythology had no fixed canon of sacred texts. This made it possible for mutually incompatible traditions to exist side by side, and for Germanic heathenism to change and absorb outside influences. However, there does seem to have been a generally accepted belief in an absolute Fate which neither men nor gods could avoid, although when and how it would come to pass might remain mysterious. Germanic heathenism had no central organisation to control belief and behaviour and no canon of sacred written texts to impart the moral authority that could turn prediction into prophecy and dream into vision. I will therefore deal with these topics only under the headings of Interpretation of Signs and Dreams and Manticism.

Eschatology: The Fate of the World The main predictive myth within the concept of Fate was that of Ragnarǫk, the inevitable future downfall of gods and men in a cosmic war against giants and monsters, in which the world will be destroyed. Important elements of this myth appear on pre-Christian and Conversion-period picture stones dating from the tenth and eleventh centuries: Heimdallr blowing his horn to warn the gods of the approach of their enemies (Jurby, Isle of Man, and probably Ovingham, Northumberland), Óðinn being swallowed by the wolf Fenrir (Kirk Andreas, Isle of Man, Heysham hogback side A, Ledberg stone, Östergötland, Sweden), Víðarr taking vengeance by killing Fenrir (probably Ovingham and the Gosforth Cross, Cumbria), and general Ragnarǫk scenes at Skipwith, North Yorkshire and (probably) Sockburn, County Durham. Descriptions of Ragnarǫk in eddic poems whose substance is probably largely pre-Christian appear in several Eddic poems, notably Vǫluspá and Vafþrúðnismál, and in a prose elaboration based on eddic verse in Snorri’s Gylfaginning chs. 51–53 (Faulkes 1982, 49–54). They agree that Ragnarǫk is inevitable and that in it: – Freyr will fall in battle against the fire-demon Surtr; – Óðinn will be swallowed by the wolf Fenrir, who will in turn be destroyed by Óðinn’s son Víðarr; – Þórr and the World Serpent (Miðgarðsormr) will kill each other; – The world will be destroyed by fire and will sink into the sea; – A new world will then emerge from the sea.



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However, there is disagreement about which of the gods will survive Ragnarǫk. Vǫluspá claims that the innocent gods (Hœnir, Hǫðr and Baldr) will return, whereas the survivors in Vafþrúðnismál are Móði and Magni (“Courage” and “Strength”), the sons of Þórr, and the just avengers Váli and Víðarr. This suggests that the ideology of individual contributors to the poetic tradition could sometimes modify the details of the predictive myth. At least one description of Ragnarǫk (Vǫluspá) shows some signs of Christian influence. Its account of the chaos before the gods created the world echoes some lines of the Old High German Wessobrunnergebet (for which, see Schlosser 1998, 44–45). Its use of mjǫtviðr (understood as meaning “measuring tree”) for the World Tree Yggdrasill is probably a literal re-imagining of the Old Saxon or Old English metod, meaning Fate or God (literally “that which has been measured”, seen for example in the Old English Cædmon’s Hymn 2, composed ca, 680 (Hamer 1970, 122–123); and the giant Muspell is probably a personification derived from Old High German or Old Saxon mu(d)spilli “Doomsday” (literally “great event”), for which see e.  g. the Old Saxon Heliand 2591 (Behagel 1933, 91) and the Old High German Muspilli (ed. and trans. Schlosser, 70–75). However, it does not seem possible to explain Ragnarǫk as wholly derived from Christianity.

Eschatology: The Fates of Individuals Fate could also be personified in the form of the Norns, female figures who were thought to preside over the fates of individuals. According to Vǫluspá 20 they are three giant women called Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld, often rendered as “Past”, “Present” and “Future”, though their names literally mean “Fate”, “Existence” and “Debt”. Elsewhere there are an unspecified number of norns, and Fáfnismál 13 says they are of various origins – some related to the gods, some to the elves, and some the daughters of Dvalinn (dwarfs). Gylfaginning ch. 15 adds that some are good (i.  e. bring good fortune) and others bad (Faulkes 1982, 18). Mention of them does not necessarily imply belief: a runic inscription from about 1200 in Borgund Church, Sogn og Fjordane, Western Norway says “The Norns have done both good and evil – they created great trouble for me”, but the carver dates his inscription to the day before St. Óláfr’s day and it is in the shape of a cross (McKinnell et al. 2004, 129–130). This shows that allusion to the Norns could sometimes be no more than an elegant figure of speech. The function and identity of the Norns seems sometimes to have merged with those of the dísir (ON) or idisi (Old High German – see The First Merseburg Charm, ed. Schlosser 108–109; Eis 1964, 58–61; McKinnell 2005, 197–200), spirits who probably originated as female ancestors and could affect the lives of their descendents for either good or ill. Thus in Hamðismál 28 (probably late ninth century in origin), Hamðir blames the dísir for inciting him to kill his half-brother Erpr and thereby making his

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own death inevitable (Eddukvæði II, 412; trans. Orchard, 237). Similarly, in Atlamál 27 (probably twelfth century), Gunnarr’s wife Glaumvǫr relates a dream in which the dísir, defined as “dead women”, summoned her husband to join them (Eddukvæði II, 387; trans. Orchard, 219). The idea of dísir sometimes merged with that of the personal or family spirits called fylgjur (literally “female followers”) or hamingjur (female spirits who adopted the form of those they were sent to “fetch”), who might appear to a person or to their close family, usually just before their death, either in literal “reality” or in a dream – see Turville-Petre 1964, 221–230; for examples, see Hallfreðar saga ch. 11 (ÍF 8, 198; trans. Whaley, CSI I, 252) and Víga-Glúms saga ch. 19 (ÍF 9, 63; trans. McKinnell CSI II, 29). It is not clear whether these spirits are thought of as controlling the fates of human beings or as agents of a Fate predetermined by some other power.

Dreams and Other Signs The Content of Dreams It is usually assumed in Norse sources that dreams are prophetic; there is no use of dreams as psychological allegory, such as we find in the Roman de la Rose and other European sources (↗ Schirrmeister, Dream Interpretation Western Christian World). Dreaming was regarded as passive reception of a “message” from elsewhere, and this is reflected in the impersonal construction mik dreymdi, literally “it dreamed me”. For this reason, dreaming did not usually carry the stigma that was often attached to manticism. Sometimes the boundary between dreaming and waking vision is blurred: a dream-visitor may ask the dreamer if he is awake; he replies that he is, only to be told that he is in fact asleep, but it will turn out as if he were awake. The visitor may be either a hostile female (possibly akin to the dísir), as in Fóstbrœðra saga ch. 11 (ÍF 6, 174–175; trans. Regal, CSI II, 355), or a helpful male, as in Flóamanna saga ch. 15 (ÍF 13, 260; trans. Acker, CSI III, 283). The dreamer may catch a glimpse of the dream-visitor leaving as he wakes up – see Laxdæla saga ch. 31 (ÍF 5, 84–85; trans. Kunz, CSI V, 42) and Óláfs saga helga in Snorri’s Heimskringla, ch. 188 (ÍF 27, 340–341; trans. Finlay and Faulkes 2014, 228). In some dreams the supernatural being who is the object of blót (see below) comes to give an explicit message about the future – usually one which is unwelcome to the dreamer. In Flóamanna saga chs. 20–21 the god Þórr appears five times to Þorgils Örrabeinsstjúpr to reproach and threaten him for converting to Christianity (ÍF 13, 274–281; trans. Acker, CSI III, 288–290); in Víga-Glúms saga ch. 26 Glúmr dreams that his dead kinsmen have come to tell him that the god Freyr has resolved to drive him off his estate despite their pleas for him (ÍF 9, 87–88; trans. McKinnell, CSI II, 308); in



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Þáttr Þorvalds viðförla I ch. 3 the local spirit to whom Koðrán has offered blót appears to reproach him for the pain which he suffers from the holy water sprinkled by the missionary bishop who is staying with him (ÍF 15, 65–66; trans. Porter, CSI V, 361). In all these cases the prophecies are explicit and come true. From the Christian point of view heathen gods and spirits are either devils or wicked historical ancestors, but in medieval European dream theory devils could only cause phantasmata of no prophetic value (Macrobius, Expositio in Somnium Scipionis, trans. Stahl, 87–90), so the fact that these predictions are all fulfilled points to some continuing tradition of belief in the powers of the gods or spirits to whom blót was offered. Dreams involving prophetesses (seiðkonur or vǫlur) are common, and sometimes seem to reflect a belief in the ability of the hamr “shape, personal nature” of a person to move beyond the body during sleep with the help of spirits known as gandar in order to gain hidden information (see also section 4.c. below). In Fóstbrœðra saga ch. 23 (ÍF 6, 243–248; trans. Regal, CSI II, 383–386) two rival women are troubled in their sleep and when they wake are able to give information about the whereabouts and actions of their enemies; the first refers explicitly to her gandar, while the second continues to rely on heathen magic while claiming to be a Christian. A similar belief in the sinister powers of vǫlur may underlie the dream of Þórðr in Haralds saga harðráða ch. 81 (ÍF 28, 177; trans. Magnússon and Pálsson, 140), in which a troll-woman rides a wolf which she feeds with the bodies of those who are falling in battle. Although this dream is not interpreted, it clearly foreshadows Harald’s coming defeat and death. However, since the dreamer was usually seen as a passive recipient and therefore not actively responsible for their predictions, these could sometimes be promulgated without social opprobrium or legal penalty, even when the dream informant was a figure from the heathen past. In Laxdæla saga ch. 76 (ÍF 5, 223–224; trans. Kunz, CSI V, 117) Herdís dreams of a dead vǫlva who complains that the penitent tears of Guðrún are scalding her in her grave, and in Íslendinga saga ch. 190 (Sturlunga saga, eds. Jóhannesson et al., I, 519–522; trans. McGrew and Thomas, I, 431–434) the dead Guðrún Gjúkadóttir, who is explicitly said to be heathen, appears in a dream to give information about the fates of important political figures; this is presented as a recent event, said to have happened in 1255. A development of this tradition appears in Gísla saga, where the hero repeatedly dreams of two “dream-women”, one favourable and the other hostile (chs. 22, 24, 30, 33, ÍF 6: 70–73, 75–77, 94–96, 102–109; trans. Regal, CSI II, 27–30, 38–39, 41–44). The “good” dream-woman gives Gísli moral advice and the bad one urges him towards the sin of despair, and in this respect they resemble good and bad personal angels; but they also tell Gísli how long he will live and how he will die, and there is no clear triumph of the good dream-woman over the evil one; these features are probably derived from native traditions about spákonur. Another type of dream-visitor is the aggressively heathen dead male ancestor who comes to punish the dreamer for abandoning blót and veneration of his ancestors, and in these cases the punishment persists outside the dream. In Bárðar saga ch. 21, (ÍF 13, 168–170; trans. Anderson, CSI II, 26) Gestr Bárðarson is visited by his dead father, who

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blinds him as a punishment for converting to Christianity; and at some time around 1206 a member of Snorri Sturluson’s household is said to have dreamed that Snorri’s heathen ancestor Egill Skallagrímsson came to him to express his disapproval of Snorri’s impending move away from the ancestral family estate (Íslendinga saga ch. 16, Sturlunga saga, eds. Jóhannesson et al., I, 241–242; trans. McGrew and Thomas, I, 131). However, most male visitants are saintly Christian figures who give advice and encouragement, recall the dreamer from sin, or make favourable predictions (St. Óláfr in Fóstbrœðra saga ch. 24 [ÍF 6, 255–256; trans. Regal, CSI II, 389–390]; Óláfr Tryggvason in Hallfreðar saga ch. 10 [ÍF 8, 191–192; trans. Whaley, CSI I, 249] and in Snorri’s Óláfs saga helga ch.188 [ÍF 27, 340–341; trans. Finlay and Faulkes, 227–228]. Such dreams must have been widely believed in the twelfth century, for Sverrir (King of Norway 1181–1202) made astute political use of them, claiming dreams of being washed in a quasi-baptism by St. Óláfr and of being anointed by the prophet Samuel (Sverris saga chs. 5 and 10, ÍF 30, 8–9 and 16–17; trans. Sephton, 4–5 and 11–12). Some dreams are used to predict the future and/or descendants of an unborn child, but although these might seem to parallel the predictions by Norns, they are largely derived from Christian sources. Some use the symbol of a great tree, which signifies noble descent or kingship and probably comes from Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Dan. 4 and/or the common medieval idea of the Tree of Jesse; the dreamer may be the pregnant mother-to-be, as in Hálfdanar saga svarta ch. 6, (ÍF 26, 90; trans. Finlay and Faulkes, 51), or another member of the family, as in Bárðar saga ch. 1 (ÍF 13, 104; trans. Anderson, CSI II, 238), where Bárðr dreams of his royal descendants and of a future change of faith in Norway. An adaptation of the tree to a number of leeks (traditionally the “best of grasses”, see Vǫluspá, Sigurður Nordal 1984, 15–16) appears in Flóamanna saga ch. 24 (ÍF 13, 293–295; trans. Acker, CSI III, 292–293), where the dreamer will become the father of the “leeks”, each of which branches to produce further descendants. Such dreams are usually interpreted on the spot, either by the dreamer himself or by another member of his or her family.

The Interpretation of Dreams Most of the dream symbols are fairly easy to interpret. A man covered in blood is dead or will die (examples include Gunnlaugs saga ch. 13 [ÍF 3, 104–105; trans. Attwood, CSI I, 331–332]), while dream-women who sprinkle blood (e.  g. Víga-Glúms saga ch. 21; ÍF 9, 71–72; trans. McKinnell, CSI II, 299) or touch warriors with a cloth dripping with blood (as in Íslendinga saga ch. 122, eds. Jóhannesson et al., I, 403; trans. McGrew and Thomas, I, 308) signify a battle in which men will be killed; two instances in Íslendinga saga are presented as recent events, said to have taken place in 1209 and 1237. Hostile warriors often appear in dreams as animals, most often as wolves, a symbol which usually suggests treachery (Kelchner 1935: 77–143 cites nine examples, including Harðar saga ch. 31 [ÍF 13, 77; trans. Kellogg, CSI II, 226–227]. Snakes and



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hawks also imply treachery (see Gísla saga ch. 14; ÍF 6, 46; trans. Regal, CSI II, 15), where the snake and the wolf are obviously synonymous symbols, and Gunnlaugs saga ch. 2 (ÍF 3, 53–55; trans. Attwood, CSI I, 306–307), where the hawk is contrasted with two eagles), while eagles and bears are complimentary symbols (see e.  g. Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar ch.  12 [FSN III, 77; trans. Pálsson and Edwards, 60–61]; Njáls saga ch. 23 [ÍF 12, 64–65; trans. Cook, CSI III, 28], where the bear represents the fylgja “attendant spirit” of the hero Gunnarr). Oxen and boars represent fierce warriors but seem morally neutral (oxen represent the fylgjur of the men of Ljósavatn in a dream in Ljósvetninga saga ch. 16 [ÍF 10, 85; trans. Andersson and Miller, CSI IV, 244] and a boar is that of Hrólfr’s brother Ketill in Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar ch. 12 [FSN III, 76–77; trans. Pálsson and Edwards, 60–61]), and there are occasional examples of more exotic animals: dragon, leopard, lion and stag (see Kelchner). A few dreams present less obvious symbols, like the head-dresses and rings which are interpreted as representing Guðrún’s four husbands in Laxdæla saga ch. 33 (ÍF 5, 88–91; trans. Kunz, CSI V, 44–45). Two eddic poems contain rival interpretations of dream sequences. Atlamál 14–26 (Eddukvæði II, 385–387; trans. Orchard, 217–219) presents two episodes in which the wives of the brothers Hǫgni and Gunnarr have multiple dreams which foretell the deaths of their husbands at the hands of Atli, King of the Huns, if they accept his invitation to visit him. Because they cannot honourably refuse the invitation, Hǫgni and Gunnarr supply harmless interpretations, in which they themselves seem to have little faith, while their wives either give correct interpretations or leave the dreams unexplained. In Guðrúnarkviða II 37–43 (Eddukvæði II, 360–361; trans. Orchard, 201– 202) we meet a case of deliberately false interpretation: Atli asks his wife Guðrún to interpret four of his dreams which actually prefigure her murder of him and the fact that she will serve up the flesh of their two sons for him to eat. She gives false interpretations of the dreams, but is well aware of their true meaning. Again it is the man who is lulled into security with false rationalisations, and it seems to be suggested that women are better attuned to the meanings of dreams than men. The disastrous interpretation of a dream is nearly always correct. This may be because dreams of impending disaster are useful in giving a story shape and suspense  – it does not necessarily imply that they were commoner than propitious dreams in the actual social culture of medieval Scandinavia. The historical “truth” of any dream is impossible for anyone but the dreamer to know, but dreams are commonly experienced within the conventions expected in the dreamer’s society, and historical experience itself may sometimes have been influenced by literary convention. Similarly, while some omens are clearly fabrications or importations of dream material into stories of waking life, others reflect a commonly accepted code of how chance occurrences were thought to be significant.

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Omens Outside Dreams Many omens outside dreams are portentous events giving warning of a coming disaster, usually one involving death. A rain of blood is either an omen or the cause of an epidemic in which many people will die; the ghosts of drowned men appear in the hall with their clothes dripping wet; a “moon of fate” (urðarmáni) appears on the inside wall of a hall, and is immediately and correctly interpreted as a prediction of a human death, perhaps because a human being’s allotted lifespan could be measured as a number of changes of the moon; for examples of all of these, see Eyrbyggja saga chs. 51, 54 and 52 (ÍF 4, 140–141, 148, 145–146; trans. Quinn, CSI V, 197–198, 201, 199–200). Another death portent is when a military leader stumbles on the way to a battle, but this is sometimes given competing interpretations. The optimistic one, usually stated by the leader himself, may be derived from Suetonius, who says that Julius Caesar stumbled as he disembarked for his African campaign and turned it into a good omen by exclaiming “I seize you, Africa!” (Suetonius, Vita divi Iuli, ed. Rolfe 1913, I, 80–83); this is echoed, for example, in William of Poitiers’ life of William the Conqueror (Davis and Chibnall 1998, 189). But in most Germanic sources the true meaning of this omen is that the ruler’s personal spirit has abandoned him and he will be killed in the battle that follows. In Haralds saga harðráða ch. 90 (ÍF 28, 186; trans. Magnússon and Pálsson, 149) Haraldr harðráði invokes the proverb fall er farar heill “a fall means good luck on a journey” when his horse stumbles before the Battle of Stamford Bridge; but his enemy Harold Godwinsson is looking on and comments: “his personal spirit (hamingja) has probably left him”, and is soon proved right. Occasionally the spirits are visible to someone other than the victim, as when Una sees dead men riding to meet her husband in Víga-Glúms saga ch. 19 (ÍF 9, 63; trans. McKinnell, CSI II, 295). As with dreams, the disastrous interpretation usually turns out to be correct, and for the same literary reason. A number of events which seem unremarkable to a modern reader are taken as warnings from personal and family spirits, as when someone is seized by violent yawning or sneezing when a dangerous enemy is near. In Njáls saga ch. 12 the magician Svanr begins to yawn violently, and realizes that the fylgjur “attendant spirits” of his enemy Ósvífr are approaching (ÍF 12, 37; trans. Cook, CSI III, 16). But people with no magical gift could also experience and interpret this omen, as in Orkneyinga saga chs. 93 and 103, when Sveinn Ásleifarson and Rǫgnvaldr kali realise that their violent sneezes are a warning of the approach of their enemies (ÍF 34, 247 and 276; trans. Pálsson and Edwards, 168 and 186). On the other hand, one very strange omen is regarded as a sign of rightful inheritance: a seal’s head comes up through the floor of the hall and can only be hammered down again by the predestined heir (Eyrbyggja saga ch. 53, ÍF 4, 147; trans. Quinn, CSI V, 200–201), or a giant is hammered into the ground by the rightful king of Norway (Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns ch. 12, FSN III, 415; trans. Pálsson and Edwards, 139).



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These portents seem to reflect a belief in beings sprung from the earth who are bent on destroying humanity and whose defeat by a chosen hero denotes his predestined right to authority over the land.

Manticism Manticism may be defined as the attempt to acquire specific knowledge of future or hidden events by supernatural means. Medieval sources usually regard it with disapproval (↗ Rapisarda, Mantic Arts Western Christian World; ↗ Heiduk, Prognostication Western Christian World), but it is hard to decide whether this reflects the Christian view that one should not pry into God’s Providence, or whether it was already normal in pre-Christian times (perhaps because of the frequent association of prophecy with the disgraceful form of female magic known as seiðr).

Prognostication and Sacrifice to the Gods In narratives set in heathen times the process of consulting gods or spirits is usually part of blót, honouring them with sacrifice; it was also called at ganga til fréttar “to go to find something out” or at sjá á hlaut “consulting lots”. Tacitus (Germania ch. 10, ed. Anderson, trans. Rives, 81 and notes on 165–166) describes one method of doing this: “They cut a branch broken off from a fruit-bearing tree into slices (surculos), and after distinguishing them with certain different marks they scatter them at random onto a white cloth. Then the state priest, if it is a public consultation, or the father of the family, if it is a private one, prays to the gods and, looking towards the sky, picks up three of them, one at a time; each is interpreted according to the marks previously scored on it.” Something similar is probably implied in Vǫluspá K 61 (Eddukvæði I, 306; trans. Orchard, 14), where Hœnir will hlautvið kjósa “choose the wood of augury” in the reborn world after Ragnarǫk, and in Ynglinga saga ch. 38 (ÍF 26, 70; trans. Finlay and Faulkes, 39), where King Granmárr of Södermanland goes to Uppsala “to make sacrifice so that there should be peace, as the custom was at the beginning of summer. Then the augury chip (spánn) fell for him in such a way as to suggest that he would not live long.” Another method was to scatter blood from a sacrificed animal or human being from a hlauttein “augury twig” so that the random splashes of blood could be “read”. Blood could also be scattered over the building and the participants in the ceremony, as described in Hákonar saga góða ch. 14, with an admiring and probably contemporary quotation from Kormákr’s skaldic poem Sigurðardrápa (ca. 950; ÍF 26 167–168, trans. Finlay and Faulkes, 98–99; and see Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson 1997, 231–236). Even gods could be portrayed engaging in this kind of sacrificial augury, as they do

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when trying to discover where they can hold their feast in Hymiskviða 1 (Eddukvæði I, 399; trans. Orchard, 76). Those consulted by means of blót were often but not always gods. Flóki Vilgerðarson, about to leave Norway, invokes the patronage of Óðinn when he makes sacrifice to three ravens so that they will help him to navigate (Landnámabók, Hauksbók ch. 5, ÍF 1, 37; trans. Pálsson and Edwards, 17), while Þórólfr Mostrarskegg prefers to consult Þórr, first as to whether he should be reconciled with the King or leave the country, and then when he throws overboard the pillars of his high seat, on which there is a carved image of Þórr, saying that they will come ashore where Þórr wants him to settle (Eyrbyggja saga ch. 4, ÍF 4, 7; trans. Quinn, CSI V, 133; Landnámabók, Sturlubók ch. 85, Hauksbók ch. 73; ÍF 1, 124–126; trans. Pálsson and Edwards, 45–46). Ingimundr Þorsteinsson is also said to have been forced to accept his destiny of settling in Iceland, but his patron god is Freyr: in Vatnsdæla saga ch. 12 (ÍF 8, 32–36; trans. Wawn, CSI IV, 16–17) he is told by King Haraldr hárfagri that Freyr wants him to settle in Iceland, and this is confirmed when he employs three Sámi shamans; in Landnámabók (Sturlubók ch. 179, Hauksbók ch. 145, ÍF 1, 217–219; trans. Pálsson and Edwards, 83–84) a prophetess tells him that he will find his lost figure of the god at the place in Iceland where he digs a hole in which to place the pillars of his high seat. Blót in honour of other beings does not always include augury: for example, it does not seem to have been the purpose of the annual blót to the dísir at the beginning of winter (Víga-Glúms saga ch. 6, ÍF 9, 17; trans. McKinnell, CSI II, 275, and the heathen Anglo-Saxon matrum noctem “night of the mothers” in Bede’s De Temporum Ratione ch. 15 [ed. Jones, col. 2320]), or of the Swedish blót to the elves in Sigvatr’s early eleventh-century Austrfararvísur 5 (SP I, 590–592, quoted in Snorri’s Óláfs saga helga ch. 91 [ÍF 27, 137]; trans. Finlay and Faulkes, 89). But when blót is offered to local spirits the acquisition of esoteric knowledge is usually part of the motivation for it. Þorsteinn rauðnefr offers blót to the spirit in a waterfall; in the last summer of his life he knows that he and/or his large flocks are doomed, and when he dies they all fall into the waterfall (Landnámabók, Sturlubók ch. 355, Hauksbók ch. 313; ÍF 1, 358; trans. Pálsson and Edwards, 134). When asked to convert to Christianity, Koðrán á Gilja replies that he has a prophet (spámaðr or ármaðr) of his own, who lives with his family of spirits in a stone on the farm, tells him future events, guards his flocks and advises him (Þáttr Þorvalds ens viðförla I ch. 3, ÍF 15.2, 62–68; Kristni saga ch. 2, ÍF 15.2, 7–8; trans. Grønlie, 35–36). According to Tacitus, Germanic augury also made use of the sounds made by specially bred white horses (Germania ch. 10, ed. Anderson, trans. Rives, 81 and note on p. 167). In some sources veneration of horses is associated with the cult of Freyr (e.  g. Vatnsdœla saga ch. 34, ÍF 8, 90–92; trans. Wawn, CSI IV, 45), but although the eating of sacrificed horseflesh was an important part of heathen ritual and remained legal for a few years after the Conversion opf Iceland (see e.  g. Ari’s Íslendingabók ch. 7 [ÍF 1, 17; trans. Grønlie]), and some high-status funerals included the sacrifice of horses (e.  g. in ninth-century Ribe [Denmark], see https://projects.au.dk/northernemporium/),



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there is no evidence that horses were still used for prognostication in the Viking Age. The earliest surviving law-code which prohibits blót is the Old English Laws of Cnut (1027–1034), which forbids heathenism of all kinds: oððon blote oððon fyrhte “whether in blood-offerings or in transmigration” (on transmigration see below); the Latin version, known as Quadripartitus, defines blot: aut in sacrificio, id est secundum ritum Suuanorum “whether in sacrifice, that is according to the religion of the Swedes, or […]” (Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, 312–313). This, and the absence of such provisions from earlier Anglo-Saxon legal codes, suggests that they reflect the practices of recent Scandinavian settlers in England. Most early Norwegian law-codes also forbid blót, although penalties vary from a fine of three marks (Ældre Borgarthings Christenret I.16, NGL I, 337–372) to outlawry and total confiscation of property (Ældre Frostathings-lov III.15, NGL I, 152). Only the Icelandic Grágás offers a definition of blót: “A person sacrifices to heathen spirits when they consecrate their property/livestock to anyone other than God and His saints” (Grágás ch. 18, 1997, 19; trans. Dennis et al., 38–39). The detailed provisions for penalties and defences suggest that blót continued to be practised in secret by some people after the Conversion, both in Norway and Iceland.

Prognostication through Transmigration Predictive and effective magic are difficult to separate, since both tended to come under the heading of seiðr “enchantment”, which was practised by Óðinn but was usually the preserve of itinerant women and other social outsiders, often members of the Sámi (Lappish) people. In Ynglinga saga ch. 7 Snorri explains: “by means of it (Óðinn) could know the fates of men and things that had not yet happened, as well as cause people to suffer death, misfortune or illness, as well as taking away people’s wits or strength and giving them to others. But so much perversion (ergi) is involved in this kind of magic when it is practised, that it was thought shameful for men to be involved in it […]” (ÍF 26, 19; trans. Finlay and Faulkes, 11). Ergi seems to have involved a man “becoming a woman” in some way, possibly involving ritual transvestism like that described in Germania ch. 43 (ed. Anderson, trans. Rives, 94 and note on 306; see also Meulengracht-Sørensen, The Unmanly Man, 1983, 19 and 63–64). There are a few stories of male seiðmenn other than Óðinn, but they are usually villainous foreigners, like the Hebridean Kotkell in Laxdæla saga chs. 35–37 (ÍF 5, 95–108, trans. Kunz, CSI V, 47–55) and the two finnar (Sámi) in Haralds saga ins hárfagra ch. 32 (ÍF 26, 135–136; trans. Finlay and Faulkes, 78–79). The commonest terms for women who practised seiðr are vǫlva “prophetess” (probably from vǫlr “staff”) and seiðkona “enchantress”, but spákona “prophetess” and vísindakona “wise woman” also appear. Family sagas often use euphemisms such as kona […] fróð ok framsýn “a wise woman who could see the future”; þat tǫluðu

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menn, at hon væri fjǫlkunnig “people reckoned that she was skilled in magic”; or nǫkkut fornfróð “rather skilled in ancient things”; for examples of all these terms see McKinnell 2005, 95–97. Fictive descriptions of the practice of seiðr show a large measure of agreement – see e.  g. Eiríks saga rauða ch. 4 (ÍF 4, 206–209; trans. Kunz, CSI I, 5–7), Hrólfs saga kraka ch. 3 (FSN II, 9–11); and a rather down-at-heel example in Víga-Glúms saga ch. 12 (ÍF 9, 41; trans. McKinnell, CSI II, 285–286). Similarly, in Lokasenna 24 Loki accuses Óðinn of having “banged on a drum like a vǫlva” (Eddukvæði I, 413; trans. Orchard, 87). The vǫlva is usually invited into his house by a named householder to prophesy for his household. She must be lavishly entertained and paid with valuable gifts, and may arrive accompanied by a group of helpers, or may need a group of women to help her achieve her trance through dancing, singing and/or drumming. The magic is often performed on a platform or mound (an ancient feature which also appears in Eddius Stephanus’s account of an attack on St. Wilfrid and his party by the heathen South Saxons in the year 666, for which he probably had an eye-witness informant [Vita Wilfridi ch. 13, ed. Colgrave, 28–29; trans. Webb, 119]). The trance involves a seizure in which the vǫlva opens her mouth wide and gasps for breath. During the trance the separable soul or gandr of the vǫlva or male magician (often one of the Sámi) typically makes a journey to discover hidden knowledge, heal sickness or revive a dead person. The earliest source for this is the Norwegian-Latin Historia Norwegiae ch. 4 (ed. Storm, 85; trans. Kunin, 6–7), which probably dates from the 1150s; however, the term gandr is probably of Norse rather than Sámi origin, and the two magic-workers in this account are both male (further see Tolley 2009, I: 246–269). The vǫlva often delivers her prophecies within the trance, in which case it is often said that “a song came into her mouth” from elsewhere; in these cases she speaks in verse, refers to her own faculty of “seeing”, and sometimes refers to herself in the third person, as in Vǫluspá K 22, 34 etc. (Eddukvæði I, 296 and 299; trans. Orchard, 8 and 10). In other cases, prophecies are given in response to questions when she has returned to her normal waking state. Most early Norwegian law-codes forbid this kind of prophecy, which they describe as at segja spár “to speak prophecies” or at fara með spásögur “to go about with prophetic stories” (e.  g. Ældre Gulathings-lov 28 [NGL I: 17]; Ældre Frostathings-lov III.15 [NGL I: 152]). Those who seek prophecies are said to gera Finfarar, fara at spyria spa “make a journey to the Sámi, to go and ask for prophecies”, fara a Finmarkr at spyria spadom “go to Finnmark to ask for prophecies”, or trua a Finna “to believe/trust in the Sámi” (Ældre Borgarthings-Christenret II.25, III.22 [NGL I: 362 and 372]; Ældre Eidisvathings-Christenret I.45 and II. 34–35 [NGL I: 389–390 and 403]). Making, seeking or listening to such prophecy are crimes comparable with murder, suicide and malicious enchantment. There are provisions for valid defences, and this suggests that the practice actually existed in medieval Norway, but in Iceland it appears only in legendary sagas about the distant past; some Icelandic legendary sagas even find it necessary to explain what a vǫlva is (see McKinnell 2005, 98–99).



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“Sitting Out” and Prognostication by Contact with the Dead An alternative to the trance was for the prophetess to “sit out” at night at a crossroads, on a mound or in a cave to wake the spirits of the dead. However, Norwegian legal prohibitions suggest that the purpose of “sitting out” was “to wake up trolls and perform heathen practices by that means”. It is not always clear what is meant by “trolls”, for the same codes sometimes refer to magic-working women (or men) as trolls or trylsk “trollish”, especially when they are Sámi. “Sitting out” is another crime that cannot be financially compensated for. Seiðr of all kinds is often associated with the Sámi people or their territory, and it is sometimes suggested that most historical seiðkonur and vǫlur were Sámi women. However, other stories make the magic-worker Hebridean, Russian or Greenlandic (e.  g. Laxdæla saga ch. 35, ÍF 5, 95–100; trans. Kunz, CSI V, 47; Oddr Snorrason, Saga Óláfs Tryggvasonar ch. 6. ÍF 25, 144–145; Eiríks saga rauða ch. 4, ÍF 4, 206 and 410; trans. Kunz, CSI I, 5–7), and it seems likely that these tales use the Sámi, as a mysterious people inhabiting the barren and frozen north, to fill an “Other-World” slot in the imaginative world of Old Norse culture. In legendary sources vǫlur are sometimes implied to have non-human origins as trolls, giants or the dead, and some prophecies are directly delivered by the dead, or by dying characters who are not otherwise gifted with prophetic powers. In Icelandic literary texts, vǫlur are usually employed as a literary motif. It is normally assumed that they tell the truth about an inevitable future, even in the few stories where a vǫlva makes what seems to be a conditional prediction (e.  g. Orms þáttr Stórólfssonar ch. 5, ÍF 13, 404–406; trans. Driscoll, CSI III, 458–459), or tries to deny the truth of what she has just foretold (e.  g. Hrólfs saga kraka ch. 3, FSN II, 9–11). More often, she asserts that her prediction will come true whether the subject likes it or not (for examples, see McKinnell 2005, 98 and 105).

Prognostication in Runic Inscriptions In runic charms it is often hard to distinguish between predictive and effective magic; for example, a runic love charm from Bergen, Norway (B 257) is obviously intended to be effective, but a similar curse in the Eddic poem Skírnismál 36 is clearly predictive (see McKinnell et al. 2004, 131–133; Skírnismál 36 in Eddukvæði I, 387; trans. Orchard, 65). A few inscriptions mingle prediction with petition to a god, as in a fourteenth-century charm from Bergen (B 241) which calls on Óðinn to reveal the identity of a thief (Knirk 1995). However most runic charms are practical in intent and clearly meant to bring about a desired result rather than merely to predict it.

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Astral Sciences The extent to which heathen Norse mythology was mapped onto the heavens is a subject of current academic debate, but it certainly included mythological explanations of sun- and moon-dogs, rainbows, the midnight sun and the names and origins of some stars, although it is difficult to identify which stars are meant (see e.  g. Gísli Sigurðsson 2014, 184–198; Dubois 2014, 199–220). Viking Age seafarers were capable practical navigators and were probably able to make rough calculations of latitude from the elevation of the sun at different times of day, but I know of no evidence that they consulted the stars for predictive purposes.

Medical Prognostication Norse medicine usually aims at practical cures rather than prediction or diagnosis, but Fóstbrœðra saga states that after the Battle of Stiklarstaðir in 1030, wounded men were given a mixture of onion and herbs to eat: if their wounds smelt of onions, that was a sign that the gut was pierced and that they would die, whereas otherwise they might recover (Fóstbrœðra saga ch. 24, ÍF 6, 275; trans. Regal, CSI II, 401–402). Medical magic appears both in Eddic poetry (e.  g. Hávamál 147 and Sigrdrífumál 12; Eddukvæði I, 352 and II, 315–316; trans. Orchard, 37 and 171) and in runic inscriptions, but the poems merely assert knowledge of a charm which imparts medical skill without including the charm itself, while most of the medical inscriptions attempt to bring about practical cures rather than to make predictions; often, as in a copper amulet from Sigtuna, central Sweden (McKinnell et al. 2004, 126–127), they tell the alien being who caused the disease that he has been found and must now flee. It might be possible to divide them grammatically, taking those which use the indicative mood as predictive and those which use the subjunctive or the imperative as merely hopeful, but this would be a modern distinction which probably did not exist in the minds of those who carved them.

Calendrical Calculations When the Alþingi (the annual general assembly of the Icelandic commonwealth) was established in 930, the Norse calendar consisted of two seasons of twenty-six weeks each, so that any particular date always fell on the same day of the week, but this meant that the year had only 364 days, and in the later tenth century it was realised that this was too short and “summer was moving backwards into spring” (Ari Þorgilsson, Íslendingabók ch. 4, ÍF 1, 9–11; trans. Grønlie, 5–6). It was therefore decided to add an extra week every seventh year, and some years later this was further refined so



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that the extra week was added in five specified years of each 28-year cycle. Although this correction of the calendar made obvious sense, it had to be validated by a symbolic dream before being accepted as law at the Alþingi, and after the Conversion to Christianity it survived alongside the Church calendar. Chieftains and priests then had to be mathematically competent enough to avoid celebrating Easter or arriving for the Alþingi on the wrong date; either of these errors made one liable to legal penalties.

Predictions Involving the Weather One of the mythological signs of the approach of Ragnarǫk is the fimbulvetr “mighty winter”, in which there will be three consecutive winters with no summer between them. In Vǫluspá (K) 40 the sunshine during the fimbulvetr is said to be black (Eddukvæði I, 301; trans. Orchard, 11); this has sometimes been interpreted as sunshine seen through a cloud of volcanic ash. If this is right, the image must have originated in Iceland, the only Norse-speaking area which experiences volcanic eruptions, and it cannot therefore be older than the beginning of the Norse settlement of Iceland around 870. More particular weather-omens include a rain of blood in Eyrbyggja saga ch. 51 (ÍF 4, 139–145; trans. Quinn, CSI I, 197–199) which turns out to be either a prediction or the cause of a plague epidemic (see above under “Omens”), and the employment of a vǫlva to predict when a famine will end (Eiríks saga rauða ch. 4, ÍF 4, 206–209; trans. Kunz, CSI I, 5–7). Like most of the other types of prediction discussed here, astral, medical, calendrical and meteorological prognostications from the Norse-speaking area seem usually to arise from the perceived practical needs of individuals or social groups rather than from any spirit of scientific inquiry for its own sake.

Selected Bibliography (Note: because of the nature of its contents, this bibliography is arranged in the order of the Icelandic alphabet: long (accented) vowels are regarded as separate letters and follow the corresponding short vowels; ð follows d; and the end of the alphabet has the order x, y, ý, z, þ, æ, œ, ǫ, ø, although in modern Icelandic ǫ and ø are both represented as ö).

Abbreviations CSI:

The Complete Sagas of Icelanders I–V. Various translators. Ed. Viðar Hreinsson. Reykjavík, 1997. Eddukvæði I–II: Eds. Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason; ÍF. 2014

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Eds. Guðni Jónsson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson. Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda I–III. ­Reykjavík, 1943–1944. Íslenzk fornrit. Reykjavík, 1933–. Norges gamle Love. Eds. Rudolf Keyser, Gustav Storm Munch, and Ebbe Hertzberg. 5 vols. Christiania, 1846–1895. Ed. Finnur Jónsson; Den norsk-islandske Skjaldedigtning. 4 vols. (A 1–2, B 1–2). København, 1908–1915. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages. Various editors. Turnhout, 2007–.

Aðalsteinsson, Jón Hnefill. Blót í norrœnum sið. Reykjavík, 1997. Ari Þorgilsson. Íslendingabók. Ed. Jakob Benediktsson. ÍF 1 (1968): 1–28; trans. Siân Grønlie. London, 2006. 1–32. Arnórr jarlaskáld. Þorfinnsdrápa. Ed. Diana Whaley. 2009. 220–268. SP II: 229–260. Atlamál. Eddukvæði II: 383–401; trans. Andrew Orchard. 2011. 215–230. Bárðar saga. Eds. Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson. Harðar saga. ÍF 13 (1991): 99–172; trans. Sarah M. Anderson. CSI II: 237–266. Bede the Venerable. De Temporum Ratione (= Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 123B). Ed. Charles W. Jones. Turnhout, 1997. Behagel, Otto (ed.). Heliand und Genesis. Halle, 1933. Bragi Boddason, Ragnarsdrápa. Ed. Finnur Jónsson. Skj (1908–1915). I A: 1–4, I B: 1–4. Cubbon, Alfred Marshall. The Art of the Manx Crosses. 2nd ed. Douglas, 1977. Dubois, Thomas A. “Underneath the Self-Same Sky: Comparative Perspectives on Sámi, Finnish and Medieval Scandinavian Astral Lore.” Nordic Mythologies: Interpretations, Intersections and Institutions. Ed. Timothy R. Tangherlini. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2014. 199–220. Eddius Stephanus. Vita Wilfridi. Ed. Bertram Colgrave. Cambridge, 1927; trans. James Francis Webb. The Age of Bede. Harmondsworth, 1965. 103–182. Eiríks saga rauða. Eds. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson. Eyrbyggja saga. ÍF 4 (1935): 193–237; trans. Keneva Kunz. CSI I: 1–18. Eis, Gerhard. Altdeutsche Zaubersprüche. Berlin, 1964. Eyrbyggja saga. Eds. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson. Eyrbyggja saga. ÍF 4 (1935): 1–191; trans. Judy Quinn. CSI V: 131–218. Fáfnismál. Eddukvæði II: 303–312; trans. Andrew Orchard. 2011. 160–168. Flóamanna saga. Eds. Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson. Harðar saga. ÍF 13 (1991): 229–337; trans. Paul Acker. CSI III: 271–304. Fóstbrœðra saga. Eds. Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson. Vestfirðingasǫgur. ÍF 6 (1943): 119–276; trans. Martin S. Regal. CSI II: 329–402. Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 3 vols. Ed. Friedrich Liebermann. Halle, 1898–1916. Gísla saga. Eds. Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson. Vestfirðingasǫgur. ÍF 6 (1943): 1–118; trans. Martin S. Regal. CSI II: 1–48. Gísli Sigurðsson. “Snorri’s Edda: The Sky Described in Mythological Terms.” Nordic Mythologies: Interpretations, Intersections and Institutions. Ed. Timothy R. Tangherlini. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2014. 184–198. Grágás. Lagasafn íslenska þjóðveldisins. Eds. Gunnar Karlsson, Kristján Sveinsson, and Mörður Árnason. Reykjavík, 1997; trans. Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, and Richard Perkins (as Laws of Early Iceland: Grágás I). Winnipeg, 1980. Guðrúnarkviða II. Eddukvæði II: 352–361; trans. Andrew Orchard. 2011. 196–202. Gunnlaugs saga. Eds. Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson. Borgfirðinga sǫgur. ÍF 3 (1938): 49–107; trans. Katrina C. Attwood. CSI I: 305–333.



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Hallfreðar saga. Ed. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson. Vatnsdœla saga. ÍF 8 (1939): 133–200; trans. Diana Whaley. CSI I: 225–253. Hamðismál. Eddukvæði II: 407–413; trans. Andrew Orchard. 2011. 234–238. Hamer, Richard (ed. and trans). A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse. London, 1970. Harðar saga. Eds. Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson. Harðar saga. ÍF 13 (1991): 1–97; trans. Robert Kellogg. CSI II: 193–236. Hauks þáttr hábrókar, 4 vols. Eds. Sigurður Nordal et al. Flateyjarbók. Akranes, 1944–1945. II: 66–69. Hávamál. Eddukvæði I: 322–355; trans. Andrew Orchard. 2011. 15–39. Helgakviða Hundingsbana II. Eddukvæði II: 270–283; trans. Andrew Orchard. 2011. 135–145. Historia Norwegiae. Ed. Gustav Storm. Monumenta Historica Norvegiæ. Kristiania, 1880. 69–124; trans. Devra Kunin (in A History of Norway and the Passion and Miracles of the Blessed Óláfr). London, 2001. 1–25. Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar. FSN III: 43–151; trans. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards as Hrolf Gautreksson. Edinburgh, 1972. Hrólfs saga kraka. FSN II: 1–93. Hymiskviða. Eddukvæði I: 399–407; trans. Andrew Orchard. 2011. 76–82. Jansson, Sven B. F. Runes in Sweden. Stockholm, 1987. Kelchner, Georgia D. Dreams in Old Norse Literature and their Affinities in Folklore. Cambridge, 1935. Knirk, James E. “Tor og Odin i runer på Bryggen i Bergen.” Arkeo 1 (1995): 27–30. Kopár, Lilla. Gods and Settlers. Turnhout, 2012. Kormákr Ǫgmundarson. Sigurðardrápa. Ed. Finnur Jónsson. Skj (1912–1915). I A: 79–80 and I B: 69–70. Kristjánsson, Jónas. Eddas and Sagas. Iceland’s Medieval Literature. Reykjavík, 1997. Kristni saga. Eds. Ólafur Halldórsson, Sigurgeir Steingrímsson, Ólafur Halldórsson and Peter Foote. Biskupa sögur I.2. ÍF 15.2 (2003): 1–48; trans. Siân Grønlie. London, 2006. 33–74. Landnámabók. Íslendingabók, Landnámabók. Ed. Jakob Benediktsson. ÍF 1 (1968): 29–397; trans. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards (as The Book of Settlements). 1972. Laxdæla saga. Laxdæla saga. Ed. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson. ÍF 5 (1934): 1–248; trans. Keneva Kunz. CSI V: 1–120. Ljósvetninga saga. Ljósvetninga saga. Ed. Björn Sigfússon. ÍF 10 (1940): 1–106; trans. Theodore M. Andersson and William Ian Miller. CSI IV: 193–255. Lokasenna. Eddukvæði I: 408–421; trans. Andrew Orchard. 2011. 82–96. Macrobius. Expositio in Somnium Scipionis. Trans. William Harris Stahl. New York, 1952. McKinnell, John. Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend. Cambridge, 2005. McKinnell, John, Klaus Düwel, and Rudolf Simek (eds). Runes, Magic and Religion. Vienna, 2004. Meulengracht-Sørensen, Preben. The Unmanly Man. Concepts of sexual defamation in early Northern society. The Viking Collection I. Odense, 1983. Moltke, Erik (ed.). Runes and their Origin: Denmark and Elsewhere. Copenhagen, 1985 [reprint: Oxford, 1999]. Njáls saga. Ed. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson. ÍF 12 (1954); trans. Robert Cook. CSI III: 1–220. Oddr Snorrason. Saga Óláfs Tryggvasonar. Ed. Ólafur Halldórsson. Færeyinga saga, Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar eptir Odd munk Snorrason. ÍF 25 (2006): 123–362. Orchard, Andrew (trans.). The Elder Edda: A Book of Viking Lore. London, 2011. Orkneyinga saga. Orkneyinga saga. Ed. Finnbogi Guðmundsson. ÍF 34 (1965): 1–300; trans. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards. London, 1978. Orms þáttr Stórólfssonar. Harðar saga. Eds. Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson. ÍF 13 (1991): 395–421; trans. Matthew Driscoll. CSI III: 455–470. Ribe excavations. https://projects.au.dk/northernemporium/ (11 March 2020).

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Schlosser, Horst Dieter (ed. and trans.). Althochdeutsche Literatur. Berlin, 1998. Sigrdrífumál. Eddukvæði II: 313–321; trans. Andrew Orchard. 2011. 37, 171. Sigvatr Þórðarson. Austrfararvísur. Ed. Robert D. Fulk. SP I (2012): 578–614. Skírnismál. Eddukvæði I: 380–388; trans. Andrew Orchard. 2011. 59–67. Snorri Sturluson. Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. Oxford, 1982. Snorri Sturluson. Heimskringla I–III. Ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. ÍF 26–28 (1941–1951); trans. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes. 3 vols. London, 2011–2015. Snorri Sturluson. Haralds saga harðráða. Ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. Heimskringla III (ÍF 28): 68–202; trans. Magnús Magnússon and Hermann Pálsson. Harmondsworth, 1966. Snorri Sturluson. Haralds saga ins hárfagra. Ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. Heimskringla I (ÍF 26): 94–149; trans. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes. 2011. 54–87. Snorri Sturluson. Hákonar saga góða. Ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. Heimskringla I (ÍF 26): 150–197; trans. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes. 2011. 88–119. Snorri Sturluson. Hálfdanar saga svarta. Ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. Heimskringla I (ÍF 26): 84–93; trans. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes. 2011. 48–53. Snorri Sturluson. Óláfs saga helga. Ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. Heimskringla II (ÍF 27); trans. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes. 2014. Snorri Sturluson. Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar. Ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. Heimskringla I (ÍF 26): 225–372; trans. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes. 2011. 137–233. Snorri Sturluson. Ynglinga saga. Ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. Heimskringla I (ÍF 26): 9–83; trans. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes. 2011. 6–47. Sturlunga saga I–II. Eds. Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason and Kristján Eldjárn. Reykjavík, 1946; trans. Julia H. McGrew and George R. Thomas. 2 vols. New York, 1970–1974. Suetonius. Lives of the Caesars, 2 vols. Ed. John C. Rolfe. London, 1913. Sverris saga. Ed. Þorleifur Hauksson. ÍF 30 (2007); trans. John Sephton. London, 1899. Tacitus. Germania. Ed. John George Clark Anderson. Oxford, 1938.; trans. James B. Rives. Oxford, 1999. Tolley, Clive. Shamanism in Norse myth and magic. 2 vols. Helsinki, 2009. Turville-Petre, Edward Oswald Gabriel. Myth and Religion of the North. London, 1964. Vafþrúðnismál. Eddukvæði I: 356–366; trans. Andrew Orchard. 2011. 39–49. Vatnsdæla saga. Ed. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson. ÍF 8 (1939): 1–131; trans. Andrew Wawn. CSI IV: 1–66. Víga-Glúms saga. Ed. Jónas Kristjánsson. Eyfirðinga sǫgur. ÍF 9 (1956): 1–98; trans. John McKinnell. CSI II: 267–314. Vǫluspá. Eddukvæði I: 290–321; trans. Andrew Orchard. 2011. 5–14. William of Poitiers. Gesta Guillelmi. Eds. Ralph Henry Carless Davis and Marjorie Chibnall. Oxford, 1998. Ældre Borgarthings Christenret. NGL I: 337–372. Ældre Eidisvathings-Christenret. NGL I: 373–406. Ældre Frostathings-lov. NGL I: 119–258. Ældre Gulathings-lov. NGL I: 1–118. Þáttr Þorvalds viðförla I. Biskupa sögur I.2. Eds. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson, Ólafur Halldórsson and Peter Foote. ÍF 15.2 (2003): 49–89; trans. John Porter. CSI V: 357–369. Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns. FSN III: 395–417; Gautreks saga and other medieval tales. trans. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards. London and New York, 1968. 121–140.

Leszek P. Słupecki

Prognostication in Pagan Beliefs among Slavs in the Middle Ages We find the first account of Slavic pagan beliefs (Słupecki 2020, in print) in a short text in Procopius’ of Cesarea’s History of Wars, which also includes the first information about the Slavic approach to prognostication. Procopius of Cesarea states, with regard to the Slavs: As for fate, they neither know it or nor do they in any wise admit that it has any power among humans but, whenever death stands close before them, either stricken with sickness or before a battle, they make a promise that, if they escape, they will immediately make a sacrifice to the god in return for their life. (Procopius III, 14; trans. Dewing)

The Slavs would fulfill thereafter everything they had promised in return for their survival. The statement about Slavic ignorance regarding fate does not sound very promising for our research but is not entirely accurate, at least in regard to prognostication, as Procopius in the same account indicates otherwise. Referring to “rivers, nymphs and some other spirits” that were worshiped by the Slavs, he relates how they not only “sacrifice to all these” but also “make their divination (μαντείας) in connection with these sacrifices.”

Definitions and Terminology Sources Generally speaking, however, our knowledge of Slavic prophecies and prognostication is very limited. Precisely like Slavic paganism (Gieysztor 2006; Słupecki 2013, 338–358) as a whole, the divinations that we can investigate thanks to written sources were recorded during the twilight of the pre-Christian beliefs of the Slavonic people in the tenth to twelfth centuries CE, and in more extensive detail in two separate regions exclusively: in Polabia and Pomerania on the one hand and in Rus’ on the other, what follows simply from the fact that only there written sources brings enough material for the topic. Furthermore, the records were mainly (with the exception of those from Rus’) composed in Latin by foreign authors, what provides us with information written, so to speak, “from outside” the Slavic culture and which includes in consequence very good, highly detailed descriptions of certain divinatory rituals (first of all, cleromancy combined with hippomancy) but says almost nothing about prophecies, which were very difficult to understand and describe without a deeper knowledge of that partichttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-004

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ular language and culture. Using Ciceros’ terminology, one may also claim that, from Slavic divinations, we learn something about artificiosa divinatio (mostly from Polabia and Pomerania in the tenth-twelfth centuries) but virtually nothing about divinatio naturalis, like prophecies and dreams. For Polabia and Pomerania, valuable source information may be drawn, first of all, from such an external view on the divinations performed there already in a relatively institutionalized way, in the form of the oracles that were connected to the most important pagan sanctuaries of these Western Slavs (Słupecki 1994). The relevant narratives one may find in accounts by Thietmar of Merseburg from the turn of the tenth to the eleventh century, in three St Otto’s Lives (Vita Prieflingensis, Helmold, and Ebo), by Adam of Bremen and Helmold of Bosau, and in Saxo Grammaticus (all sources originate from the twelfth century; see also ↗ Lehner, Prognostication in Latin Historiography). For Rus’, the most interesting information on prophecy and prognostication is provided by the Primary Chronicle (Povest’ vremennykh let), composed at the beginning of the twelfth century, where the accounts of divinations and a kind of prophecy are, however, strongly influenced by the Scandinavian and Finnish tradition with regard to both the narratives and also the level of belief itself. The next stage of development of sources concerning Slavic divination is the process of, so to speak, offering mythographical descriptions of the Slavic pagan past, although these add little with regard to our topic. Nevertheless, a few accounts of this nature include interesting material, like the legend from the Bohemian dynastic tradition that ascribed divinatory and magical powers to the Czech heroine, Lubuša. Such mythographical and demonological elements occur infrequently in accounts of Slavic pagan divination. The following written sources already belong to the common European wave of medieval and early modern superstition (including the picturesque Cracovian legend about a sorcerer and a university master, Twardowski), which is already another topic. In very rich form, however, Slavic prophecy and prognostication reemerge in the nineteenth century in the ethnographical material.

Research Perspective In listing the academic research on Slavic prophecy and prognostication (speaking only about works still actual today), one should begin with Szymon Matusiak’s article (in Polish) from 1911 concerning the problem of źreb (= Latin sors) within the context of cleromancy and hippomancy (see below), and two studies by Rolf Wilhelm Brednich (from 1964 and 1967), both in German, about the idea of destiny and the role of the fatal sisters in the folklore of eastern Europe, together with a couple of studies dealing with the problem of Slavic hippomancy and cleromancy, including some of my own articles (Słupecki 2006, 2008 and 2009) and a book-chapter (Słupecki 2017, 196–207). Two papers focus on a general approach to the problem of Slavic divination, one written in French half a century ago by Frans Vyncke (1968, 303–332), and my own short study from the beginning of the present millennium (Słupecki 2003, 73–80).



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Genuine Terminology in a Linguistic Perspective Despite Procopius’ skepticism, one should stress that a vital element regarding prophecy and prognostication in the Slavs’ pre-Christian beliefs is that the Slavs used the original Slavic vocabulary preserved in their languages, which are rich in genuine termini connected to destiny and divination. We should outline here at least some of the more important terms employed. To begin with destiny, the Polish term rok (Linde 1951, vol. 5, 62), which means today simply a “year” originally denoted a definite term, or the last and ultimate day of such definite space of time and, in this last sense, was used in Old Polish juridical terminology to denote definite times for court assemblies (roki sądowe). From the same root originates the term wyrok (“a sentence”). From rok, however, derived also urok (today “bewitching” or – strangely enough – “glamour”, originally simply “fate”) and prorok (“prophet”), denoting, literally speaking “someone who says what must come” (Matusiak 1911, 195–196; Brückner 1927, 438, 463, 565). In the languages of the Southern Slavs, like Serbo-Croatian, exist the term sreča, denoting “fortune”, “fate”, “doom”  – literally, “saying something that has already been predicated, decided and sentenced.” With regard to proverbs (where one may find plenty of petrified old ideas), one should quote here after Julian Krzyżanowski (1972, 599), Polish fatalist saying: “jak nie urok to sraczka” (actually quite obscene), originally meant: “if not fate, so doom” is stressing the inevitability of destiny. Turning to the techniques used for “artificial” divination, the tokens employed in cleromancy were called in Slavic źreb (see below) and wróg. The second term in Old Polish originally meant “fate” or “chance”, but denotes first of all tokens cast or taken in order to discover the will of destiny. This supports translations from Latin, where the Old Polish term wróg renders the Latin terms fatum and omen. Whether wróg came to mean “fate” because of bad, unfavorable luck (wróg means today, in Polish, simply “an enemy”), as Matusiak (1911, 200) argued, or whether the semantic development was in quite the opposite direction is impossible to say. The linguistic identity of the names denoting the divinatory token (wróg) used in lot-casting with the substantive denoting an enemy (wróg) is less accidental as Aleksander Brückner (1927, 632; cf. Boryś 2005, 710–711) supposed. From *vorgь, the Old Slavonic *vergti, “to cast” (cf. Polish wierzgać, “to fling out”) derives the substantive wróżba (“presage”, “augury”, “auspice”), wróżbita (masculine) and wróżka (feminine) meaning “fortune-teller”, “augur”, and “fairy”, and the verb wróżyć (‘forebode’). Another term denoting fortune-telling, recorded at a very early stage (see below), was gadanie, which even today preserves such a meaning in Russian, but in Polish has sunk to mean “twaddle, speaking about nothing.” Another term for “seer” derives from another, but equally interesting root. The substantive wiedźma means toady simply “a witch”, but derives from the root meaning “seeing” and “knowing”, which is included in its etymology (Boryś 2005, 692) and – consequently – foreseeing appears to be one of most important fields of activity among witches in Slavic folklore. Several genuine terms denoting those

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who practice sorcery and divination comes to the light e.  g. in fifteenth century Polish sermons (FHRS 1931, 17, 76). The substantives źreb and wróg convey the abstract meaning of “something what is already predestined, set out and inevitably marked” (Matusiak 1911, 199–200; Brückner 1927, 632) by the higher powers with nicks on the tokens for lot-casting. Because, through lot-casting (or lot-taking), people were assigned to be granted, in the real world, possesion of – exempli gratia – part of a tract of land or, in the world of myth and belief, good or bad luck, the subsequent notions for destiny were szczęście and dola, both denoting a part of something that comes to someone as his share (Boryś 2005, 118 and 598), in the sense of a good, valuable share (cf. negative opposite notions of nie-dola and nie-szczęście, built of the same substantives with the contradictive prefix “nie-”). In East- and South-Slavic folklore, at least, Dola was personified as a goddess or rather a kind of demon of destiny (Gieysztor 2006, 206–207). The term los (“destiny”, “fate”), the dominant term in Polish today for denoting “fate”, is clearly a loan word from High-Middle-German (Borys 2005, 290). Russian language uses even today the genuine terms sud’ba (“something that was sentenced”) and over mentioned dola (present still in Polish but considered somewhat of an archaism).

Slavic Gods and Demons of Destiny Goddesses, Gods and Demons of Fate It is not easy to establish who, in Slavic belief (or rather beliefs), was responsible for destiny and divination. Accounts describing the oracles within the main sanctuaries of the Polabian and Pomeranian Slavs and the gods worshiped there connect divination with questions concerning the success of planned military expeditions and future welfare (especially related to good and bad harvests). This suggests that the shape of destiny was regarded as lying in the hands of the (almost exclusively male) gods who were worshiped at these shrines, but there are sufficient traces to allow us to conclude that, among the Slavs, as among other peoples of the past, the power over destiny lay in the hands of supernatural female goddesses, comparable to the Roman Parcae or Old Norse Norns (Brednich 1964, 172–197; Brednich 1967). Such supernatural beings, appearing as a numerous but slightly anonymous group, bearing simply a collective name can (again, as in other mythologies) sometimes be reduced to three, slightly more personified characters. The first trace of their existence occurs in Procopius of Cesarea’s account, where he mentions some “nymphs” (and other demons) in connection to Slavic divination. Unfortunately, after this account from the sixth century, our sources remain silent on this topic for a long time, until some Roshanitse appear in late medieval old-Russian sources, who emerge also in South Slavic folklore as rojenice and other female demons like sudenice (“sentencing” fate) from Bulgaria,



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Serbia and Croatia, and sudički from Bohemia, and as similar female demons in the folklore across all Slavic lands. It was believed that such females help people at their birth and shape at that moment their destiny, take care of them during their lifetime and finally remove them from this world at the appropriate time, which has been long predestined. In Rus’, the cult of Roshanitse was still alive in folk beliefs of the late Middle Ages when the Orthodox Church was seeking to suppress such rituals, which means that we have some source accounts in which – inter alia – roshanitshnaia trapesa (“a table for Roshanitse”) is mentioned, on which were laid bread, cheese, honey and grout, as offerings for Roshanitse and the god Rod (sources: Mansikka 1922, 142–159, 164–165, 246–247, 250, 305–307; cf. Brednich 1964, 174). A very slight trace of such kind of demons is also found in the late-medieval Polish accounts (Bracha 2001, 319). Contrary to typical pagan goddesses of destiny, the East Slavic Roshanitse appear in the company of the masculine god Rod. The collective name for Roshanitse (and the name of the god Rod) connects all of these characters with the notion of birth (from roditi – “giving birth”; cf. also: ród – “a kin”) and so, in consequence, with death and destiny (Gieysztor 2006, 204–207). It remains doubtful, however, that the god Rod (masculine) is the same character as Dola (feminine). Nevertheless, Rod, with his Roshanitse, appears to be a relatively important god rather like a demon. The hypothesis of the late Russian scholar, Rybakov (1987, 239–246), who posited that Rod may have been the most important god of the Rus’ prior to the development of the cult of the god Perun – based as it is on the uncritical use of an account from Slovo sviatovo Grigoria (Mansikka 1922, 306) – is, however, unconvincing. Nevertheless, Rod acts in Russian Slavonic paganism as a god who creates humankind, or at least as a character who grants people fertility, based on the Old Russian text, O vdunovenii dukha v tshelovieka (Mansikka 1922, 163–165). It claims, in opposition to the opinion of the pagans, that the Christian God is the only creator of everything and not some “Rod who is sitting in the air and throwing clods of earth down, from which children are born.” In the Western Slavic mythographical tradition, an echo of Roshanitse or similar demons features in an early twelfth century account by Cosmas Pragensis (Chronica Boemorum I, eds. Bretholz and Weinberger, 4–9) concerning Kazi, Tetka and Lubuša, the daughters of Krok (Croccus), legendary forefather of the Royal dynasty of Přemyslids. Kazi was described as a herbalist and witch doctor, Tetka as a pagan priestess who taught people about the heathen cult and Lubuša (the youngest) as the best one who, unfortunately, “was a sibyl” (fuit phitonissa). Her ability to foresee the future helped her, however when she – ruling already in the country as a kind of judge (or rather a duke-arbiter) – decided to take a ploughman called Přemysl as her husband and a true lord for the Czech people, finding him thanks to her second sight ability. In this way, the Přemyslids dynasty was established, according to the Czech tradition. This may pre-date the Cosmas account because already, in another Latin source probably from the late tenth century called Kristiánova legenda (Strzelczyk 1998, 120–124; Vyncke 1968, 319), there appears an anonymous phitonissa who, in a similar but shorter

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story, advised the Czech people through auguries to build the city of Prague where Přemysl was elected to rule, taking as his wife “the aforementioned virgin fortuneteller” (iuncta […] in matrimonio supramemorata phitonissa virgine). Both sources are already mythographical in nature, but reflect the genuine Slavic tradition regarding the very ancient rituals related to the enthronement of rulers (Słupecki 1997, 35–41).

Gods and Prophecies To what degree were the Slavic gods able to influence destiny? Let us begin with Helmold of Bosau’s general description of the pagan religion (ydolorum cultura) of Polabian Slavs, that was re-born after the pagan uprising (Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum I, 52). Mentioning first three names of gods (Prove, Siva and Radigast), the canon of Bosau goes on to describe their priests (his dicati erant flamines) together with their “numerous kinds of rituals” (et sacrificiorum libamenta multiplexque religionis cultus). The priest should first announce, based on the result of lot-casting, the proper time for ceremonies (solempnitates diis dicandas sacerdos iuxta sortium nutum denuntiat). Once the people have gathered, they sacrifice (mactant) to the gods offerings (hostias) of cattle, sheep and sometimes human Christians (de bobus, ovibus, plerique etiam de hominibus Christianis) because, as Helmold stresses, “they please their gods with blood of those Christians” (quorum sanguine deos suos oblectari iactitans) and “when the priest sacrifices the victim, he drinks of its blood in order to be more efficient at understanding oracles” (post cesam hostiam sacerdos de cruore libat, ut sit efficacior oraculis capescendis). What Helmold’s comment stresses is that, in the opinion of many, the drinking of the sacrificial blood serves to summon up demons (what remains unclear is whether this reflects the opinion of many pagan Slavs or rather that of Christian clerics). Having completed the offerings according to custom (iuxta morum), the people began feasting and merrymaking, and – by this possibility – through drinking from the goblet (patera) circulating among them, they “blessed it, or rather cursed, in the name of gods” (sub nomine deorum), both good and bad gods, believing “that all good fortune is dispensed from a good god, and that bad luck allows the bad one” (omnem proseram fortunam a bono deo, adversam a malo dirigi profitentes). The bad god was named, according to Helmold, Diabol sive Zcerneboch id est nigrum deum (“The Devil i.  e. Zcerneboch, the black god”). The major among the Slavic supernatural powers (numina), in Helmold’s estimation, was however “Svantevit, the god of the Rugian country” (Zvanthevith deus terrae Rugianorum) who was not only the most important (the Slavs in his opinion “other [gods] estimate to be a kind of half-god”, ceteros quasi semideos estimabat) but was also as “the most effective in prophecies” (efficacior in responsibus). Yet Saxo Grammaticus has more to say about the Svantevit cult and oracle (see below). In Helmold’s account, one may distinguish various strata. On the level of the cult’s geography, Helmold’s knowledge about the cult and oracle of Svantevit and his



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reference to three far more enigmatic gods are notable. This is sufficient to attest that Prove is a god of Wagria, despite the unclear meaning of his name. Riedegost should be rather in his place in the temple in Riedegost-Rethra, while Siva (god or goddess?) remains a total enigma. On the level of the content of the ritual, the performance of lot-casting is confirmed. The description of the priest ritually drinking the blood of the victims to gain oracular inspiration sounds like a horror story but finds a parallel in a letter of the Saxon bishops from 1108 calling for a crusade against the pagan Slavs – which may constitute crusade propaganda. Human blood within Slavic pagan ritual is mentioned in one further source only (written about the same time and in the same milieu), namely, in a letter by Bishop Adelgot, who wrote about bowls of the blood of human victims being offered to (the entirely enigmatic) Slavic god, Pripegala (Labuda 1975, 234–236; Strzelczyk 2001, 66). Contemporary Scandinavian parallels are available (e.  g. in Eyrbyggja saga 4, and Hakonar saga goða 14, cf. Słupecki 2009, 32–35; Słupecki 2010, 356–357; ↗ McKinnell, Pagan Traditions in Germanic Languages). What remains as credible in Helmold’s account are the prophecies (oracula, responsa) spoken by the Slavic priests. They probably drink by this possibility in a normal way, like other people, rather some alcohol (see below). This bring us to the last stratum: the reference to the good and bad fortune granted by the good and bad gods of the Slavs, which information was widely discussed in the research on Slavic religion as evidence for the existence of an element of dualism within Slavic belief (obvious in folklore and possible but more doubtful in the early Middle Ages prior to Christianization; cf. Tomicki 1976, 47–66; Gieysztor 2006, 160–161). The evidently Christian name “Diabol” (from Latin, originally Greek, diabolus) is in Polabian heathenism, unsurprisingly, re-born after an episode of Christianization and, on this point also, Helmold’s information appears relatively credible. His Slavic name, Zcerneboch, finds some echoes in the Knytlinga saga (ch. 122), which describes among the idols worshiped on Rügen certain Tjarnaglofi (“Black-heads”). The efforts to detect, within Slavic religion, a “white” counterpart to “black” Zcerneboch, however, appear ungrounded. In Rus’, it is impossible to demonstrate by name, apart from Rod who was connected to Roshanitse, any other god who was responsible for prophecies and prognostication. In Slovo o polku Igorievie, a legendary Russian bard, Bojan, bears the epitheton vieshtshiy (“seer”) and is described as the “grandson of Veles,” who was the Old Russian god of magic, what may suggest that Veles and his grandson were linked to oracles. Unfortunately, Slovo o polku Igorievie, contrary to the assumptions made by the old scholarship, is probably a very late source, standing closer to ethnographic records than to medieval sources (although not simply a fake, as some scholars assume, but rather an old bylina recorded very early by the eighteenth century, edited and eventually re-shaped at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and wrongly considered to be an Old-Russian medieval source).

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Oracles in West Slavic Paganism I understand an oracle to be institutionalized divination with its proper place in the main sanctuaries of the relevant deities within organized communities (tribes, cities, kingdoms), performed at fixed time by professionals (priests, prophets and diviners, but sometimes also leaders like kings or chieftains). In Polabia and Pomerania, the well-known pagan gods were – apart from Svantevit, who was worshiped in the temple in Arcona on Rügen – Svarozic, who was revered in the temple in Riedegost/ Rethra, and Triglav, who was venerated in the temple in Szczecin. The three respective shrines of these three aforementioned gods hosted oracles, where cleromancy and hippomancy were employed when the priests attempted to foresee the success of the military expeditions of relevant communities. In Arcona (and in another indefinite place among the Lutitians, possibly in Riedegost), priests also performed divinations based on alcohol (pure vine and hydromel), that was kept in god’s horn, to predict future harvests. All of these constitute, however, “artificial” divination, which seems to be, especially when related to war, the proper domain of masculine gods. Accounts of the divinations that took place at these three shrines provide the majority of the source material about Slavic divination that we possess. In Arcona was practiced also the oracle concerning future harvests, which was consulted in the autumn, after the yield and in connection to the ceremony of thanksgiving for the crops (Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum XIV, 39, 4). The oracle was questioned about the success of military campaigns in Riedegost and Szczecin during spring, before the expeditions began but, after successfully returning to Riedegost, it was decided again per sortes ac per equum (“by lots and by the horse”), what kind of offerings should be made to the gods in gratitude for the victory (Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon VI, 25). Private divinations were performed at those shrines as well. According to Adam of Bremen (Adam of Bremen, Gesta  II, 21), the entrance to the temple-stronghold in Rethra (which Thietmar earlier called “Riedegost”) was open only to those who went there to request auguries (responsa petentibus). Saxo Grammaticus (Gesta Danorum XIV, 39, 11) mentions also some private divinations that were clearly practiced in the home by women.

Divinations about Future Crops from Wine and Hydromel in God’s Drinking Horn The same topics enquired about during in divinations performed at the main sanctuaries of the Western Slavs are also to be found in an account by Thietmar of Merseburg of the holy spring of Glomac in the land of Daleminci-Glomaci. It provides information about a sanctuary in the world of nature, rather than a temple, and the divinations are not mentioned explicitly, but the account does refer to a phenomenon that was



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interpreted as ominous. Thietmar explains that the land of Glomaci was so named because of some: […] spring situated not more than two miles from the Elbe. Its waters create a large morass, on which, the people from the area and witnesses claim, strange events occur. As long as the natives enjoy the blessing of peace and the soil is not short of harvest, the morass is covered with wheat, oats and acorns, and gives joy to the neighbors who crowd around it. Whenever war rages, blood and ash inevitably mark the future. Each inhabitant reveres and respects that spring more than any church, although what he can expect from it remains very uncertain. (Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon I, 3)

One may assume (Słupecki 1994, 164–165; Banaszkiewicz 2001, 408, 413) that this description of such miraculous phenomena may echo true offerings of trifunctional agricultural nature (wheat, oats and acorns offered as food for people, horses and pigs), and also of purely military character (the blood of victims and ashes). At the same time, it nevertheless conveys an oracular flavor. Regarding prosperity, one should note that, in Slavic (and not only Slavic) beliefs, gods were granting people good harvests (Herbord, Dialogus III, 4; Ebo, Vita Sancti Ottonis III, 8) or punishing them with bad ones (Modzelewski 2004, 456–457). The (Western) Slavs attempted to predict harvests by divination from the stand of alcohol that was kept in a horn held in the hands of the idol of the god (or goddess?). As the first such information recorded (following a lost German source), William of Malmesbury mentions some Vindelici et Leutici, what means simply Lutitians (“Vindelici” is here a corrupted record of the name “Vinidi,” that was frequently used in German sources to refer to Western Slavs – Wenden, and not the name of people dwelling in ancient times by Augusta Vindelicorum, today Augsburg, cf. Słupecki and Zaroff 1999, 15). William of Malmesbury writes that they: […] worship Fortune and, placing her idol in the most prominent position, they placed a horn in her right hand and filled it with the beverage, made of honey and water, which we call by the Greek term, hydromel […]. Wherefore, on the last day of November, sitting around in a circle, they all taste it and, if they find the horn full, they applaud with loud clamoring because, in the ensuing year, plenty with her brimming horn will fulfill their wishes in all matters; but, if it be otherwise, they lament. (William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum Anglorum II, 12)

Williams of Malmesbury’s description sounds like a poorly-constructed extract from an account of Saxo Grammaticus about the identical ritual followed in Arcona but, in fact, William write his text half a century earlier, using a German source for his information (or, rather, a lost written text as an oral relation). At the same time, Saxo’s account shows no trace of having used William’s text (or source), which proves that we have two independent sources describing a similar ritual. What William described was happening, I assume (contrary to Roman Zaroff; see Słupecki and Zaroff 1999), in the main Lutitian temple in Riedegost, which still existed at the time of German Emperor Henry III (d. 1056). We know from Thietmar’s account (Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon VI, 23–25) that the temple held an oracle but the German chronicler described

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its divinatory rituals of lot-casting and horse-divination alone. This may have been because the oracle from hydromel in the horn was performed only once a year, in the autumn, while the German envoys, who were probably Thietmar’s informants, may have visited Riedegost at another time, as I assume in spring 1003 (Słupecki 2008, 242). In William’s description only the name of the deity is problematic. On may speculate that William, like many other authors before and after him, replaced a strange barbarian name that he found in the text lost to us with a proper classical equivalent. The choice of “Fortuna” here is logical, as she was responsible for fortune, fate and providing oracles but the problem is that Fortuna is female while the god responsible for the same kind of oracle in Arcona, Svantevit, is clearly male. On the other hand, we know very little about Lutitian goddesses, but at least one anonymous goddess is attested relatively strongly in Thietmar’s Chronicle (Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon VII, 64) so it remains uncertain whom, in the Lutitian pantheon, was responsible for divinations about future harvests: an anonymous Goddess or God and then eventually Svarozic (Słupecki and Zaroff 1999, 16–17). In the description in Saxo Gramaticus (Gesta Danorum XIV, 39, 3–7) of the temple in Arcona (Słupecki 1994, 24–50) includes a far more extensive description of divination from an alcoholic beverage (in this case, pure wine, merum) kept in the horn but, in Saxo’s account, only one of the three public oracular ceremonies are described in detail. After describing the temple building (although not in complete detail), Saxo relates how a huge wooden idol of Svantevit, with four heads, stands in the inner “chapel” of the shrine, to which only the priest had access (Gieysztor 1984, 262), and even he only in a limited sense, as dictated by the ritual. The idol is described as follows: In his right hand, he held a horn (cornu) made of various metals, which was annually filled with wine (mero) by a priest experienced in sacrifices, who could draw conclusions about the harvest for the following year from the state of the liquid. (Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum XIV, 39, 4)

The important detail is here the alcoholic beverage. In William’s account, this was hydromel (alcohol made of honey and water), well known in the Indo-European tradition as a ritual and festive drink, called in Slavic miód, in Old Norse mjöðr, in Latin medus, in Greek μέθυ, and so on, up to Old Hindu mádhu (de Vries 1962, 390). The use of wine is more astonishing but not impossible. The important detail is, however, the unusual name that Saxo chose, as he did not use the common substantive vinum but the relatively more sophisticated term, merum, which means “pure wine without water,” alcohol that was used in pagan rituals in ancient times precisely in libations to gods. Saxo did so for two possible reasons: because he knew that the Slavs in Arcona used wine in the Svantevit oracle in precisely the same way (we should remember that Saxo’s informants were Danish clerics, including his protector, Bishop Absalon, and aristocrats who had personally participated in the destruction of the shrine in Arcona) and/or because he wished to avoid any association with the ritual use of wine in the



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Christian holy service, where it is mixed with water (and in fact only such a liquid should we name wine). As Saxo stresses, the ritual was celebrated once a year, after the harvest, and the oracle formed part of the ceremony of thanksgiving for the crops (comparable to the Polish dożynki feast, cultivated in folklore up to the present day). At that time, the people gathered in front of the temple. On the eve of the celebration, the priest: […] meticulously cleaned the chapel (sacellum), to which only he himself had access, with a brush. He was careful not to breathe inside the temple. Whenever he had to breathe in or out, he went to the door, apparently to avoid defiling the divine presence with the breath of a mortal. The next day, while the people kept watch outside the door, he took the cup (poculum) from the idol and carefully examined it. If any of the given liqour had disappeared, he thought that this meant a dearth in the following year. Noting this, he would order the present yield to be kept for the future. If he saw no lessening of its usual fullness, he would predict a good season. Depending on this auspice (auspicium), he warned the people to use this year’s harvest either sparingly or liberally, then he poured out the old wine (merum) at the feet of the image (ad pedes simulacri) as an offering (libamenti nomine), and filled the empty cup (vacuefactum poculum) with fresh liquor. Enacting a drinking ceremony, he venerated the statue with a toast, and supplicated him in solemn words for an increase in wealth and victories for himself, the fatherland and its citizens. Having done this, he hastily put the cup to his mouth and emptied it excessively quickly, in a single draught and, replacing it in the right hand of the statue, refilled it with wine (merum). (Saxo Gramaticus, Gesta Danorum XIV, 39, 5–6; trans. Słupecki 1994, 28)

The ritual appears similar to that described by William but with several small, albeit important, differences. The first difference, that has already been mentioned, was the use of another ritual drink, having however absolutely the same meaning. More important is the exclusive nature of the ceremony. In William’s account, the whole community, sitting around the idol, drank of the hydromel in the horn while, in Saxo, only the priest does so, but obviously in public (we know about some veils covering idols in West Slavic shrines including Arcona but people were allowed to view statues from outside, when the shrine was opened and the veils turn off on special occasions). Even the priest should behave there in a highly restricted manner, as prescribed by the ritual, what on may see in description of him cleaning the “chapel” (sacellum, here probably denoting the “sanctissimum”) quoted above. The most intriguing factor is, however, the male sex of the god. The oracle forms an integral part of the thanksgiving ceremony. Its final ritual includes also some element of wish and desire, which is close to magic and prognostication. The next ritual follows immediately after the oracle: Another offering was a round cake (placenta), flavored with hydromel (mulso confecta), which was almost as tall as a person. The priest placed it between himself and the people and, looking at the Rugians, would ask if they could see him. If they replied that they did, he wished that they would be unable to see him after the following year. In that way, he did not wish for himself or the people any doom (fatum) but more abundant harvests (messis incrementa) in the future. Then, on behalf of the idol (sub simulacri nomine), he saluted the attendant crowd (presentam turbam), reminding (hortatus) them to continue worshiping the deity (numinis venerationem) by offering rituals (sacrificii ritu) and promising them victory on land and sea as a certain reward for their

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worship (certissimum cultus premium). Having done this, the priest and the people spent the rest of the day enjoying luxurious banquets, using the offerings for feast and gluttony […]. (Saxo Gramaticus, Gesta Danorum XIV, 39, 5–6; trans. Słupecki 1994, 28–29)

Two accounts from Polabia about the same oracle, connected to the notions of abundance and future harvest, allow us to assume that this ritual was known throughout Polabia. It might be argued that it developed from certain agrarian rituals, known more broadly within Slavic paganism since, for instance, in ceremonies and myths linked to the ruling dynasties of Czechia, Poland and Carinthia, several motifs of this nature come to light, such as, for instance, the appointment of the ploughman Přemysl as ruler of the Czech people, mentioned above. The image of a figure holding a drinking horn is also visible on a limestone statue from Zbrutsh River, the most impressive Slavic pagan sculpture we know.

Fig. 1: Sculpture of Sviatovid from Zbrutsh, Poland ­(Archeological Museum of Kraków; date: saec. X?). Photo credits: Małpolska Institute of Culture.



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What is puzzling here is the link between these divine figures bearing the “horn of abundance” with a masculine deity rather than the more common motive of “ladies with a cup” (Enright 1996), as the powers ruling the domain of abundance, fertility, destiny and divination, well-known from other mythologies, but there also in the shatten appear masculine characters involved, at least to some extent, in those realms. It seems that, in West Slavic belief, such masculine figures became, at least in certain places like Arcona, fully dominant.

Cleromancy and Hippomancy: Divination about Success in Military Campaigns To begin with a reference with an almost mythical flavor, in Thietmar’s extensive account about the temple in Riedegost, the passage about divinations end with information about an ominous animal known there (testatur), thanks to “ancient superstition” (antiquitas error): […] whenever a calamity of long civil war hangs over them, a huge boar with foam on its tusks emerges from the aforementioned lake [on which shore the shrine of Riedegost stands, in a kind of holy grove] and, in front of everybody, wallows in a puddle with great satisfaction, causing terrible tremors. (Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon VI, 24)

This description, clearly written before 1018 (when Thietmar died) has some prophetic value indeed, as the civil war among the Lutitian tribes began some half century later, in 1057–1059 (Modzelewski 2004, 355), which led to their decline and subsequent fall, thereby ending the existence of the temple. In the temple in Riedegost, described already in the very early eleventh century, and the later portrayed shrines in Szczecin and Arcona, all military affairs, political matters and offerings due to the gods in gratitude for victories were decided per sortes ac per equum – “by lots and by the horse” (Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon VI, 25). Before discussing both of these rituals in detail, it is important to offer a linguistic comment. A special relationship between divination by lots and hippomancy is confirmed by the history of the Slavic word źreb, which shares the same meaning as Latin sors, but denotes something else in addition. The word refers to: 1 – a fragment of the community’s land, granted to an individual owner (or user) by drawing lots (compare here Latin sors and its meaning in the medieval rural economy); 2 – a token used in lot-casting, for instance for land portioning. Furthermore, however, the word źrebię/ źrebiec exists in Polish, designating a foal, undoubtedly a diminutive form of the lost substantive *źreb, meaning “horse”. It also appears that, at some point, horses and tokens for lot-casting were named using the same term. One may assume that the extension of the semantic field of the substantive źreb far beyond its original meaning may originate from the role of horses in divinatory rituals involving, at the same time,

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lot-casting (Matusiak 1911, 193–241; Słupecki 2009, 881; Słupecki 2017, 205–206). One should remember here that all names for “horse” that are in use in Slavic languages today are borrowed from foreign tongues, and that the original Indo-European name for this animal vanished – probably because of some taboo.

Cleromancy Drawing (or casting) lots, among Slavs, as in other cultures (Słupecki 2009, 876; Słupecki 2017, 143–176), formed the initial part of a longer oracular procedure (cf. Tacitus, Germania, 10), and its result required confirmation through other methods of divination, like hippomancy and ornitomancy. Lots were particularly associated with war affairs and decisions regarding alliances, the initiation and direction of military campaigns, the acceptance or avoidance of battles, sacrifices prior to expeditions and the thanksgiving offerings due to the gods afterwards. Our first reference to Slavic cleromancy dates back to the ninth century, in an apology of the Slavic Alfabeth of Khrabr Charnoresiets (Kujev 1967, 188; cf. Słupecki 2009, 878). Stressing the fact that, prior to conversion and Cyril and Methodius’ mission, pagan Slavs did not have books (what means writings and alfabeth), he nevertheless stated that they “count (chtiakhu) and foretell (gadakhu) with marks and nicks (tshertami i rezami).” We see the term gadanie (“forecast, fortunetelling”) here for the first time, and the best material on which one can mark something in that way is, of course, wooden tokens for lot-casting or lot-drawing (Słupecki 2017, 166–167). The material shape of the lots in our sources related to the Slavs is referred to in detail only in the description of Arcona by Saxo Grammaticus (Gesta Danorum, XIV, 39, 11, eds. Olrik and Raeder, 467), who wrote that “they were also not ignorant about using lots (nec sortium usus ignotus), as they threw three pieces of wood (tribus ligni particulis), white (albis) on one side and black (nigris) on the other, all together as lots (in gremium sortium loco coniectis), with the white meaning success and with the dark the opposite” (candidis prospera, furvis adversa signabant). For comparison, one should recall the similar descriptions in Tacitus (Germania  10), Lex Frisonum (14, 1), and in Old Norse sources (Słupecki 2017, 150–157, 195–206), but also a late (seventeenth century), detailed account of Pretorius concerning Baltic people, which contains several astonishingly archaic elements. Pretorius described how a Lithuanian fortune-teller cast three small pieces of cut twig (of artemisia arbotanum L.), as long as one part of the finger and, depending on how they fell, with either the good or bad side upward, gave her answers (Mierzyński 1896, 68). To create a good and bad side for the token, it is sufficient to cut the twig down the middle, so that the flat side, without any bark, can represent the white and the rounded side, with the bark, can represent the dark. Strangely enough, a very similar ritual was used by King Władysław Jagiełło, who was born a pagan prince of Lithuanian stock and, following his baptism, become a fifteenth-century Polish king and the



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founding father of the Jagielonian dynasty. According to a funeral panegyric to him, written by future Archbishop Gregory of Sanok (Długosz XI, 1877, 531), he adopted the following custom: as soon as he rose from his bed each morning, he would “break and cast twigs or a cane” (virgae et calami iacendo frusta). Although the ensuing verses contain an invocation to Jesus Christ in an attempt to justify this royal superstition, the link to the aforementioned practice of cleromantic ritual is clear.

Hippomancy. Per sortes ac per equum The (Western) Slavs bred horses in their major sanctuaries in Riedegost (Polish Radogoszcz, in German Rethra: Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon VI, 24; Adam of Bremen, Gesta II, 21/18), Szczecin (German Stettin: Vita Prieflingensis II, 11, ed. Wikarjak and Liman, 42–43, and Herbord, Dialogus II, 32–33, eds. Wikarjak and Liman, 123–126) and Arcona (Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum XIV, 39, 9–10, eds. Olrik and Raeder, 465–467; cf. Słupecki 1994, 24–132; Modzelewski 2004, 353–365 and 456–457; Słupecki 2006; Słupecki 2008, 241–256; Słupecki 2009, 876–883; Słupecki 2017, 196– 207). At these shrines, horses were used in divination to make decisions regarding military campaigns. In Riedegost, the ritual began by digging, in the meadow inside the temple stronghold, a small hole in the ground to receive the tokens for the lot-casting from the earth, hidden there below the sod. This hole, in my opinion, may have corresponded to the ancient Roman mundus and the hole in the Delphic oracle that gave Pythia inspiration. In Riedegost, the hole was located in a similar way to a mundus, at a point marking the mythical center of the community and granting, like the hole at Delphi, access to the subterranean powers. The act of digging the hole was of major importance. Thietmar relates how the priests, murmuring most probably some sacral texts, terram cum tremore infodiunt (“dug into the ground in great fear”), which suggests that this was a kind of misterium tremendum. In this way, the chtonic powers, unlike the igneous and solar Svarozic with his white horse, were consulted first. The chtonic deity could be interpreted as the pan-Slavic god Weles (so Modzelewski 2004, 390) or the aforementioned anonymous goddess of Lutitians, appearing on their war standards (Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, VII, 64) that were kept in the temple in Riedegost (Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon VI, 23). Following the lot-casting, the lots were replaced in the hole and covered over with the sod again, clearly to be used again in future ceremonies. Then, the saddled horse was used, as the analogies with Szczecin and Arcona prove, (where it is explicitly stated) that the horse was a god’s horse, and the place on the saddle was reserved for him. Here, one may see a difference from Germanic hippomancy where the horses drag a holy cart (Tacitus, Germania 10), and also a similarity, as in the case of both the holy cart of the Germans and the Slavic saddle, the place on it was reserved for the gods only. Nevertheless, the Germans used, in hippomancy, an archaic cart (originating from the age of Indo-European ridvans), while the Slavs

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used the modern (and possibly originally nomadic) saddle. In Arcona, as explicitely stated by Saxo Grammaticus (Gesta Danorum XIV, 39, 9, eds. Olrik and Raeder, 466), the horse was white (flamines, peculiarem albi coloris equum posidebat) and it was ­forbidden to tear hair from its mane or tail (cuius iubae et caudae pilos convellere nefarium ducebat). The horse was also probably white in Riedegost, in reference to the nature of the solar god Svarozic, who was his owner, and the “solar” or at least “shining” etymology of his name (Gieysztor 2006, 167–178). In Szczecin, the horse was clearly black (nigri coloris), tall and fat (mire magnitudinis et pinguem). It was forbidden to ride a sacred horse. In Szczecin, Herbord states this directly: […] all year long, the horse did nothing (toto anni tempore vacabat) and was so holy (tantaeque fuit sanctitatis) that nobody was worthy to mount it (nullum dignaretur sessorem) but it had one of the four priests as its custodian (habuitque unum de quatuor sacrdotibus templorum custodem diligentissimum). (Herbord, Dialogus II, 33)

In Arcona (Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum XIV, 39, 9, eds. Olrik and Raeder, 466), Svantevits’ horse could be fed and ridden only by the priest (soli sacerdoti pascendi et insidendique ius erat) and only in order to keep the animal in good condition for its divine owner. It was believed that Svantevit (Suantovitus) rode this horse while fighting the enemies of his sanctity (adversus sacrorum suorum hostes), as was proved by the fact that it was often found to be muddy in the morning, even though it had spent all night in the stable. Also in Riedegost, it was forbidden to ride the sacred horse. Thietmar makes no reference to this but Annales Augustiani (1068), reporting the end of the temple in Riedegost (called “Reda” in the annals), stated that “Burchardt, Bishop of Halberstadt, invaded, destroyed and burnt the province of the Lutitians. He captured the horse which was worshiped as a god in Reda and returned to Saxony riding it.” The emphasis placed on the fact that the bishop returned riding the sacred horse stresses the breaking of the taboo (Słupecki 1994, 56). The horse oracle was performed in Riedegost on a meadow in front of the temple, and consisted of walking over spears stuck crosswise in (or laid on) the ground. In Riedegost, two spears were stuck crosswise into the ground; in Szczecin, nine were laid on the ground (Herbord, Dialogus II, 33); in Arcona, three rows of spears were stuck crosswise into the ground (Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum XIV, 39, 9, eds. Olrik and Raeder, 466–467). Good or ill fortune was predicted depending on whether the horse stopped over the spears with its right or left leg (or whether it touched them with its hoof or not). Among the Balts in Livonia, the late medieval Chronicus Livonicum Vetus (I, 10, ed. Hansen, 52–54) describes how such a horse divination saved the life of a certain missionary. In that case, only one spear was laid on the ground and the saddleless horse (according to the following description, riding on the horse’s back was reserved for divine powers) and the pagans touch the animal walked in such a way that forced them to show mercy toward the cleric because Christ mounted the horse, guiding it invisibly. The format of this ceremony was, nevertheless, identical to



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the Slavonic ritual. Similar divinations feature also in ethnographic records related to Eastern Slavs (Moszyński 1967, 2/1, 411–412). It is worth quoting from the oldest record here. Thietmar, having described the temple stronghold and the temple building with the idols (of whom he names only Svarozic – Zuarasici) and war standards kept inside it, went on to describe the cult: The natives have instituted priests (ministri) to take care of the temple with due solicitude. When they gathered there to make offerings to idols or pacify their anger (immolare seu iram eorundem placare), only they themselves sit down while the others have to stand. Murmuring secretly, they dig with fear into the ground in turns, in order to become certain about doubtful matters through the lots cast there (sortibus emissis). Having finished, they covered them with green sod (cespite viridi) and took the horse (equum) which they have as the biggest of all (maximus inter alios) and venerate as sacred (ut sacer ab hiis veneratur), and led it with great reverence over two spears fixed in the ground with heads and puted in that way crosswise (super fixam in terram duarum cuspides hatilium inter se transmissarum), and walking over the lots which they asked first (premissis sortibus exploravere prius), using it like something divine (per hunc quasi divinum) to make once again auguries (denuo auguriantur). If both actions produced the same result (omen), they acted in accordance with this but, if not, the people sadly abandoned the enterprise completely (a tristibus populis hoc prorsus omittitur). (Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon VI, 23–25)

Other records present descriptions of the same ritual, performed with little variation, in two further shrines, in Szczecin and Arcona, which provide sufficient material for further speculation about particular details. The most interesting problem concerning West Slavic hippomancy is, however, the fact that, in their pre-Christian religion, we find the best and most detailed records about horse divinations that we possess for the whole of pagan Europe. From the other hand, the written sources concerning the Slavs record utterly nothing about horse offerings! In the history of the Old Norse ritual, the situation is almost completely the reverse (Słupecki 2009, 876–883; Słupecki 2017, 177–210). Coming back to the Slavs, only Cosmas Pragensis (Chronica Boemorum  I, 11) relates a story about something similar to horse offering but the animal that the Czech army sacrificed at the beginning of a military expedition was, in fact, a donkey, what sounds like an effort to turn a genuine pagan ritual (but Slavic or German?) into a mockery about pagans. Despite investigations into many cultures (Mayer 1950; Słupecki 2009), little is known about horse divination. Apart from Tacitus’ aforementioned account of the Germans, the best narrative from outside the Slavonic culture, which sounds similar to the divinations described above and includes also an element of offering is  – strangely enough – the story of Polybius (Historiae XII, 4b, ed. Paton, 316–319) about the Romans who, at the start of a war or when deciding about important matters, in the field (glossed as τω Καμπω which means Campus Martius), killed a horse with a spear and predicted military success or failure based on the way in which the sacrificed horse fell. These circumstances (divination about war matters, an oracular animal and the instrument used during the ritual) feature also in similar oracles among the ancient Romans and among the Slavs far later (Słupecki 2006, 226; cf. Dumézil 1966,

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217–229), but no doubt the Slavic priests who took care of the oracular horses would face the question of what to do with a divine animal once it became very old. In Slavic archeology, traces of the sacrifice of such animals are very rare and dubious, although recent excavations may shed fresh light on this matter (Chudziak 2014).

Ornitomancy and Other Rituals In Tacitus’ (Germania 10) description of divination apart from hippomancy there appears also a very brief reference to Germanic ornitomancy, as this ritual was well known to the Romans from their own customs. About Slavic ornitomancy we unfortunately know very little. Fifteenth-century Polish predictions (FHRS 1931, 71, 76) refer to certain ptakoprawnyczi as people who foretell the future based on birds’ flight and song (qui dicunt futura ex garritu avium; in another source: et volatu avium). How far such laconic descriptions reflect genuine Slavic beliefs and how far they simply depend on the old tradition of Christian prediction is difficult to say, but what is astonishing is the use of many terms denoting specialized diviners quoted in those predics in the vernacular, albeit without, unfortunately, providing any details about their art. In Rus’, Slovo sviatovo otca Kirila (Mansikka 1922, 196) complains about the “belief in birds” enumerating woodpeckers, ravens and tomtits, and mentioning the custom of listening to birdsong prior to embarking on a journey to see from which side (from the right or the left) one heard the birds (Vyncke 1968, 328). According to ethnographical records the direction of birds’ flight was observed as well and, in both cases, the righthand side was interpreted as favorable (Moszyński 1967, 2/1, 1967, 408–409).

Prognostication in Rus’ Old Russian chronicles, letopisy, written in the vernacular, preserved some of the original Slavic terms concerning prognostication but, nevertheless, at times display a very strong analogy with foreign traditions. Povest vremennykh let (for the year 983, Primary chronicle 1926, 82–83) speaks about lot-casting among the Varangian retinue of Duke Vladimir (who was still pagan at that time) in order to select an appropriate victim to sacrifice to the gods in gratitude for their military victory. Here, we should remember that the Varangians were of Swedish origin: “The old people and the nobles say: let we cast lots (mietshem shrebi) for a youth and a maid, who will be shown; them we will slaughter for the gods!” The virgin was of little interest to the narrative, and quickly disappeared from the story, but more was said about the youth. The father of the young men chosen in that way, already a Christian baptised in Byzantium, refused to give his son “to devils” and, in consequence, was killed on his estate, together with his son. The idea about choosing men to be offered to the gods from among



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companions from the same retinue, despite the use of the Slavic term shreb (= źreb), recalls a similar narrative from Gautreks saga 7 (Słupecki 2017, 149 and 159), although the form of lot-casting is different. In the Gautreks saga, the lots were taken off (kom upp, confirming Saxo Grammaticus’ VI, 5, 7 version of the same story), what made the choice of one individual possible, but in Rus’, was that the lots were cast – but how was it possible to distinguish in that way one individual who should be killed? The story in letopis is also somewhat of an echo of the already partly forgotten foreign tradition. Again, the form of the offering is different: in the Gautreks saga, King Vikar was hanged while the Varangian youth was to be slaughtered. In another story in the letopis (Povest vremennykh let, for the year 912, Primary chronicle 1926, 32) Prince Oleg, although granted the epitheton veshtshiy (“knowing fortune” and/or “knowing fortune-telling”), asks his volchv how he will die. In answer, he is told that it must happen because of his horse. As identified several years ago (Stender Petersen 1934), the account of Oleg’s death is a version of the Old Norse story from the Örvar-Odds saga (Örvar Odds Saga 2–3 and 31, eds. Jónsson and Vilhjálmsson, 283–289, 390) about Örvar-Odds’ horse, Faxi. Faxi was immediately killed following such an inauspicious prophecy, but Oleg’s horse, kept far away from the ruler, was allowed to die naturally. The ending of both stories, however, is the same: both arrogant leaders step over the skull of dead horse, from which a venomous serpent emerges and kills them (Hannika 1960; Słupecki 2009, 880; Słupecki 2017, 190–195). It is worth stressing that Faxi means, in Old Norse, “a horse with a big mane,” while Saxo Grammaticus (Gesta Danorum  XIV, 39, 9) stated that it was forbidden to tear out or cut hair from the mane of Svantevit’s horse! It seems that Slavic sacred horses looked similar to Nordic Faxis in this respect. Another similarity is that it was forbidden to ride both horses! The volkhvy (sing. volkhv) mentioned in the story about Oleg are presented in the letopis as Old Russian pagan priests and diviners, and are presented in the Povest vremennykh let’, far more broadly in two stories that were allegedly set after the official conversion of Rus’, as the leaders of pagan uprisings, claiming to possess strong magical power, including knowledge about the future (Povest vremennykh let, for the years 1024 and especially 1071). One volkv also relates his own story about the origin of humankind, from a wisp used by a god while sitting in a kind of sauna bath. In all probablity, however, the volkhvy were, in the letopis narratives, rather an echo of a kind of Ugro-Finnish shaman, acting in the ethnically-mixed early Russian state as truly Slavic diviners.

Conclusion and Outlook The weak point of the current study – which is important to stress in this conclusion – is the emphasis placed on a very specific region of Polabia and Pomerania, which

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delivered for our research highly impressive source accounts. This was possible due to the fact that, during the bloody conflicts with Christians (especially German Saxons), between the tenth and the twelfth century, the Slavic pagan religion flourished there, not in a truly syncretic way, but rather by reinforcing some of the genuine elements already present with little regard to the well-known religion of their enemy; namely, Christianity. As a consequence of the pagan revolt of 983 (and later uprisings), the role of the pagan shrines (and their oracles) increased and, in the case of the tribal union of Lutitians established after 983, we may even speak of a kind of theocracy, led by pagan priests, and an amphictionia organised around the temple of Svarozic in Riedegost, hosting a shrine complete with idols, rituals, temple-tresor and an oracle, and a pan-tribal assembly, where the most important judicial and political matters were discussed and decided and the gods were consulted through divination performed according to the rituals described above. About the “secular” rulers of Lutitians we have, from that period, no information (if they existed at all, cf. Modzelewski 2004, 853–854; Słupecki 2006, 224). Very important and still highly influential in the twelfth century (after the fall of the temple in Riedegost/Rethra in the late eleventh century) was the temple in Arcona, and the rulers of Rügen, according to Helmold of Bosau, completely dominated by the priests of Svantevit from Arcona. As Helmold sarcastically comments: The king is not very highly esteemed in comparison with the priest (comparacione flaminis) because the latter interprets the oracle and the results of the lot-casting (responsa perquirit et eventus sortium expolorat). This depends on lots (ad nutum sortium), but the king and people depend on his will. (Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum II, 108)

The “secular” aristocracy and Pomeranian dukes in Szczecin appear to have held more power but, there also, the temple played a very important role. Nowhere else in the Slavic lands did the role of pagan temples as institutions rise so high and, in consequence, among the Slavs, the most highly-developed oracles are confined to this specific region. In other Slavic lands, the situation was different and at least public magic and divination were controlled by the ruler/leader and their families. For that kind of pagan prognostics there, we possess, unfortunately, very scant material. In 1209, on the head of the army of one of the Polish dukes in his fight against the Germans appeared a witch carrying water taken from a river in a riddle, but the water was not flowing downward. Through that sign, the witch attempted to forecast military victory for the army, but in vain (Chronicon Montis Sereni, for the year 1209; cf. Urbańczyk 1991, 89). This story, drawn from a German source, is one of the first of its kind, illustrating the emergence of the new medieval superstitions within Christian Slavic culture or, rather, cultures, as the same process of absorbing pan-European magic, including new kinds of prognostication, is visible not only in Slavic lands of Latin culture, but also in Rus’, where information about eclipses and comets was recorded, e.  g., in Povest vremennykh let (for the years 1065, 1091, 1102). Similar



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research about these and similar omina might be conducted, using Latin sources from West Slavic lands, but this is another topic, which belong to the history of pan-European sorcery in the advanced and late Middle Ages and modern times.

Selected Bibliography Adam of Bremen. Magistri Adami Bremensis Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum (MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum). Ed. Bernhard Schmeidler. Hanover and Leipzig, 1917. Annales Augustiani. MGH Scriptores. Vol. 3. Ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz. Hanover, 1839. Banaszkiewicz, Jacek. “Źródło Głomacz i jego rajska okolica.” Viae Historicae. Księga Jubileuszowa dedykowana Profesorowi Lechowi Tyszkiewiczowi. Wroclaw, 2001. 407–414. Boryś, Wiesław. Słownik Etymologiczny Języka Polskiego. Cracow, 2005. Bracha, Krzysztof. “Latawiec. Z katalogu imion rodzimych duchów i demonów w źródłach ­średniowiecznych.” Ludzie, Kościół, Wierzenia. Studia z dziejów kultury i społeczeństwa. Eds. Wojciech Iwańczak and Stefan K. Kuczyński. Warsaw, 2001. 313–334. Brednich, Rolf W. Volkserzählungen und Volksglaube von den Schicksalfrauen (FF Communications, vol. 193). Helsinki, 1964. Brednich, Rolf W. “Die osteuropäischen Volkssagen vom vorherbestimmten Schicksal.” Fatalistic Beliefs in Religion, Folklore and Literature. Ed. Helmer Ringgren. Stockholm, 1967. 97–117. Brückner, Aleksander. Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego. Cracow, 1927. Chronicon Livonicum Vetus. “Die Chronik Heinrichs des Letten.” Scriptores Rerum Livonicarum. Vol. 1. Ed. August Hansen. Riga, 1857. Chronicon Montis Sereni. “Chronicon Montis Sereni.” MGH Scriptores. Vol. 23. Ed. Ernst Ehrenfeuchter. Hanover, 1874. Chudziak, Wojciech, and Ryszard Kaźmierczak (eds.). The Island Żółte on Lake Zarańskie. Early Medieval Gateway into West Pomerania. Toruń, 2014. Cosmas Pragensis. Cosmae Pragensis Chronica Boemorum (MGH, series nova, vol. 2). Eds. Berthold Bretholz and Wilhelm Weinberger. Berlin, 1923. Długosz, Jan. Joannis Dlugossi seu Longini canonici quondam Cracouiensis Historiae Polonicae libri XII. Vol. 4. Cracow, 1877. Dumézil, Georges. La religion romaine archaȉque. Paris, 1966. Ebo. Ebonis Vita Sancti Ottonis Episcopi Babenbergensis (MPH series nova, vol. 7/2). Ed. Jan Wikarjak. Warsaw, 1969. Enright, Michael J. Lady with a Mead Cup. Ritual, Prophecy and Lordship in the European Warband from La Tene to the Viking Age. Dublin, 1996. Eyrbyggjasaga. Íslenzk Fornrit. Vol. 4. Eds. Einarr Ol. Sveinsson and Matthias Þórðarsson. Reykjavík, 1935. FHRS = Fontes Historiae Religionis Slavicae. Fontes Historiae Religionis Slavicae. Ed. Karl Heinrich Mayer. Berlin, 1931. Gautreks Saga. Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda. Vol. 3. Eds. Guðni Jónsson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson. Reykjavík, 1944. Gieysztor, Aleksander. “Opfer und Kult in der slawischen Überlieferung.” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 18 (1984): 249–265. Gieysztor, Aleksander. Mitologia Słowian. Warsaw, 2006.

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Hakonar Saga Goða. Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla. Eds. Bjarni ­Aðalbajarnarson. Reykjavík, 1979 (Islenzk Fórnrit, vol. 28). Hanika, Josef. “Olegs Tod durch die Schlange. Zu einem Erzählmotiv.” Die Welt der Slawen. Vol. 5. 1960. 299–309. Helmold of Bosau. Helmoldi Presbyteri Bozoviensis Chronica Slavorum. Ed. Heinz Stoob. Berlin, 1963. Herbord. Herbordi Dialogus de vita S Ottonis Babenbergensis (MPH series nova, vol. 7/3). Eds. Jan Wikarjak and Kazimierz Liman. Warsaw, 1974. Knytlinga Saga. Íslenzk Fornrit. Vol. 35. Ed. Bjarni Guðnason. Reykjavík, 1982. Krzyżanowski, Julian. Nowa księga przysłów i wyrażeń przysłowiowych polskich. Vol. 3. Warsaw, 1972. Kujev, Kujo M. Čarnorez’ec Chrabr. Sofia, 1967. Labuda, Gerard. Fragmenty dziejów Słowiańszczyzny Zachochodniej. Vol. 3. Poznań, 1975. Lex Frisonum. Die Gesetze des Karolingerreiches 714–911. Ed. Karl August Eckhardt. Germanenrechte. Vol. 2/3. Weimar, 1934. Linde, Samuel. Słownik języka polskiego. Vol. 5. Warsaw, 1951. Mansikka. Die Religion der Ostslaven. Vol. 1. Quellen. Ed. Viljo Johannes Mansikka. Helsinki, 1922 (Russian original, slightly different to the German edition published posthumously from the manuscript as: Religija Vostotshnych Slavjan. Moscow, 2005). Matusiak, Szymon. “Wieszczba i źreb.” Lud. Vol. 17/4 (1911): 193–241. Mayer, Anton. “Das mantische Pferd in lateinischen Texten des Mittelalters.” Liber Floridus. Mittelalterliche Studien. Paul Lehmann zum 65. Geburtstag am 13. Juli 1949 gewidmet von Freunden, Kollegen und Schülern. Ed. Bernhard Bischoff. St. Ottilien, 1950. 131–151. Modzelewski, Karol. Barbarzyńska Europa. Warsaw, 2004 (French and Italian translation also published thereafter). Mierzyński. Źródła do mytologii litewskiej. Vol. 1–2. Warsaw, 1892–1896. Moszyński, Kazimierz. Kultura Ludowa Słowian. Vol. 2/1.Warsaw, 1967. Örvar Odds Saga. Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda. Vol. 1. Eds. Guðni Jónsson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson. Reykjavík, 1943. Polybios of Megalopolis. Polybius of Megalopolis, The Histories. Ed. William Roger Paton. Vol. 4. London and Cambridge, MA, 1960. Primary Chronicle. Povest’ vremennykh let. Lavrent’evskaya letopis. (Polnoe sobranye russkikh letopisey, vol. 1). Leningrad, 1926. Procopius of Caesarea. “De bello gothico. The History of the Wars: The Gothic War.” Procopius with the English Translation by Henry B. Dewing (Loeb). London and Cambridge, MA, 1962. Rybakov, Boris. Jazytshestvo drevney Russi. Moscow, 1987. Saxo Grammaticus. Saxonis Gesta Danorum. Eds. Jørgen Olrik and Hans Raeder. Copenhagen, 1931. Slovo o Polku Igorievie. “La geste du prince Igor.” R. Jacobson, Selected Writings. Vol. 4. Hague, 1966. Słupecki, Leszek Paweł. Slavonic Pagan Sanctuaries. Warsaw, 1994. Słupecki, Leszek Paweł. “Spuren tschechischer und polnischer Fürstensteine.” Der Kärntner Fürstenstein im europäischen Vergleich. Ed. Axel Huber. Gmünd, 1997. 35–42. Słupecki, Leszek Paweł. Mitologia skandynawska w epoce wikingów. Cracow, 2003. Słupecki, Leszek Paweł. “Posłowie.” Mitologia Słowian. Ed. Aleksander Gieysztor. Warsaw, 2006. 340–359. Słupecki, Leszek Paweł. “Per sortes ac per equum. Wyrocznia w Radogoszczy.” Europa barbarica, Europa christiana. Studia mediaevalia Carolo Modzelewski dedicata. Eds. Roman Michalowski and Marcin Rafal Pauk. Warsaw, 2008. 139–154.



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Słupecki, Leszek Paweł. “Per sortes ac per equum. Lot-casting and Hippomancy in the North after Saga Narratives and Medieval Chronicles.” Á austrvega. Saga and East Scandinavia. Eds. Agneta Ney et al. Vol. 2, Gävle (2009): 876–883. Słupecki, Leszek Paweł. “Świątynia pogańska – świątynia chrześcijańska. Problem pogańskich budowli kultowych w Skandynawii.” Sacrum pogańskie – sacrum chrześcijańskie, Kontynuacja miejsc kultu we wczesnośredniowiecznej Europie środkowej. Eds. Krzysztof Bracha and Czesław Hadamik. Warsaw, 2010. 319–360. Słupecki, Leszek Paweł. “Slavic religion.” The Handbook of Religions in Ancient Europe. Eds. Lisbeth Bredholt Christensen et al. Durham, 2010. 338–358. Słupecki, Leszek Paweł. Wróżby i wyrocznie pogańskich Skandynawów. Cracow, 2017. Słupecki, Leszek Paweł. “Encounters: Slavic.” Pre-Christian Religions of the North. Vol. 1. Eds. Jens Peter Schjødt et al. (in production: Brepols Publishers, 2020). Słupecki, Leszek Paweł, and Magdalena Valor. “Religions.” The Archaeology of Medieval Europe. Eds. James Graham-Campbel and Magdalena Valor. Aarhus, 2007. 366–379. Słupecki, Leszek Paweł, and Roman Zaroff. “William of Malmesbury on Pagan Slavic Oracles. New Source for Slavic Paganism and Its Two Interpretations.” Studia Mythologica Slavica. Vol. 2. 1999. 9–20. Strzelczyk, Jerzy. Mity, podania i wierzenia dawnych Słowian. Poznań, 1998. Strzelczyk, Jerzy. “Niektóre problemy chrystianizacji Ewuropy wczesnośredniowiecznej.” Nihil superfluum esse. Prace z dziejów średniowiecza ofiarowane Profesor Jadwidze Krzyżaniakowej. Poznań, 2001. 61–84. Tacitus, Publius Cornelius. Die Germania des Tacitus erläutert von Rudolf Much. Heidelberg, 1937. Thietmar of Merseburg. Thietmari Merseburgensis episcopi Chronicon (MGH, Scriptores rerum germanicarum, nova series, vol. 9). Ed. Robert Holtzmann. Berlin, 1935. Tomicki, Ryszard. “Słowiański mit kosmogoniczny.” Etnografia Polska. Vol. 20/1. 1976. 47–97. Urbańczyk, Stanislaw. Dawni Słowianie. Wiara i kult. Wroclaw et al., 1991. Vita Prieflingensis. Monachi Prieflingensis Vita Ottonis Episcopi Babenbergensis (MPH series nova, vol. 7/1). Eds. Jan Wikarjak and Kazimierz Liman. Warsaw, 1966. Vries, Jan de. Altnordisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Leiden, 1962. Vyncke, Frans. “La divination chez les Slaves.” La divination. Etudes recueillies. Vol. 1. Eds. André Caquot and Marcel Leibovici. Paris, 1968. 303–332. William of Malmesbury. Willelmi Malmesbiriensis Monachi De Gestis Regum Anglorum libri quinque (The Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, vol. 90/1). Ed. William Stubbs. Vol. 1. London, 1887.

Matthias Heiduk

Prognostication in the Medieval Western Christian World In this compendium, prognostication is used as a collective term to describe all methods of predicting the future. According to the Christian belief prevalent during the millennium between the years 500 and 1500, the “Middle Ages” as they are generally called in European history, only God knows the future. Several theologians were adamant that it did not befit humans to look into the future and God’s plan for the salvation of his creation. Still, the biblical stories confirm that the providential plan could be revealed through signs and the prophecies of illuminated people, so the predominant view was that predictions of the future were altogether possible, although the nature and value of these predictions remained a subject of controversy. Future events, according to the widely-held view, could be announced directly through visions and dreams or indirectly through natural signs but people also actively tried to predict events by interpreting the signs of nature or asking intermediaries about the divine will. Saints or the departed were called upon to serve as intermediaries, because they were closer to God and therefore more knowledgeable, but so were supernatural beings such as angels and demons which, as entities of the celestial realms, were also able to provide deeper insights into the course of events. This survey offers a cursory overview of the medieval practices of prognostication in the medieval Christian West. Part 1 provides an introduction to some of the fundamental principles of prognostication in the context of the medieval Christian outlook on the world. It examines the concepts of time, cosmology and world-view, plus the debates on divine providence and free will as well as on the perimeters of legitimacy of certain practices. Part 2 illustrates various methods of prognostication and their role in everyday life. The large variety of prognostication methods and their historical sources are addressed in part 3. A brief outline of the crucial points in the history of prognostication in part 4 concludes this survey.

Acknowledgement: The author is very grateful to Claudia Heiduk for her help in shaping the English version of this paper. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-005

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Part 1 – The Foundations of Prognostication Notions and Concepts of Time Medieval notions of time were dominated by the parallelism of the cyclical and linear movement of time. The daily cycle from sunrise to sunset determined the rhythm of work and prayer, the seasonal cycle dictated agricultural activities and the dates of fairs, and the feast days throughout the liturgical year. In the towns of the Late Middle Ages, other modes of timing also influenced daily life. Mechanical devices such as wheel clocks told the hour independently of the position of the sun. Guilds determined the working hours for their members, and merchants calculated profit margins and interest rates on the basis of exact calculations of time (Dohrn-van Rossum 1992). While the cyclical movement of time was in tune with nature, the linear movement emerged with the idea that time on earth is limited, starting with God’s creation and ending with the second coming of Christ and the Last Judgement. The Christian liturgy recalls all three levels of linear time by commemorating biblical and historical events of the past and anticipating salvation and eternal life in the present (Knoch 1995). Acts of penance linked the time on earth with the time in the afterlife. Especially the doctrine of purgatory, which arose during the Middle Ages, strengthened this link, because the lengths of time for penitential acts equivalently diminished the time period of punishments in purgatory (Le Goff 1981, 288–296). In Christian faith, the end of the world marked the completion of the divine plan of salvation, so the future had no open end. This, however, was no reason for resignation and inaction, but an admonition to use the remaining time well. Since everybody’s lifetime was embedded in the linearity of the plan for salvation, everybody – each individual and the whole of Christianity – was expected to make this world a better place in expectation of the end to come (Gurjewitsch 1980, 108–187; Schmieder 2015). To calculate time and break it down into periods was seen as helpful for understanding where in God’s plan the present was situated. According to the two most common historical concepts of the Middle Ages, Christians felt that the end was near. The teachings of both the “Four Empires” and the “Six Ages” claimed that humankind had already reached the last period. Church Father Jerome (d. 419) attributed the four empires brought up by Daniel the prophet to the ancient empires of the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans (Jerome, Commentarius in Danielem I, ii, 31–35), which meant that the continuation of humankind on Earth depended on the duration of the Roman Empire. In the Christian West, this had been achieved at least temporarily by the translatio imperii, the translation of the empire, to the Franks and later the Germans, or, alternatively, the Pope (Goez 1954). Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) preferred the division into the “Six Ages” based on biblical stories. The first age starts with Adam and ends with Noah; the second extends to Abraham; the third to King David; the fourth to King Nebuchadnezzar; the fifth to the birth of Christ; and



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the present was already part of the last period after the birth of Christ (Augustine, De civitate dei, books 15–18). Attempts to calculate the length of these periods and, by implication, the time remaining, led to widely differing results: Isidore of Seville (d. 636) arrived at a completely dissimilar conclusion as Bede the Venerable (d. 735) (Schmidt 1955/1956, 293). The heterogeneous model of history according to Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202) exemplifies how calculating the remaining time already manipulates the future. According to Joachim, there is also little time left for humankind’s spiritual renewal, which is needed to withstand the Antichrist and his work of destruction. Following the defeat of the Antichrist, Joachim envisioned a 1000-year period of peace before the Day of Judgement. Therefore, in order to do the right thing, it was vital to learn as much as possible about God’s plan of salvation through a correct exegesis of the bible and a prophetic interpretation of history (Reeves 1999; Wannenmacher 2005). In medieval philosophical treatises on time, two conflicting views became prevalent. On the one side, Augustine suggests that time is present in and measured by the soul. The past, present and future do not have any duration, but are dimensions of the consciousness of the soul (Augustine, Confessiones XI, 15–26). On the other side, Aristotle defines time as the number and amount of motion in accordance with the before and after (Aristotle, Physica IV, 219b1–2). With the translation of the Physica, along with a commentary by the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd (= Averroes) (d. 1198), Aristotle’s conception had become known in the Latin West since the thirteenth century and caused an extended debate, as reflected in the commentaries intended for university teaching. Many scholars joined rank with Aristotle, sometimes adding to his perspective on time, including Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253), Albertus Magnus (d. 1280), Henry of Ghent (d. 1293) and John Duns Scotus (d. 1308) (Jeck 1994). Toward the end of the Middle Ages, Martin Luther, for example, tended to share Augustine’s view (Flasch 1998).

Cosmological Frame The cosmic world view of the Middle Ages was shaped by Ancient Greek philosophy. Up to the twelfth century, a simplified version of Plato and the Stoics’ model of a universe with the earth at its center, as described by William of Conches (d. after 1154), was commonly accepted (Guilelmus de Conchis, Philosophia mundi, ed. Maurach). The earth’s spherical shape was never questioned throughout the Middle Ages, and it was thought to consist of the four elements: fire, earth, water, and air. It was a place of constant change and transience. The celestial spheres surrounding the earth, however, remained unchanged. Counting from the earth, the following spheres were of the seven planets, which included the two luminaries: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The planets were not simply regarded as lumps of matter, but as intelligent entities. They were thought to be attached to the substance-based

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Fig. 2: John of Sacrobosco, De sphaera (New York, Public Library – ­Manuscripts and Archives Division, MssCol 2557 (MA 69), fol. 81r; date: saec. XIII). Photo credits: The New York Public Library Digital Collections (http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/ items/510d47da-e570-a3d9-e040e00a18064a99).

but transparent celestial spheres rotating around the earth. After the planets came the sphere of the stars, which in turn was surrounded by the last sphere, the primum mobile, which maintained all motion in the cosmos. From a Christian point of view, it made sense to interpret the primum mobile as the divine power. With the act of creation, the order established by God was complete, and things began to take their natural course. The cosmos as a whole was seen as homogeneous and organic, with the large macrocosm reflecting the structure of the human microcosm. The world soul, as the connection between all living things, dominated the interactions between the two. This simplified model underwent many modifications over the further course of the Middle Ages, most of them due to the increasingly detailed knowledge of Aristotle’s writings and those of his Arabic commentators. The main points of the debate were the nature of aether and the world soul. Aristotle used the term aether to describe the substance of the celestial spheres, which in their perfection and unchangeability differed considerably from earthly matter. This meant that the cosmos was not homogeneous after all. Many medieval scholars agreed with this view, but the exact nature of the aether remained subject to debate, as commentaries to John of Sacrobosco’s (d. 1256) cosmological standard reference De sphaera by Michael Scot (d. about 1235), Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253), or Cecco d’Ascoli (d. 1327) confirm (Thorndike 1949, 206). Aristotle’s view of the eternal nature of the world soul proved to be highly problematic, because it contradicted the act of creation and the temporality of the cosmos. Most medieval scholars rejected it categorically, but a few, such as Boetius of Dacia (d. after 1277) and Siger of Brabant (d. 1284), referring to Ibn Rushd’s (d. 1198) commentary on Aristotle’s work, exacerbated the conflict by concluding that the eternal nature of the world soul implied that the souls of humans were mortal (Bianchi 1999).



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Other modifications to the basic cosmological model resulted from attempts to reconcile the biblical creation account with the conceptions of Antiquity. God separated the water, so the bible says, so that the sky appeared above the seas. This led Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) to believe that the water above the firmament represented a sphere of its own in the crystal heaven, located between the starry heaven and the outermost sphere, the Empyrean heaven, where the angels were thought to reside (Grant 1978, 275–278). The ancient idea that intelligent entities were responsible for the motion of the individual spheres was also considered problematic. From a Christian point of view, it was, of course, completely unacceptable to associate these entities with the planetary gods from Antiquity, which is why Thomas Aquinas and others replaced them with angels or other more or less neutral metaphysical entities. Other scholars, such as Jean Buridan (d. ca. 1358), abandoned the idea of animated movers of the spheres or, such as Robert Kilwardby (d. 1279), replaced them with an intrinsic tendency (Weisheipl 1961). According to the generally accepted view, the movements and nature of the celestial bodies did have an influence on all things animate and inanimate. “Every natural power of this inferior, sensible world is governed by the heaven […] and to every active power in these inferior things, there corresponds a certain power in the heaven […]”, as Themon Judeus (d. after 1371) states quite concisely (Grant 1978, 288–289). The motion of the spheres was thought to be the reason for the existence of time and transience, but the stars and planets also had a strong influence: sunlight transformed the four elements while the moon caused tidal ebb and flow and determined the mix of bodily fluids, which was of central importance for the state of health. This knowledge of cosmic influences provided scientific explanations for many forms of medieval prognostication, starting with the calculation of time and the observation of the stars up to the astrological properties of the celestial bodies and their influence.

Predestination and Free Will The question of whether humans can shape their future through autonomous, conscious decisions or whether their destiny is predetermined had already been a matter of controversy in Antiquity. Christian theology rephrased the question: had God the Almighty in his divine providence preordained the life of every individual or could man be rewarded for commendable acts in the afterlife? Boethius (d. ca. 525) went to the heart of this philosophical dilemma: There seems to be a considerable contradiction and inconsistency’, I said, ‘between God’s foreknowing all things and the existence of any free will. If God foresees all things and cannot be in any way mistaken, then what Providence has foreseen will happen must inevitably come to pass. So if God has prior knowledge from eternity not only of men’s actions but also of their plans and wishes, there will be no freedom of will; […].‘ (Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae/Consolation of Philosophy, ed. Walsh, 100)

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Once again, it is Augustine who influenced significantly this controversy, which continued to be relevant throughout the Middle Ages and was still essential in the theology of the reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin. The Bishop of Hippo combined the problem of predestination with his doctrine of grace. He revised his original view that God’s grace was granted according to the merits of the individual, claiming that God had decided who was to be redeemed and that this decision was the Divine Providence. Nobody could possibly know whether they had been chosen or not. What God’s providence sees will happen, but not in a manner which would preclude human free will (Flasch 2000, 46–53). With his particularly strict interpretation of Augustine’s teachings, Gottschalk the Saxon (d. ca. 869) advocated the doctrine of double predestination which states that God chooses not only who will be saved but also who will be damned. This led to the predestination controversy, and Gottschalk was harshly criticized by the intellectual elite of the Carolingian Empire. In this controversy, John Scotus Eriugena’s (d. late ninth century) expertise De praedestinatione was significant. He emphasized that predestination required a dimension of time, but God was outside time. Therefore Augustine’s teachings on predestination were to be understood as a tropological exhortation. A two-fold predestination was unthinkable, because it excluded freedom of will and connected God with evil (Schrimpf 1982). Anselm of Canterbury (d. 1109) tried to harmonize Divine Providence and free will. According to him, God had already included humans’ autonomous decisions in his providence (Anselm of Canterbury, De concordia II.3). The debate did not end with Anselm, however. Peter Abelard (d. 1142), a representative of Early Scholasticism, pointed out further inconsistencies in the debate, but failed to come up with any solution. Thomas Aquinas also confirmed the infallibility of Divine Providence which served the purpose of guiding humans toward the real goal – the vision of God. According to him, providence did not exert any pressure on people, but allowed them to make their own decisions (Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica I, q.23, a.6). In Late Scholasticism, the focus shifted toward problems of semantic connotations, with William of Ockham (d. 1347) as a leading figure. For Ockham, the world was determined through God’s providence, which meant that prophetic statements about the future were possible only to a limited extent. He identified free will with humans’ natural inclination to adopt ethical behavior, an approach which separated ethical standards from normative principles not based on personal awareness. Even God’s omnipotence could not destroy the ethical act in itself, so there was a clear difference between man’s disposition toward ethical behavior and predetermination (Perler 1988, 292–294). Despite of all difficulties associated with explaining the adversarial relationship between free will and predestination, one thing was unquestionable in the Christian world-view of the Middle Ages: there was no determinism which could undermine humans’ free will and their decision to do either good or evil. In the debates about the legitimacy of mantic practices, one criticism was that divination was based on the



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principle of determinism and absolved people of their responsibility to act ethically (↗ Canaris, Debating Astrology in the Renaissance; ↗ Rapisarda, Doubts and Criticism on Astrology).

How to Predict the Future: Prophecy versus Divination Marcus Tullius Cicero (d. 43 BCE) described divination as the capability to recognize and interpret the signs sent by the gods as a premonition. He used the term divinatio synonymously with the Greek term mantike (↗ Engels and Nice, Divination in Antiquity, 15). In the Christian view, too, predictions of the future could only be made by interpreting the signs of God’s will. Still, the Church Fathers in Late Antiquity drew a clear distinction between the two and rejected divination. The reasons for this rejection were related to the fact that mantic practices were considered elements of the ancient pagan rites that Christians were expected to avoid but, as astonishing as it might seem, it was generally accepted that divination did work: that supernatural beings communicated with humans and passed on knowledge of the future. It was also believed that those beings, the ancient gods who were negatively perceived as demons, used their superior knowledge to deceive people. Augustine of Hippo writes: The demons, on the other hand, do not contemplate in the wisdom of God these eternal and, as it were, cardinal causes of temporal things. They do, however, foresee many more future events than men do, by reason of their greater knowledge of signs which are hidden from us. Also, they sometimes announce their own intentions in advance. Finally, the demons often err, […]. (Augustine, De civitate dei, ed. Dyson, 386–387)

Therefore, this lead to the conclusion that mantic practices were a form of paying homage to demons and nothing but pagan idolatry. In his Etymologiae, Isidore of Seville offers a compact summary of Augustine’s teachings and provides explanations of conceptual connections. His work became a standard reference for legal, theological and scientific definitions throughout the Middle Ages (Harmening 1979; Herbers 2019). He explained that diviners derived their name from God, but only pretended to be inspired by divinity while, in reality, they were misguiding people through their predictions (Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae VIII.9.14). Isidore considered the mantic arts, among which he listed all of the classical approaches such as hepatoscopy, auguries, necromancy, incantations for divination purposes, astrology, practices based on the four elements and the casting of lots as activities performed by magi, i.  e. magicians. In his deliberations on magicians, he often uses the word malefici, malefactors, as a synonym, emphasizing the negative connotation of the term (Etymologiae VIII.9.9). Consequently, the word magic indicated something alien, something to be shunned, similar to the Greek mageia: the religion of the others (Schwemer 2015, 17–18). In the Christian interpretation, however, the religion of pagans was, by definition, mere superstition. Superstition signifies a far-reaching discourse in the

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further course of European history which, enhanced through the philosophy of the Enlightenment, persists until today: the mantic arts were subsumed under magic and categorized as superstition (Otto 2011). Isidore of Seville confirms the negative view of magicians and their activities, although the gospel of Matthew presented the three stargazing magoi as witnesses to the incarnation of God. Magic and the mantic arts, according to his rather gruff admission, had only been permissible until the birth of Christ (Etymologiae VIII.9.26). With divination no longer an option, there were nevertheless several methods left for orthodox Christians to receive knowledge of the future from God. Isidore of Seville mentions this elsewhere in his Etymologiae. Here, he rigorously distinguishes between the prophets of the Old Testament (prophetes) and the visionaries of the pagans (vates). The prophets, he claims, would speak of the distant and would be able to pronounce the truth about the future, because they were able to see what was hidden (Etymologiae VII.8.1). This ability to see what was hidden was God’s gift to the prophets, who became his voice and figures of great authority. This gift was not only granted to the prophets of the Old Testament, but could be bestowed upon any person, regardless of his/her social standing, gender, or age (↗ Holdenried, Prophecy Western Christian World). There was, however, a risk involved: false prophets might worm their way into people’s confidence and spread the lies of demons and devils. As part II of this survey will demonstrate, those claiming to speak in the name of God were often regarded with skepticism. Later in the Middle Ages, the Church would increasingly attempt to verify and control these presumably prophetic voices. Although Augustine and Isidore of Seville’s views on divination became doctrinaire, especially scholastic thinkers of the Middle Ages opted for a more differentiated approach. As Aristotle’s writings on natural sciences and works on astrology of the Islamic world became known and subjected to much debate, new explanations for the cosmological relationships between the earth, humans, and the celestial spheres became necessary. Albertus Magnus, for instance, far exceeded the limits of Augustine’s conception by adopting ideas from Antiquity and non-Christian civilizations about the cosmos. He conceded that astrology in particular, but also hermetic talisman magic, could offer insights and have effects due to natural causes. He even put prophets and astrologers on the same level. Their knowledge of astral influences gave them amazing abilities, such as seeing the future. The prophet was able to make true predictions, because his mind was able to translate divine inspiration into comprehensible messages. The astrologer gained his knowledge not only through cosmic influences, but was even able to channel them while remaining unaffected himself (Palazzo 2011, 80–84). Thomas Aquinas, too, accepted the idea that the interaction between the micro- and the macrocosm provided the basis for true prognoses, and that astrology and other mantic arts, to the limited degree to which they referred to natural events and their signs, could be used for prognostication. There was no such thing as sheer coincidence, according to Thomas, so even the casting of lots was thought to be subject to cosmological principals or the laws of physics (Sturlese 2011).



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Part 2 – Prognostication in Medieval Everyday Life – Some Examples Prophets, Visionaries, and their Audience Monastic libraries are full of miracle stories about visions and mythical journeys to the Hereafter, so they must have been very popular with the spiritual communities of the Middle Ages. A thirteenth-century manuscript from Salem on Lake Constance (Heidelberg, University Library, Codex Salem IX 31), written by an anonymous monk, tells of the wondrous occurrences that happened at Vaucelles, a Cistercian abbey near Cambrai, in 1195. Roaming brigands had appeared in the area, spreading fear among the community. In order to defend themselves, the monks had acquired weapons “to meet violence with violence, a radical deviation from the saintly nature of their order” (Visio Vacellis, ed. Schmidt, 159; trans. Heiduk). His brothers readiness to spill blood obviously confronted the author with a moral dilemma but divine inspiration, delivered in a series of four visions, showed him a way out. In the first two visions, a strange figure wearing a monk’s habit had appeared near the abbey church, given him meaningful glances, and then vanished. The monk started praying, and as he was utterly absorbed in his prayers, a giant dove flew in through the window. The dove revealed itself as his guardian angel, let him climb onto its back and took him with tearing speed to the places of the Hereafter: purgatory, hell, and heavenly Jerusalem. The pains inflicted on the poor souls in purgatory – among them, several brothers from his monastery who had passed away – were sufficiently gruesome to make the monk’s heart melt, so he asked his guardian angel what he could do to help. The answer was clear and pragmatic: Their pain will become less through alms-giving, intercessions, penance, and other good deeds, and finally subside. If you start flagellating yourself every Monday to atone for your sins and those of others, you will help the living as well as the dead. (Visio Vacellis, ed. Schmidt, 161; trans. Heiduk).

This journey to the Other Side culminates in an encounter with the strange monk of the first visions, who revealed himself to be Saint Benedict (d. 547) and gave the monk instructions for his penance. The legitimacy of self-flagellation, a practice which contradicts the conventions of the Cistercian order, was confirmed to the monk in the fourth vision by the order’s guiding figure, Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153). Before Dante Alighieri (d. 1321) reinterpreted the genre of visionary journeys to the Hereafter, most medieval texts on the subject mirrored the life of ascetics, nuns, or monks (Dinzelbacher 2017, 370–377; ↗ Bihrer, Journeys to the Other World Western Christian Traditions). The way in which the vision of Vaucelles is transmitted suggests that it was also intended as advice on how to live the life of a penitent in the monastery. The visions of saints and places of the Hereafter were to be seen as proof of divine

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intervention, with the aim of legitimizing the practice of self-flagellation. The eschatological imagery of the Vaucelles visions expresses highly personal ideas about the concept of monastic order. The concurrency of the different time dimensions is typical of prophetical texts. The vision is not merely a prediction but is also meant to reveal that God wants the errors of the past and the present remedied in order to pave the way to a better future. A view of the places of the Otherworld tells the readers what to expect depending on how they have lived their lives on Earth and the recommended penance is designed as an aid to follow the right path. Caterina di Iacopo di Benincasa, venerated as St. Catherine of Siena (d. 1380), reached a far wider audience than the visionary from Vaucelles (on Catherine see: Muessig et al. 2011). She led a rigidly ascetic life, devoted to the worship of God, just like the Cistercian monk. In her case, she had to assert her calling in the face of her family’s resistance and the reservations of the Dominican tertiaries with whom she wished to live. She shared again the urge for radical penance with the brother of Vaucelles, although she seems to have preferred self-flagellation with an iron chain. However, religious devotion within a spiritual community was not her only purpose in life, she felt that God had sent her into this world to practice charity. Due to her charisma, her altruism, her perseverance and her reputation as a mystic visionary, Catherine’s influence continued to grow. Her audience soon included not only the environment of her social milieu, but also the powerful leaders of the North Italian cities as well as the popes in Avignon and Rome although, unlike her Dominican brothers, she was not allowed to deliver sermons. That left personal encounters and an extensive correspondence, which she managed with the support of her religious advisors. In those letters, she not only provides spiritual guidance but also makes political demands: peace in Italy, a crusade to the Holy Land, and reform of the Church. Catherine never wavered in her commitment, even when she was mocked, doubted or summoned before an investigative church committee, all evidence of the basic mistrust in female visionaries and their revelations (↗ Holdenried, Prophecy Western Christian World, 338–339). She derived her strength from ecstatic beatific visions with the recurrent motive of a mystical union with Christ, such as the exchange of hearts which her confessor and hagiographer, Raymond of Capua (d.  1399), describes as follows: It appeared to her that her Heavenly Bridegroom came to her as usual, opened her left side, took out her heart, and then went away. […] And for some time she went on repeating this, that she was living without a heart. […] One day she was in the church […]. All at once a light from heaven encircled her, and in the light appeared the Lord, holding in His holy hands a human heart, bright red and shining. […] He came up to her, opened her left side once again and put the heart He was holding in His hands inside her, saying ‘Dearest daughter, as I took your heart away from you the other day, now, you see, I am giving you mine, […]’.” (Legenda maior, II.6 = The Life of St. Catherine, ed. Lamb, 165–166)



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Predictions about the future are rare in Catherine’s visions. In her revelations, she describes mystical encounters with God or the injustices and grievances of her time. There is an element of prognosis in her visions, based on issues of contemporary relevance, comparable to the visions from Vaucelles. This prognostication could serve as consolation; for example, when she accompanied Niccolò di Toldo, who had been sentenced to death, to the place of his execution. She predicted that he would soon be united with Christ in eternal life: “Courage, my dear brother, for soon we shall reach the wedding feast” (Letter 31, ed. Noffke, 109). In her political demands, predictions are intended mainly to indicate what needs to change in the present, as in the following words which she addressed to Pope Gregory XI: And if you should say to me, father, ‘The world is in such a sorry state – how can I bring it peace?’ I tell you in the name of Christ crucified that you must use your authority to do three essential things. You are in charge of the garden of the holy Church. So [first of all] uproot from that garden the stinking weeds full of impurity and avarice, and bloated with pride. […] Plant fragrant flowers in this garden for us, pastors and administrators who will be true servants of Jesus Christ crucified, who will seek only God’s honor and the salvation of souls, who will be fathers of the poor. (Letter 63, ed. Noffke, 201)

Catherine leaves no doubt that she has received her revelations from God and has the right to speak in his name – a claim that was widely acknowledged by her contemporaries, including Pope Gregory XI, who returned from Avignon to Rome at her bidding. Liedwy of Schiedam (d. 1433) was confined to bed for the rest of her life following an accident. She was in permanent pain but never complained and survived, although she ate very little (on Liedwy, see: Caspers 2014). During bouts of illness, she experienced visions of the crucified Christ and communion wafers dripping with blood, which the parish priest interpreted as a sign of insanity and possession but, after the Bishop of Utrecht had her examined, it was concluded that her visions were true revelations and Liedwy’s fame started to spread. Her visitors frequently asked her to contact saints or dead relatives, hoping to learn about their fate in the afterlife. There were, however, many sceptics in medieval times not only among Liedwy and Catherine’s contemporaries who had their doubts about the divine nature of prophecies. Throughout the centuries, medieval historical works give accounts of the exposure of false prophets and mixed reactions to supposedly divine revelations (see further examples in: Lehner 2019, 47–49). In 847, the Annals of the monastery of Fulda mention a certain Thiota, who had caused an uproar in the city of Mainz by announcing the end of the world. Thiota was called before a church committee and had to revoke her prophecy after it was revealed that she not received divine inspiration, but acted on behalf of a priest (Annales Fuldenses, ed. Kurze, 36–37). When another doomsday preacher, the hermit Bernard, addressed a gathering of princes in Würzburg in 960, according to the Hirsau chronicle, those present only partly believed in his prophecy. The others either found his manner overbearing or thought he was mentally ill (Annales Hirsaugienses, ed. Schlegel 1, 103). In 1455, the citizens of Ulm,

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Fig. 3: The angel shows Liedwy the poor souls in the purgatory (Johannes Brugman. Vita alme virginis Lijdwine. Schiedam [print: Otgier Pietersz/Nachtegael], 1498. Fol. 70v. Utrecht, Rijksmuseum Het Catherijneconvent, BMH i44). Photo credits: Museum Catherijneconvent / Ruben de Heer.

so Sebastian Fischer reports in his chronicle, derided a wandering prophet, who had been paid to preach doom and gloom. About a century later, however, his words still resounded after the city was defeated in the Schmalcaldic War (Sebastian Fischer, Chronik, ed. Veesenmeyer, 120).

Diviners and their Clients In his enormously popular astrology textbook, Liber introductorius ad iudicia astrorum, Guido Bonatti (d. ca. 1290) provides valuable insights into the various prognostication methods offered by medieval astrologers (see also Dykes 2015). He was convinced that astrology was a science, which enabled him to take a stand against scaremongers and charlatans who tried to exploit people’s superstitions, such as Simone Mestaguerra (d. 1257), who terrorized the citizens of Forlì for three years with his demagoguery while Bonatti claimed that he was the only one to oppose him (Book of Astronomy 5, ed. Dykes, 343). He also describes in great detail how Giovanni da Schio of Vicenza, who appeared in Bologna in 1233 claiming to be a miracle worker, was never able to provide proof of his supernatural powers (Book of Astronomy 5, ed.



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Dykes, 343–345). Clerics and scholars who railed and ranted against astrology and called it a pseudo-science are referred to as idiots in tunics (Book of Astronomy 1, ed. Dykes, 4). Bonatti wanted people to benefit from the astral sciences and offered his expertise to help them solve their problems caused by a hard life and misfortune (Dykes 2015, 40–41). Guido Bonatti’s first clients were princes, all potentates who had sided with the Ghibellines in the struggle for power in thirteenth-century Italy. Among them were Ezzelino da Romano, Guido Novello and Guido da Montefeltro. The examples of consultations he listed in his book are all military in nature. He was to provide information about the most opportune moment to attack the enemy or launch a siege (Dykes 2015, 33–35, 39–40). Guido Bonatti’s astrological expertise was also frequently requested by those seeking advice on relationships and health issues. They wanted to know about matters such as when to start medical treatment or whether a marriage with a certain partner was recommended. As far as issues of sexuality and pregnancy were concerned, Guido Bonatti proved highly sensitive when his clients were female. Many were under pressure, because they had to provide proof of their virginity or fidelity, or the legitimacy of their children, or protect themselves from the advances of men (Book of Astronomy 6, ed. Dykes, 435–449). Especially such notes in the Liber introductorius confirm that not only princes sought astrological advice. While Guido’s work for the potentates seems to have been of limited duration, he generally offered his services to townspeople from all walks of life. The astrological case study about the liberation of a slave could possibly be interpreted as a hint to serfs seeking his counsel (Book of Astronomy 6, ed. Dykes, 430–431). It appears that Guido Bonatti ran a practice, probably full of books and devices such as astronomic tables and astrolabes serving as status symbols. A century later, Geoffrey Chaucer describes such an astrologer’s equipment and status symbols in his Canterbury Tales (Chaucer, The Miller’s Tale, 3187–3210). A notebook of the astrologer Richard Trewythian (d. after 1458?), who lived in London, has been preserved: it contains business notes, the names of clients, horoscopes, and invoices, and offers detailed insights into his daily routine (Page 2001). His clients seem to have appreciated his sophisticated astrological techniques, which enabled him to stand out among other providers of far simpler divination services. His expertise, however, did not come cheap, particularly when he visited clients outside London. All in all, his clientele represented a social mix of well-to-do homeowners, merchants, clergy and simple craftsmen or innkeepers. A quarter of these were women. Most of his clients were from London, with a few from Norwich, Leeds, or Salisbury. Astrological prognoses were, however, not the only source of income for Richard Trewythian. He also offered various medical treatments, sold medicines, and worked as a money lender and bookseller. All of these activities seem to have merged into one. Medical doctors often resorted to astrology, which was taught at the universities as a subject of relevance for medical prognoses. Guido Bonatti’s notes are often about health-related issues, so it seems likely that he practiced medicine as well. Apart from health concerns, Richard Trewythian’s clients were mostly interested

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in recovering lost or stolen items, learning the whereabouts of a missing husband, or the chances of a wife getting pregnant, while mothers asked for birth horoscopes to learn what would become of their children or, first and foremost, how long their children would live. Apart from such notes about individual requests, the book also contains records of mundane astrology, such as weather forecasts for a whole year or events of importance for the rule of the King of England. Whether Richard Trewythian wrote such entries on his own initiative or at the request of his clients remains unclear. Astrologers generally worked at court or in the cities, not least because they often demanded high prices for their services, but they were not the only ones to offer prognoses of the future; there were other experts who, however, are less frequently mentioned in the historical records of the Middle Ages. This is particularly true for those diviners who were most sought-after in medieval daily life. People in the country, but also townsfolk and aristocrats, called upon the services of these individuals whenever they needed medicinal herbs, love potions, fortifying spells, protection from evil spirits, or knowledge of the future. There are several different names for those experts in the arts of healing, divination, and everyday magic in all European languages. This indicates that they did not belong to a homogeneous social group. Over the course of history, these terms have changed and acquired different connotations. The most common English words witch and wizard, for example, originally neutral and frequently used to describe “wise people”, assumed an increasingly negative meaning. Collective terms such as cunning folk only appear toward the end of the Middle Ages, reflecting a large variety of local traditions and attributions. The French word devins-guérisseurs (soothsayer-healers) emphasizes the link between the art of healing and divination, similar to the Spanish curanderos, which emphasizes healing. The German term hexenmeister or the north Italian benandanti, on the other hand, refer to the defense against harmful spells (Davies 2003, vii–viii, 163). There are more reports about those healers-diviners after they came to the attention of the Church and state authorities during the witch hunts of the sixteenth century. The files of the witch trials provide the most important historical context for information about these local practitioners of magic, but this information remains difficult to evaluate because it is distorted by prejudices and stereotypes (Ginzburg 2005, 76–100). In the meantime, however, research has uncovered many facets of the “cunning folk’s” activities (Thomas 1971, 209–300; Davies 2003, 93–118; the problematic name “cunning folk” is used in this survey in lack of a more neutral collective term according to these references), ranging from summoning ghosts, scrying or rudimentary astrology for treasure hunting or the recovery of lost things. In a time before lotteries became popular, many people hoped to get rich by searching for lost treasure via divination. When they wanted to know the future, they sought out these diviners for the same reasons that the better-off consulted learned astrologers: to find out about relationships, luck in love, business transactions, or health issues. The “cunning folk” had undoubtedly been offering their services long before their existence was recorded in the documents relating to the witch trials of the Early



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Modern Era. Still, it is difficult to draw conclusions from these documents about the practices of divination in the Middle Ages. A glance at the files of the fifteenth-century trials confirms this. In 1428, for example, Matteuccia Francisci was prosecuted in the Italian town of Todi on the following charges: infecting people with illnesses, producing poison, and conjuring spirits for harmful spells. She was also accused of riding the devil on her way to the witches’ Sabbath – which is already an early testimony for the stereotype of the imagined members of the witches’ sect (Peruzzi 1955). Matteuccia had obviously offered various magical remedies, which were later documented as the typical services provided by a witch. She had gained a reputation for being a professional and clients traveled long distances to see her. The trial files, however, do not mention any divinatory practices, concentrating instead on her alleged attempts to do harm and her participation in the witches’ Sabbath. A similar case is that of Margery Jourdemayne, the witch of the Eye near Westminster, who was involved in what was thought to be a magical assassination attempt against King Henry  VI of England conducted by Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, in 1441 (Carey 1992, 138–153). Margery was accused of having prepared magically a wax figurine of the monarch together with some of the duchess’ courtiers, to cast a harmful spell. It seems that Margery’s services were similar to those of which Matteuccia was accused. Margery had met Eleanor when the duchess came to buy love potions from her: “suche medicines and drynkies as the said wicce made” (English Chronicle, ed. Davies, 58–59). There are no references to any predictions of the future made by Margery, neither in the trial files nor in contemporary works of history, although other details of that spectacular, scandalous incident at court received considerable attention. It was only later, when the story became legend, that the prophecies by Margery were mentioned, such as her prediction of the Duke of Somerset’s death and, of course, Shakespeare stages the entire affair, leaving an impressive literary monument to the witch (Shakespeare, Henry VI, Act I Scene 4). It appears that the accusers in the early witch trials were not particularly interested in divination, so even without trial records there is hardly any evidence at all of divination by “cunning folk” in the Middle Ages. Evidence from the Early and High Middle Ages is even scarcer, which makes it difficult to determine the diviners’ exact actions or their social class. Still, one thing becomes evident: apart from the witches and wizards, in rural areas, there were also scholars and priests who dabbled in the mantic arts, as references in John of Salisbury’s (d. 1180) Policraticus suggest. The Policraticus is a deeply ironic description of the peculiarities of courtly life, combined with philosophical guidance for efficient governance and a moral appeal to courtiers. This intellectually demanding as well as highly entertaining work was much appreciated by a wide audience throughout the Middle Ages (on John of Salisbury, see Wilks 1984). One rather disconcerting practice at court, in John of Salisbury’s view, was to include astrologers and diviners in the decision-making. The respective passages in the Policraticus are mostly literary in nature and form part of the intellectual game which the author plays with his audience, but two of them actually hint at the setting of divination in everyday life. The

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Policraticus is dedicated to Thomas Becket (d. 1170), John of Salisbury’s employer. In his text, John asks him several questions: What did the haruspex, whom he consulted before he went on a campaign to Brittany with the King of England, actually tell him? And what did the chiromancer, who was also called in, have to say? (John of Salisbury, Policraticus II, 27). There is no additional information about these consultations, but another passage of the Policraticus explains how to perform these mantic practices (Policraticus I, 12). The chiromancers were those who based their prophecies on palm-reading, whereas the haruspices used animal bones to pronounce their oracles. Obviously, John of Salisbury is not referring to the haruspex of classical antiquity who observed the entrails of sacrificed animals (↗ Engels and Nice, Divination in Antiq­uity, 33–34), but to the scapulimancer who derived his oracles from the bones of animals (↗ Rapisarda, Shoulder Bone as Mantic Object), so the Policraticus i­ ndirectly confirms that both chiromancers and scapulimancers used complex interpretation techniques requiring expert knowledge. It seems likely that John of Salisbury was familiar with the latest translations of the Arabic instructions regarding these methods of divination (Burnett 1987, 189–191). He even claims to have himself some first-hand experience with the techniques of specularii, i.  e. scrying, the search for omens in the reflections on smooth surfaces such as swords, mirrors or water basins (Policraticus I, 12). In addition to reflecting surfaces, this method also used spirit mediums, frequently children, who were told to observe reflections and shadows. John of Salisbury describes a scene from his childhood when a clergyman involved him, probably to find out whether he was able to perform what he had read up on before: During my boyhood I was placed under the direction of a priest, to teach me psalms. As he practiced the art of crystal gazing, it chanced that he after preliminary magical rites made use of me and a boy somewhat older, as we sat at his feet, for his sacrilegious art, in order that what he was seeking by means of finger nails moistened with some sort of sacred oil or crism, or of the smooth polished surface of a basin, might be made manifest to him by information imparted by us. And so after pronouncing names which by the horror they inspired seemed to me, child though I was, to belong to demons, […] my companion asserted that he saw certain misty figures, but dimly, while I was so blind to all this that nothing appeared to me […]. (Policraticus II, 28, ed. Pike, 164)

Toward the end of the Middle Ages, palm-reading became a specialty, often connected to the Sinti and Roma who have appeared as travelling folk in West European sources since the fifteenth century (Tuczay 2012, 78–83). Johannes Hartlieb mentions them explicitly in his Puch aller verpoten kunst (“The Book of all Forbidden Arts”), which he completed in 1456. He states that their divination services were much sought after, but did not comply with the standards he was familiar with and that he had described in his work. Therefore, he assumed that they performed these services with fraudulent intent, and so contributed to a perception which associates “Gypsies” with superstition, quackery and theft:



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There is a people who move around much in the world, called Gypsies. These people […] exercise this art [of palm reading] a great deal […]. When they come upon gullible people, they induce many to believe in them. Yet in truth their art has no foundation, […]. I tell you, I have asked many of these Gypsies, […] to see if they really knew anything about their art. But in fact I have never found among them any real skill in these matters, for all they care about is taking money from people or stealing the shirts off people’s backs. (Johannes Hartlieb, The Book of all Forbidden Arts, ed. Kieckhefer, 78)

“Do It Yourself”-Prognostication Up to this point, examples of the recipients of divine revelations and the prognoses derived from those revelations have been provided, as well as predictions of the future with the aid of mediators, such as astrologers or palm readers. The following section offers insights into “do-it-yourself” practices. There is a large variety of such methods, ranging from simple observations and applications of random mechanisms to interpretations derived from written instructions, for which a certain degree of literacy was required. Hans Vintler (d. 1419) was the district magistrate of the count of Tyrol and lived in the famous Runkelstein Castle near Bolzano. He wrote Die Pluemen der Tugent (“The Flowers of Virtue”), a didactic poem based on an Italian treatise about virtues and vices. He did not adhere strictly to the original but added large sections of text about daily magical practices and divination, which he listed under the category of vices. It seems that he had watched many of these practices performed, such as the shoe oracle. It was consulted during the 12 nights of Christmas, ending with Epiphany, and intended to help people decide where to stay: And during Twelfth Night, so I have heard, you toss the shoes backwards over your head and where the tip is pointing, there you should stay. (Hans Vintler, Pluemen der tugent V, 7938–7942, ed. Zingerle 266; trans. Heiduk)

Watching animals, particularly birds, was also considered helpful according to Hans Vintler if one wished to know the future. While the croak of a raven was seen as a bad omen, the seeing a goose early in the morning predicted a day without an accident (Pluemen der tugent V, 7885, 7876–7879, ed. Zingerle, 264–265). John of Salisbury detected a connection between the behavior of animals and weather forecasting, predicting that, when a water fowl plunges greedily below the surface or when a crow caws in the morning, it will rain (Policraticus II,2). Johannes Hartlieb also provides an account of how to interpret various signs in order to make predictions. He categorizes lead-pouring as a form of pyromancy (divination based on the element of fire). Molten lead or tin is poured into water, and the shapes it makes and their colors are then interpreted as either good or bad omens (Johannes Hartlieb, The Book of all Forbidden Arts, ed. Kieckhefer, 74). For the practice of aeromancy (divination based on the element of

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Fig. 4: Illustration of the shoe oracle in a Vintler manuscript (Vienna, Österreichische National­ bibliothek, Cod. Ser. n. 12819, fol.151v; date: 1419). Photo credits: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (http://data.onb.ac.at/rep/1002E06E).

air), Johannes Hartlieb recommends interpreting sneezing, because sneezing was the result of warm air being expelled from the body: When a person sneezes, […] they take it for a great sign of fortune or unfortune, and they used it for fortune-telling. If there are three sneezes, then there are four thieves about the house. If there are two, the person should get up and lie somewhere else to sleep. If there are thirteen, that is supposed to be very good, and whatever appears [in dreams] is supposed to be turned to good. (Johannes Hartlieb, The Book of all Forbidden Arts, ed. Kieckhefer, 63)

It is unlikely that, back in the Middle Ages, everybody believed in the validity of such methods of divination, and the three cited authors themselves harbor strong reservations about those practices. From a modern perspective, all this may appear merely a form of superstition practiced by illiterate people, but that would be a false conclusion. John Mirfield’s (d. 1407) Breviarium Bartholomei, a medical encyclopedia covering all fields of medical science according to the established standards of its time, demonstrates this very clearly. Mirfield, a chaplain at St. Bartholomew’s hospital in Smithfield, London, compiled several classics of medicine in his Breviarium, particularly the works of Bernard de Gordon (d. ca. 1330), but also included his own observations. A highly telling example of prediction methods can be found in the chapter dedicated to the signs of impending death. Besides the analysis of fever and



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other physical signs, John Mirfield recommends onomatomancy, divination based on a person’s name, as a method of prediction: Moreover, if there is any doubt as to whether a person is or is not dead, apply lightly roasted onion to his nostrils, and if he be alive, he will immediately scratch his nose. Furthermore, if the first vowel of the name of a patient, who has lost an eye or is otherwise mutilated, be A or O, then he will suffer in his right side, and if it be E, I, or U, then in the left. Again, in acute diseases, uncovering of the body, and restlessness of the arms, is a deadly sign: similarly when spasm follows the taking of a laxative. […] Again, take the name of the patient, the name of the messenger sent to summon the Physician, and the name of the day upon which the messenger first came to you; join all their letters together, and if an even number result, the patient will not escape; if the number be odd, then he will recover. (John Mirfield, Breviarium Bartholomei, eds. Smith-Hartley and Aldrige, 69–71)

The matter-of-factness with which John Mirfield lists this method of allocating numerical values to a name in order to determine a patient’s remaining lifetime in his Breviarium demonstrates which mantic ruses were considered useful in everyday practice, and this was even more evident with regard to the accidental nature of the progression of diseases. It appears that John Mirfield and his readers were unaware of any contradiction between the contingency-based principle of onomatomancy and the otherwise highly rational recommendations of his Breviarium that were based on expert knowledge. Such contradictions are often found in medieval medicine. In several cases, scientific knowledge, where everything not approved by the recognized authorities is rejected, and mantic methods of prognostication are combined to create comprehensive practical guidebooks (↗ Demaitre, Medical Prognostication Western Christian World, 553 and 560). For practical purposes, it was entirely possible to mix elements from the different levels of the hierarchy of knowledge but, as far as the theory was concerned, the strict standards separating scientific and unscientific knowledge remained in place. There are several other very popular text-based methods of divination which deserve a brief mention here, although they are presented in more detail elsewhere in this handbook. Since the days of antiquity, lot books have enjoyed continuing popularity (↗ Heiles, Sortes). The Sortes Sanctorum (the Oracles of the Saints) look back to this long tradition. Based on the ancient Roman sortes, this collection of 56 oracles had been adapted in early Christianity. Consulting the oracles is remarkably simple: after rolling three dice, the spots are arranged in descending order. The sequence of numbers corresponds to one sentence of the oracle. Here are two examples for demonstration purposes: The sequence of 6, 5 and 2 yielded the following result: You want to catch the horns of a running stag; that is difficult, because it stays in the woods, but when it is returning to its den, it will be possible for you to catch it; so what you are doubting will come into your hands. (Sortes Sanctorum, ed. Montero Cartelle, 76; trans. Heiduk)

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The combination of 6, 2 and 1 read: Your way is prepared, be patient, ask God, and you will gain what you desire. (Sortes Sanctorum, ed. Montero Cartelle, 82; trans. Heiduk)

The oracles speak for themselves: they remain vague, with a positive or negative tendency, can provide answers to all sorts of questions and leave sufficient room for interpretation depending on the personal situation of the inquirer. In the Early Middle Ages, when the rate of literacy was still very low, mediators were needed in order to consult lot books such as the Sortes Sanctorum. These were probably mainly priests, which explains why penitential books or collections of Church laws frequently prohibit these methods of divination. In the Late Middle Ages, when mediators were rarely any longer required, consulting oracle books became a form of entertainment. One of the earliest European printed book of dice oracles, which appeared in 1482, was introduced in the first sentence by its author, Lorenzo Spirito: “Per dare spasso ala fannata mente – to give pleasure to the strained mind.” This was the very book which, some decades later, on Shrove Tuesday of 1523, caught the attention of the mathematician Niccolò Tartaglia. In Verona, he observed a group of young people who were clearly having a lot of fun with Spirito’s lot book. Unfortunately, he fails to inform us exactly what they found so hilarious, but was more interested in the mathematical problems related to the combinations of dice falls (↗ Heiduk, Games and ­Prognostication, 781– 783). Later, he published a book on these problems, entitled the General Treatise on Number and Measure (Rosenstock 2010, 3). Still, this short description is enough to convey a vivid impression of how the young people were prodding and mocking each another because of what the oracle had told them about their love lives or careers. Interpreting most lot books is easy; interpreting the results of geomancy, however, is somewhat more complex. This form of divination is practiced by making up to 16 rows of holes in sand or earth, or placing a similar pattern of dots on wax, clay or paper, quickly and randomly. With the aid of a square of 12 fields – called the geomantic mirror – patterns are derived from the rows of dots and then attributed to the planets and signs of the zodiac. The combinations of planets and signs reveal certain properties which have an impact on the future. In a sense, geomancy is a simplified form of horoscopy without the complicated, time-consuming calculation of the constellation of the stars (↗ Rapisarda, Mantic Arts Western Christian World, 432–434). As a kind of “astrology light”, geomancy was practiced in various areas. One of its practitioners was King Charles V of France (d. 1380), who enjoyed presenting himself as a wise monarch and was very proud of his vast library in the Louvre, a public and permanent institution. It held about 1,000 volumes, many of them lost today, but the inventory has survived and lists the title of each volume. The list contains 23 books on geomancy. One of them contains the king’s own signature and the bookmarks which he used to flag his favorite works. This tells us that he took a personal interest in this method of divination and consulted at least this particular book himself (Delisle 1907,



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123, No. 752). Unfortunately there are no medieval records about the specific geomantic inquiries made by Charles V, unlike those from the sixteenth century about the inquiries made by August, the Elector of Saxony (d. 1586) (Ludwig 2015).

The Functions and Social Settings of Prognostication This selection of examples from medieval everyday life illustrates the important functions of prognostication and offers clues about its social context. What stand out are the differences between the revelations of prophets and visionaries and the alternative methods of predicting the future. Divination and astrological calculations are supposed to give answers to specific questions, whereas visions focus on the individual experience of a mystical encounter with a saint or God himself. Whether such experiences were actually based on states of ecstasy or whether certain literary motives were used to deliver a message does not matter in this context. It is the setting which is decisive, the context provided by historical evidence. Visions are about revelations of divine mysteries, less often about predictions of the future. The future revealed in a vision – references to the end of time or the Hereafter – is a mirror of the present. It is now, in the present, that warnings need to be heeded and behavior needs to change: that of individuals, spiritual communities or the whole of Christianity. The chosen examples demonstrate that the impact of the revelations on the outside world varied. The records of the monk from Vaucelles were passed on within his order, but there is no evidence that they had any effect. The fact that only one manuscript has survived could either mean that the so-called vision did not appear credible or was seen as a marginal incident. Unlike the messages of the female visionaries Catherine of Siena and Liedwy of Schiedham, the Vaucelles revelations had never provoked any debate or been subject to control by the Church authorities. Catherine of Siena had always been very self-assured when confronted with skeptics. According to her hagiographers, she was able to win many of them over. Liedwy of Schiedham was bed-ridden and therefore less able to defend herself against hostile critics and presumptuous admirers alike. Compared to Catherine of Siena, she appears to be far less resolute and autonomous. Many areas of the manic arts were male-dominated, particularly those where thoughts and ideas were expressed in writing. Most of the authors of instructions for divination, often scholars or clerics, as well as their disputatious critics were male. There are a few exceptions, such as Christine de Pizan (d. after 1429), who participated in the discourse about the role of astrology at the royal court of France (Cadden 1997). The practical exercise of sophisticated astrology required a university education and was therefore a privilege enjoyed by men. However, there has been no research to date on the role that astrology may have played for female medieval healers, quite a few of whom were highly educated. Male doctors who had graduated from university tended to see them as competitors and attempted to prohibit them from practicing medicine

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(Green 1989). The significance of astrology for courtly life was related to its classification, however controversial, as a science. Erudite astrologers often acted as the personal physicians to royal personages, which enhanced both their own status and that of the ruler, who gained a reputation for being a wise man. Consulting astrologers before political and military decisions were taken presented an opportunity for the ostentatious display of precious instruments, computation tables, and books. Emperor Frederick II excelled at staging such events in the tradition of the Roman Emperors, as happened during the siege of Pavia in 1248 (Rolandinus Patavinus, Cronica, ed. Bonardi, 84). To employ one or even several astrologers became fashionable at court. In fifteenth-century France, the court office of the astrological advisor was created, and other courts followed suit (Boudet 2006, 303–316). Guido Bonatti and Richard Trewythian represent also the diversity of business models among medieval astrologers, and their clients, mostly townspeople, came from different social backgrounds. Speculations about the imminent end of the world, based on calculations of the stellar constellations, sometimes made it difficult to distinguish science from revelation. In the Late Middle Ages, prophetic writings based on astrology enjoyed great popularity (Mentgen 2005, 55–127; Boudet 2006, 316–325). The degree of complexity achieved by astrology in the Middle Ages (↗ Burnett, Astral Sciences Western Christian World) remains unrivalled, and no other method of divination even comes close, although people continued to make use of the services offered by other experts. Chiromancy and scapulimancy were mentioned as techniques that were open to many different interpretations, so it was advantageous when the expert was a person of considerable knowledge and experience. The summoning of supernatural forces to catch a glimpse of the future was also usually left to the professionals. It remains somewhat unclear who was considered an expert in the field of divination, and whether a high rate of success, personal charisma, or knowledge of ancient wisdom were key factors. Male as well as female healers-diviners in the rural areas existed as a separate group of professionals offering a wide range of services. The example of the Duchess of Gloucester proves that their clients came from all walks of life. There was, however, a risk involved: that of becoming an outsider, excluded from society because of the nature of the services offered, which materialized when the witch hunts started at the end of the Middle Ages. In Johannes Hartlieb’s polemics against the Roma and Sinti, the accusation of fraudulent practices provided a strong argument for their marginalization. The reason why people in the Middle Ages wanted to know the future and consulted astrologists, diviners or saintly mystics, had obviously more to do with universal human desires than with the circumstances of the time. The prognoses were meant to help them to take precautions in order to ensure their security and survival or the salvation of their souls. Guido Bonatti explicitly mentions that they also served as a kind of therapy, to provide encouragement and consolation in times of distress or grief, clarity before important decisions were taken, or a sense of purpose, by making the future appear less uncertain. According to George Minois, making a prediction



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is the first step toward manipulating the future, because the future in all its guises always reflects the present and is shaped by the intentions, desires, and fears regarding the present (Minois 1998, 17–21). Once the prognosis has been put into words, it starts to have an influence on the future in the sense of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Prophecies like those of Catherine of Siena provide an example of how, starting with the Church, a whole society is prepared for change because of a new awareness of what awaits people at the end of time. Prognoses are never neutral. When a prediction is made and the right moment for a decision about marriage, business transactions, or life expectancy is determined, the future starts to take shape, based on the needs of the present but, as gloomy as this may sound, divination in the Middle Ages was not always a matter of fate. Lot books like those by Lorenzo Spirito prove that there was also a more playful approach to divination, as simply a source of entertainment.

Part 3 – Medieval Techniques of Prognostication and their Historical Evidence Overview: Methods of Prognostication The following overview of the medieval methods of prognostication and their historical evidence is far from complete. Prodigies, for example, can be interpreted in so many ways that, due to the sheer number involved, it is impossible to list them all. Attributions and meanings have changed over time, so it often remains unclear which methods were actually practiced in the Middle Ages, and which were simply book knowledge from antiquity. Furthermore, the terminology used for mantic techniques in the research literature is somewhat misleading, because it is based on a systematic approach that did not exist in the Middle Ages. Terms such as capnomancy, botanomancy or sycomancy often originate from the philhellenism of Agrippa of Nettesheim (d. 1535) and other authors of the Renaissance period. They do not, however, appear in the medieval sources, although there were categories for the different areas of divination, used by early writers such as Isidore of Seville and later ones such as Johannes Hartlieb. The majority referred to the four elements (pyromancy, hydromany, aeromancy, and geomancy) plus additional mantic arts like chiromancy or necromancy. The aim of this guide is, however, to describe, not only the methods of divination, but all types of future prognoses. For this purpose, it seems reasonable to move away from the divergent historical models and use the following categories, as determined by the author, instead: a. Methods for the Calculation of Time b. Methods for the Interpretation of Natural Signs c. Methods for the Interpretation of Random Patterns and Casting of Lots

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d. Forms of Intuitive/Inspired Prediction e. Methods for Quantifying Risks a. Calculation of Time The calculation of periods and points in time during the Middle Ages relied on astronomic principles. The distinction between astronomy and astrology, according to the Ancient Greek classifications, was generally known in medieval times, too but, in language use, the dividing line became blurred which explains why they are often used synonymously in the historical sources (↗ Burnett, Astral Sciences Western Christian World, 485–487). The same applies to their practical application: the determination of a point in time often automatically involved an astrological interpretation of the influence that the stars would have at that moment. An obvious example of this is the field of iatromathematics, an approach which bases the diagnosis of a person’s health and the resulting treatment on the influence of the celestial bodies at a given moment (↗ Demaitre, Medical Prognostication Western Christian World, 563–564). Enormously important in daily life in the Middle Ages were prognoses about lucky and unlucky days according to calendars, for which modern research established the term hemerology (↗ Nothaft, Calendrical Calculations Western Christian World, 605–606). The days listed in a calendar were not simply marked as propitious or unfavorable but often contained relatively detailed information about which activities to avoid on an unlucky day, such as buying a house, sowing grain, having one’s hair cut or being bled. The doctrine of the Church categorically rejected this approach, as it did all divinatory practices with pagan roots. Nevertheless, the practice of hemerology underwent a certain Christianization as the feasts of saints increasingly became the starting points for identifying days. b. Interpretation of Natural Signs This category includes observations of animate and inanimate nature and also predictions of the future derived from their interpretation. The preferred object of studies of animate nature was the human being. In physiognomy, all physical features served as indicators of personality traits and, by implication, of a person’s future behavior. In medieval treatises, physiognomy is recommended as a reliable method for choosing trustworthy servants and office holders (↗ Forster, Pseudo-Aristotelian Sirr al-asrār/ Secretum secretorum). The subcategories of physiognomy are the study of spots on the fingernails – supposed to be a sign of certain medical conditions (Johannes Hartlieb, The Book of all Forbidden Arts, ed. Kieckhefer, 83) – and chiromancy, foretelling the future by studying the lines on the palm of the hand (↗ Rapisarda, Mantic Arts Western Christian World, 435–438). Prognostications based on animal observation are legion. There are, however, no medieval records of ritualized observations such as the Roman augurium, the study of bird flight, although the term was still in use. Cries of birds and other animals, as well as their behavior at certain times of the day, offer an inexhaustible source of interpretable signs, ranging from predictions of personal



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fate to weather forecasts. A few significant examples, such as explained in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, are mentioned in the previous chapter and in the article on “Mantic Arts” (↗ Rapisarda, Mantic Arts Western Christian World, 439–440). The first observations of inanimate nature concentrate on the elements of air and fire. Aeromancy, as the study of all celestial phenomena, has always been a vague term, even in Antiquity. In the Middle Ages, it still existed, but without any fixed definition. Nevertheless, the number of methods employed to interpret celestial signs was vast. Eclipses of the sun and moon, comets, air movements, cloud formations, rainbows, and the shades and colors of the sky were taken into account, often for the purpose of weather forecasting (↗ Kocánová, Weather Forecasting Western Christian World). There were even books on the interpretation of thunder (= brontologies) based on antique works (for example, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms Rawlinson D. 939) (↗ Grünbart, Importance of Thunder), although there was no unambiguous collective term for these techniques of prognostication and divination in the Middle Ages. Pyromancy describes the consultation of oracles through the flames of sacrificial fires in Antiquity. Knowledge about these methods continued to spread, but their ritual significance and, eventually, the practice itself were lost. Occasionally, the method of reading smoke, its various shapes and the direction into which it drifts is mentioned in medieval texts. This seems to have allowed for a wide variety of interpretations. Agrippa of Nettesheim was the first to call this capnomancy. As already mentioned in part II, Johannes Hartlieb, somewhat arbitrarily, considers lead-pouring a category of pyromancy. On the other hand, scapulimancy, the reading of oracles from the bones of animals (↗ Rapisarda, Shoulder-Bone as Mantic Object), generally boiled shoulder blades, was a common term in the scholarly language of the Middle Ages. c. Interpretation of Random Patterns and the Casting of Lots Various prognostication methods based on random mechanisms were also widespread in the Middle Ages. Casting lots may have been the earliest form of divination: when a decision was to be made, in a tribunal or when elections were held, the divine will was to be revealed through this method. Cleromancy is a term of Greek origin, coined during the Renaissance for this method. During the Middle Ages, the Latin words sortes and sortilegia were used, from which also many vernacular terms derived. Sortes included also the type of book oracles used for prognostication, as presented in part 2 (↗ Heiles, Sortes). Destiny was not only foretold by dice, but also by playing cards and turntables (volvelle), or books opened at a random page. Any book could be used for this purpose, but the Bible was preferred. In the research literature, bibliomancy is a term that is often used to describe this kind of divination by books. In the tradition of Antiquity, geomancy is defined as the study of movements on the ground without, however, any further explanation being provided about how to practice this. In the Middle Ages, the technique of placing rows of dots on sand, on the ground, or on paper, which had its origins in the Islamic world, was called geomancy. Patterns were read from these dots and allocated to constellations. Prognoses were

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then derived from the astrological properties of those constellations (↗ Rapisarda, Mantic Arts Western Christian World, 432–434). In his medical compendium, John Mirfield already refers to onomatomancy, a post-medieval term for the allocation of what were thought to be significant numbers to personal names. In the Middle Ages, this method was used for medical prognoses but was also very popular for predicting the outcome of single combat. d. Intuitive/Inspired Prediction In the research literature, both adjectives, “intuitive” as well as “inspired”, are applied to prognoses dictated by supernatural entities. The choice of words suggests differences, depending on whether a message is sent to the soul by outside forces (lat. inspiratio) (↗ Holdenried, Western Christian World, 330), or whether one has gained a direct insight (lat. intuitio) (f. e. Lange, 2006, 249). The descriptions of such phenomena make it difficult to differentiate between the two, as the examples of visions in part 2 demonstrate. The richest sources for the medieval tradition of this method of prognostication are the countless narratives of divine revelations, made by God himself, by angels or saints, in the form of prophecies and visions received during wakefulness or in a dream. Still, it seems advisable to differentiate between visions and the interpretation of dreams, because they are the subject of different literary genres: reports about ecstatic visions are mostly found in hagiographic texts or in monastic records of an affirmative character. For the interpretation of dreams, there was a special type of prognostic literature, the dreambooks, based on classical treatises about dream interpretation (↗ Schirrmeister, Dream Interpretation Western Christian World; ↗ Falcone, Dreambooks Western Christian World). Some of these treatises first discuss what causes dreams, under which circumstances dreams are equivalent to inspirations, and whether these inspirations are actually of divine rather than demonic origin. Under the label oneiromancy, the interpretation of dreams is counted as a mantic art. In the context of intuition, the sense of foreboding could be interpreted as a precursor to visionary revelation. That people and even animals may have a presentiment of disaster, accidents or death, is explained in both Antiquity and the Middle Ages by the sympathetic correlation between the macro- and the microcosm: the link between earthly creatures and cosmic forces (Tuczay 2012, 291–292). Sometimes, divine revelations, or rather the communication with supernatural beings and with hereafter, required a little assistance. The summoning of spirits was already mentioned in the context of everyday magic. Medieval works on learned magic gave instructions regarding the complex rituals for summoning entities sometimes called angels, sometimes called demons. As beings from the higher realm, they were thought to possess deep knowledge about cosmic matters, enabling them to predict the future of humans (↗ Otto and Heiduk, Prognostication in Learned Magic). Such summoning rituals not only provided material for entertaining stories about devils and wizards, such as those by Caesarius of Heisterbach in his Dialogus miraculorm



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(Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, eds. Nösges and Schneider 3, 960–967), as the Liber florum, written by the priest John of Morigny (d. after 1315?), illustrates that such rituals were considered elements of religious beliefs and taken very seriously. Their adherents defended them against the official religious doctrine (Fanger 2015, 1–12). Medieval scholars often summarized magical arts that included summoning rituals under the heading necromancy, since the twelfth century also known as nigromancy (lat. niger = black), a slurred version of the term (↗ Rapisarda, Mantic Arts Western Christian World, 441). This term had a negative connotation, which signaled the absolute damnability of such practices. Later, the so-called “black magic” derived from these arts. Other medieval scholars, however, defined necromancy/nigromancy as the far less sinister study of the secrets of nature (Fidora 2013, 63–64; ↗ Fidora, Tractates on the Divisions of Sciences). In classical Antiquity, necromancy described rituals for summoning the dead, involving blood and body parts. Nowadays most scholars usually don't reckon that such rituals were still practiced during the Middle Ages. However, medieval manuals for necromantic conjurations of the dead existed beyond doubt like the instruction in the Liber Razielis (↗ Otto and Heiduk, Prognostication in Learned Magic, 953–955). Moreover, these manuals were just one of various ways of communicating with the dead in the hereafter in order to consult them about the future. There may have been attempts to summon the dead; for instance, in churchyards (Devereux 2010). The example of Liedwy of Schiedam in part 2 shows how visionary mystics were instrumentalized as mediums to contact the dead. The urge to stay in touch with deceased relatives  – including physical contact with their bodily remains, for instance in ossuaries  – has always been strong. In the thirteenth century, the Church established All Souls’ Day, an attempt to channel this desire by imposing acceptable rules for the remembrance of the dead. People not only prayed for the salvation of the souls of the dead in an orthodox manner but also, quite pragmatically, asked them for help in times of hardship or when they wished to know the future. The idea of consulting the dead about lucky lottery numbers, however, is definitely a post-medieval approach (Daxelmüller 2010). As a last intuitive/inspired form of prognostication, John of Salisbury’s method, introduced in part 2, shall be mentioned again. Here, a medium, preferably a child, is asked to interpret the movements of shadow and light on reflective surfaces. In the Middle Ages, such methods were usually categorized as hydromancy, while the Byzantine term lecanomancy refers to the bowl of water used for the purpose of divination (↗ Grünbart, Lekanomanteia Eastern Christian World). It was known that other artefacts, such as mirrors or crystal balls were used, too, but the terms for such methods of divination, cataptromancy or crystallomancy, were created later. e. Quantifying Risks To date, little is known about the mathematical methods of prognostication in the Middle Ages apart from the calculation regarding time and calendars. There are,

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however, records of very rudimentary but still rather impressive probability calculations. Merchants relied on these to determine the risks along a certain trade route and the resulting costs for the insurance of their goods (↗ Franklin, Quantifying Risks Western Christian World). The pseudo-Ovidian poem De Vetula contains probability calculations based on the throwing of three hexagonal dice. This demonstrates that medieval readers were not only aware that certain results showed up more frequently than others, but that at least some understood how these probability calculations were obtained and could be presented in a mathematical scheme. This enabled them to calculate their betting odds and improve their chances of winning. (↗ Heiduk, Games and Prognostication). Astrology stands out in the schematic classification of prognostication methods. While the calculations regarding time and calendars were based on astronomy, astrological interpretations formed an integral part of various other methods of prognostication. Astrology explained celestial phenomena such as comets as portents, helped people to read the dot patterns in geomancy, determined the sequence of summoning rituals by defining the astrologically opportune moments for their performance, and was even connected to doomsday prophecies. If there were a hierarchy of prognostication methods, astrology would rank, uncontested, at the top, due to its versatility. Its outstanding importance is reflected in the intense debates about its scientific value and compatibility with the Christian doctrine, but above all in its omnipresence in the medieval recorded history, poetry, science, and advice literature.

Written Sources, Artefacts, and Pictures There exists a wide variety of historical evidence available for research on medieval prognostication. However, these sources provide a very limited insight into the past, because it was only toward the end of the Middle Ages that written records became more common. In the area of prognostication, oral traditions probably prevailed for the majority of the medieval millenium. The observations of everyday prognostication practices made by Hans Vintler and Johannes Hartlieb started very late in the fifteenth century. The same applies to the detailed records made by professional astrologers such as Richard Trewythian. Those mantic practices, performed either in private or in semi-public spaces, were rarely recorded. Frequently, written documents were only produced when the state or Church authorities started intervening and trials were held. The evidence they provide is relatively selective. Even narrative texts such as works of history or vitae offer only glimpses of unsettling events, such as the appearance of wandering prophets, unusual natural phenomena, or the presumed miracles worked by a visionary, written down to confirm her saintliness and proximity to God. The research on medieval prognostication is also limited by the lack of many historical documents. While it is true that many relevant texts have been critically exam-



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ined and edited, and important fundamental research has been carried out, this work remains far from completion, particularly in the area of astrology with its immensely rich tradition. The digitalization of historical records for computer analysis is making slow progress. Databases, such as the search engine on magic and mantic practices in medieval legal texts created by the Käte-Hamburger-Kolleg in Erlangen, represent the small beginnings of such an endeavor (https://www.ikgf.fau.de/publications/databases/). Other types of sources, such as historiographical works, have only recently been studied in more detail with regard to visions and prognoses of the future (Lehner 2015). The following overview of source material is just a cursory listing. The main articles on the practices of prognostication offer more detailed information.

Manuals As far as written records are concerned, there exist enormous differences in both the quantity and diversity of the source material. The bulk of the information about prognostication practices comes from manuals; i.  e. instructions on the application of mantic knowledge. The majority of these are dedicated to its supreme discipline: astrology. These records comprise the standard introductory works, textbooks, and comments used for university studies, volumes of tables and calendars with astrological remarks, astrological prodigy literature, nativities, and predictions of mundane astrology, but also works on mixed subjects such as astrometeorology and astromedicine. Then there is a highly specific type of work: polemic papers that argue for or against the scientific nature and significance of astrology (↗ Rapisarda, Doubts and Criticism on Astrology). The vast majority of these documents were written by scholars and professionals. The more popular media, such as practical calendars containing astrological mottos, hemerological instructions, and weather proverbs, appear only in the Late Middle Ages. There is far less information available about the other mantic arts, and it is less diverse. The number of treatises on geomancy, oneiromancy, and physiognomy, including chiromancy, is relatively high, which suggests that this knowledge was not only of scientific interest but also applied in practice. Instructions on scapulimancy are less common, and other mantic techniques received only a brief mention in treatises on other subjects. Explications of onomatomancy can be found in works on fencing or medical compendia, but there are no specific works dedicated to those subjects. Instructions on how to perform magic rituals also occur in surprisingly large numbers, but divination is just a minor aspect of this type of literature (↗ Heiduk and Otto, Manuals of Learned Magic). Following the concept of the Secretum secretorum, the instructions for several divinatory arts, in particular for physiognomy and other relatively basic applications, were not only included in the advisory books consulted at court (↗ Yun, Culture of Prognosis in Mirror-of-Princes; ↗ Forster, Pseudo-Aristotelian Sirr al-asrār/Secretum secretorum), but also widely circulated and popular with a large audience. Lot books, in their enormous diversity, also count as manuals.

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Countless medieval manuscripts of lot books, and the discovery that many of these works were among the first books to be printed, confirm their popularity throughout the ages. Textbooks on medical prognostication, on the other hand, belong to the category of scholarly literature, whereas books on commercial agreements, including insurance contracts, merchants’ manuals, instructions for applied arithmetic, and tables of compound interest, were part of the merchants’ world.

Normative Texts and Reflective Works of Literature Normative texts from the canonical as well as the secular side provide a huge amount of source material regarding divinatory prognostication. For centuries, legal texts were concerned with divination and prohibited it repeatedly. This indicates that regulations from earlier times were regularly included in the current legislation, and that divinatory practices posed a persistent problem. Those legal texts address a wide range of mantic arts but, since they often simply quoted the definitions of the Church Fathers, it is impossible to draw any conclusions about how often those arts that are mentioned were practiced or exactly how they were performed. Reflective works of literature, like treatises on natural sciences or theology, summae as well as encyclopedias, are often inspired by these normative texts, and so adopt their basic definitions of the mantic arts and condemn their unlawful character. Sometimes, however, this criticism of all forms of superstition sounds hollow. Instead, as in the case of Johannes Hartlieb, the critic seems to veil the useful descriptions on how to practice these arts. In contrast to the collections of laws, reflective writings leave more room for debate on the legitimacy of fortune telling and the basic human need to know the future. Several scholars, such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas (see part 1), adopted a more nuanced view of the issue.

Narrative Texts Knowledge of the visions, experiences of the afterlife, and the prophecies of medieval mystics have been transmitted by narrative texts. Autographs are rarer in this context than vitae or reports of visions by fellow brothers, confessors, or hagiographers. Autographs of female visionaries are the sole exception here. The historiographical works of the Middle Ages, however, provide a real treasure trove of notes about presumed portents, prophecies, astrological interpretations, apocalyptical hysterics, and the appearance of mystics or false prophets. In these notes, the future is foretold mainly ex eventu, with a strongly moralizing undertone. The medieval historiographers are often the only informants about the practical aspects of prognostication in the non-Christian societies of the Middle Ages, but their accounts are often biased (↗ McKinnell, Pagan Traditions in Germanic Languages; ↗ Boyle, Early Medieval Perspectives on



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Celtic World; ↗ Słupecki, Prognostication in Pagan Beliefs among Slavs). A special form of narrative prose is fictional texts, such as courtly poetry and novels (↗ Rapisarda, Novels and Poems Western Christian World). The diviners and sorceresses appear with fantastic features in those works, but this mirrors the medieval imagination about fortune telling. However, these fantasy figures often possess a surprisingly detailed knowledge of astronomical devices or are able to quote learned authors.

Artefacts Very few of the medieval artefacts used in prognostication have survived. Of course, some of the archeological finds or utensils stored in treasuries, such as crystals, mirrors, dice, or playing cards, may have been used for divination, but there are no pre-modern artefacts known that would have been clearly marked for such use. Therefore, the tradition of objects is limited to accessories in lot books, such as the volvelle, and to the astronomical instruments used by astrologers, most of them astrolabes and less often quadrants. Astrolabes for daily use were made of parchment or paper applied to wood and have not been preserved, unlike the more prestigious ones made of metal (↗ Rodríguez Arribas, Mathematical Instruments).

Pictorial Traditions Pictorial traditions of prognostication from the Middle Ages exist in large numbers, most of them illustrations of the biblical traditions, about the Old Testament prophets, the Three Magi from the Orient, or the Book of Revelation. The scenes depicted were not intended to predict the future specifically. They kept the memory of Christian tradition alive and reflected the general idea of the end of time. For people in the Middle Ages, it was normal to be surrounded by pictures telling stories. These were everywhere: illuminations of books of liturgy and prayer, frescos, sculptures and stained glass windows in churches (↗ Wagner, Prophecy in Visual Art), maps of the world that marked the places of salvation and those of the hereafter (↗ Scafi, Medieval Mappae mundi), or, at the beginning of the Modern Age, pamphlets containing apocalyptical messages (↗ Wagner, Three Images of Celestial Phenomena). Fewer in number were the non-biblical subjects related to prognostication. Illuminated treatises on astrology often show the authority figures from this discipline, such as its mythical founder, Hermes Trismegistos, ancient philosophers, such as Ptolemy, or masters from the Islamic world, such as Abū Maʻshar. Beside these authority figures, there are also pictures of anonymous astrologers at work, observing the stars with astrolabes and quadrants (Mazal 2001). Sometimes, such depictions simply enrich the scenery, irrespective of any astrological activities, such as in the illuminations of travel reports or courtly novels, with no apparent connection to the text. However, the most

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important visual medium for the study of celestial objects and phenomena are the constellations. The pictorial tradition of the constellations started in the early Middle Ages with the illumination of manuscripts, but soon constellations occurred as figurative motifs, for instance at the portal of San Isidoro in Léon, or, in the Renaissance, in the frescos of the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara. The results of comprehensive studies of the pictures in manuscripts have been made available only recently in several large volumes (Blume, Haffner, Metzger 2012–2018). Medieval pictures of the constellations did not serve the purpose of biblical or theological studies, but were used in schools and universities as well as by scientists. They were intended to illustrate knowledge and make it easier to memorize. They were also an information medium, which did not require an accompanying text. Eventually, they developed a life of their own as motifs, independently of the original teaching purpose.

Fig. 5: Constellation of Draco, Ursa maior, and Ursa minor according to the Leiden Aratea (Leiden, Bibliotheek der ­Rijksuniversiteit, Voss. Lat. Q. 79, fol. 3v; date: saec. IX). Photo credits: Leiden University Digital Collections.

Part 4 – Decisive Moments in the History of Prognostication in the Western Christian World during the Middle Ages The diversity of prognostication methods in the Western Christian world of the Middle Ages was enormous. They differed from region to region and enjoyed varying degrees of popularity, so general tendencies are difficult to identify. At certain critical moments, however, changes occurred which had a lasting impact on all areas of prognostication. Some of them were the result of the progress of Christianity in the Early and High Middle Ages, others of the dissemination of knowledge through the translation movements of the High Middle Ages, and, in the Late Middle Ages, the popularization of scholarly knowledge on the one hand, and, on the other hand, also the increasing attempts of regulation by the religious and secular authorities.



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Prognostication and Christianization in the Early and High Middle Ages Part 1 of this survey has already demonstrated that, in many areas of prognostication, the Christian doctrine changed the attitude to the traditions from Antiquity. It brought about a radical change in the concept of time and, by implication, the concept of the future. In medieval Christian faith, time on earth was aligned to the end. With the second coming of Christ, the divine plan of salvation would be completed and, at the Last Judgement, humans’ final destiny decided. From that point onward, looking at the future could be no more than looking at a finite period of time. Since only God knew when the end of time would happen, there was no clear conception of how much more time on earth would be allotted to humankind. The Christians thought that they were living in the last age, with the end already in sight. Eschatology became the prevalent paradigm for interpreting all kinds of signs that might reveal insights into the divine plan of salvation (Fried 2001, 24–41). Predictions about the exact date of the end of the world remained speculative in nature, whereas the instruments for measuring time became increasingly refined. With the spread of Christianity, also, the liturgical calendar became widely used. Since the dates of certain holidays, such as Easter, varied, accurate calculations were required to determine these. The Christian calendar also determined the hours of prayer and service throughout the day, and this cycle of prayer provided the structure for daily life. Elaborate calendrical calculations, computistic tables, and increasingly sophisticated measuring tools made periodic cycles predictable (Borst 1999). With the spread of Christianity, divination lost the institutional framework in which ancient societies had embedded it. The oracles of Delphi or Dodona were connected to sacred places, so the consultation of these oracles required the observance of established rites, and the words of the seers were interpreted and controlled by the priests. In ancient Roman culture, the reading of signs by priests was a ritual with fundamental importance for the state (↗ Engels and Nice, Divination in Antiquity). In the Christian understanding, the gift of prophecy was God-given, free from institutional contexts. People of any social standing, age or sex could become the voice of God at any time and in any place. The examples in part 2 of the survey demonstrate that, even by the Early Middle Ages, not all prophetic figures were perceived as trustworthy, even if their appearance usually created quite a stir. Increasingly, the Church authorities reserved the exclusive right to verify visions, auditions, and other presumed revelations, so the chances of being officially recognized as a true prophet became increasingly slim after the thirteenth century. It would, however, be misleading to speak of the “disappearance of the practice” (Minois 1998, 253–278). The popularity of prophecies and visions remained high, although their recipients frequently came under suspicion of holding heterodox religious beliefs. It seems logical to assume that, in times of crisis, prophets appeared in particularly large numbers. Cataclysmic events, such as the Mongol invasion or the plague in the fourteenth century, were

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certainly interpreted as eschatological signs, but they created a demand for historiographical reflexion rather than prophecies (Bezzola 1974, 90–109; Sprandel 1987). So far, there are no methodologically convincing studies about the conjunctures of prophecies over long periods of time. Christianity also broke with the mantic traditions, as already mentioned in part 1. Early Christian authors condemned all forms of divination as pagan rites and admonished true believers to stay away from these in order to withstand the treacherous insinuations of demons. Following Isidore of Seville, the medieval discourse connected both the mantic arts and magic, as wicked superstitio. Although a clear distinction was drawn between Christian and pagan practices, in medieval daily life, the dividing line between the two remained blurred for a long time. Gregory of Tours (d. 594), for example, writes in his History of the Franks that Duke Gunthram had faith in the classical arts of divination: Then Gunthram sent a slave to a certain woman known to him from the time of king Charibert, who had a familiar spirit, in order that she should relate what was to happen. He asserted besides that she had foretold to him the time, not only the year but also the day and hour, at which king Charibert was to die. (Gregory of Tours, Libri historiarum V, 14 = History of the Francs, ed. Brehaut, 116)

King Merovech, on the other hand, modified the ancient method of bibliomancy by opening books of Christian liturgy at random pages to receive his prophecies (Libri historiarum V, 14 = History of the Francs, ed. Brehaut, 117). There is every reason to believe that the constantly repeated warnings about the dubious connection between magic and the mantic arts – which were taken up from Isidore by Hincmar of Reims (d. 882), Regino of Prüm (d. 915), and others – were not simply born out of the desire to categorize all forms of divination, as they are to be understood as a reaction to the persistence with which those ancient arts were practiced, although they had probably long ceased to be part of pagan cults (Harmening 1979, 274–278).

The Impact of the Translation Movements of the Twelfth and ­Thirteenth Centuries A decisive impetus to the history of medieval prognostication came from the translation movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They brought about fundamental changes in many areas of the tradition and sparked a new intellectual interest in the discussion and appraisal of mantic practices. Numerous texts of ancient writers and scholars from the Greek East and the Islamic world, which had been inaccessible until then, were translated into Latin and had an enormous impact on the concepts and practices of prognostication. The astrology and geomancy of the Latin West received their theoretical and methodological foundation. The interpretation of dreams, physiognomy, and scapulimancy became increasingly the subjects of trea-



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tises and were more frequently applied in practice. The translation of fundamental works opened up new possibilities in the areas of medical prognostication and mathematical calculation as well. It took some time for the transfer of knowledge, its organization, and its reception to take effect, with varying results in different places but its consequences were felt throughout the Latin West. Profound changes in science and education helped people to absorb the new knowledge. Above all the newly-founded universities, but also the study centers of the mendicant orders, and the princely courts as centers of art and erudition, created an enormous demand for new texts and new knowledge. The high mobility of students and scholars – many of them travelled all over Europe – promoted the exchange of knowledge, which was presented and categorized in new works, such as encyclopedias, mirrors for princes, summae, comments, and text books (Brungs 2017). Most translations were produced as a result of the knowledge exchange with Byzantium, in Southern Italy or the Iberian Peninsula, areas where people from different cultures came into contact. Jewish scholars often played a key role as translators from Arabic. There is also sporadic evidence of the transfer of the mantic traditions between the Latin and Hebrew cultures (Rebiger and Schäfer 2009, 81–85). The large majority of translations relevant to prognostication were produced on the Iberian Peninsula. Recent studies were able to highlight the cultural environment of the translation movements by analyzing how they were linked to the Reconquista and the reorganization of the Church structures (Hasse 2006). The analyses prove that those translations were hardly the result of a direct exchange between Muslim and Christian scholars, but often an act of appropriation of the cultural prey looted from the libraries of the rulers of al-Andalus. The first generation of translators, who worked in different places between Braga and Barcelona in the second quarter of the twelfth century, was mostly interested in works on mathematics and astral and occult sciences, including the mantic arts, which were particularly numerous in the libraries of the Islamic rulers. Only in the second half of the twelfth century did Toledo become a center for the translation movement, which focused also on philosophical works (Gutas 2006). The early translators were fascinated especially by the astral sciences, as the large quantity of translations on this subject proves. John of Seville (d. after 1153), for example, was highly productive; among his translations are two of the most influential introductions to astrology: the Liber isagogicum by al-Qabīṣī and the Great Introduction into Astrology by Abū Maʻshar. Plato of Tivoli’s (d. after 1145) translations include the Tetrabiblos by Ptolemy which was also translated from the Greek by William of Moerbeke (d. 1286) in the thirteenth century. Hugo of Santalla (d. after 1145) was responsible for the translation of an important book on astrological interrogations, the Liber novem iudicum (↗ Burnett, Astral Sciences Western Christian World, 496–497). Not only the translations themselves but also several programmatic statements made by the translators indicate how intrigued they were by the Arabic texts on astral sciences. Hugo of Santalla and Plato of Tivoli expressed their main interest in astrology and signaled that Latin scholars had a lot of catching up to do in this area.

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Hugo even added a defense of this discipline (Burnett 1977; Ricklin 2006). In addition to the translations of astral sciences, Hugo of Santalla was also responsible for the Latin versions of texts on geomancy and scapulimancy, such as the Ars geomantie and the Liber de spatula (Burnett 2006, 114–116). Through the references in the Arabic texts, Latin scholars also became aware of the mythical authorities of the mantic arts, like Hermes Trismegistos. As a result, Hermes was adopted as the founder of ancient knowledge about the secrets of nature (Heiduk 2008, 327–360). A phase of intense diplomatic contact between Italian trading towns, the Staufer and the papal courts on the one side and the imperial court of Byzantium on the other, coincided with the translations produced by Italian scholars between the 1130s and 1160s. Those scholars were ambassadors and interpreters at the Byzantine court. They bought Greek books during their stay in Constantinople and translated many of them into Latin (d’Alverny 1982, 430–438). Through this transfer, knowledge previously unknown in the West, from the works of Aristotle for instance, made its way to Italy and from there into the Latin world. Texts about prognostication formed part of this knowledge transfer. It appears that Paschalis Romanus found several books on occult sciences in the imperial library of Constantinople, among them the Liber thesauri occulti, a compilation of various Greek books about dream interpretation. The Latin version of this compilation also included an early translation by Leo Tuscus on the decoding of dreams and oracles (Ricklin 1998, 247–270; Heiduk 2014, 143–145). Translations from Arabic and Greek into Latin had been produced since the eleventh century in the area of Southern Italy that was under Norman rule and later in the kingdom of Sicily. The work of Constantine the African (d. ca. 1087), whose name indicates his Berber provenance, was the starting point. He translated the Arabic Versions of the books of Hippocrates and Galen during his time in Salerno and in the monastery of Montecassino. He also compiled texts from Arabic, Persian, and Jewish authors for medical education (Veit 2003). Although the Norman rulers were rarely the commissioners of translations, their policy of balancing the interests of the Arab, Greek, Jewish, and Latin-Christian communities within their kingdom promoted the exchange of knowledge in the twelfth century. Henry Aristippus (d. 1162), Archdeacon of Catania, translated the fourth book of Aristotle’s Meteorologica and received a copy of a fundamental work on ancient astronomy, Ptolemy’s Almagest, while visiting Constantinople as an emissary. Later, however, the translation of the Almagest from the Arabic by Gerard of Cremona (d. 1187) would outrank this first translation in the history of reception (Pedersen 2011, 16–19). At about the same time, Admiral Eugenius of Palermo (d. 1202), another high-ranking official in the service of the Norman rulers, probably translated the prophecies of the Erythraean Sibyl (Jostmann 2006, 236–238). The Staufer rulers, successors of the Norman kings, directly commissioned translations from Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew. Among them were texts of particular significance for prognostication, such as the astrological works Centiloquium Hermetis or De revolutionibus annorum nativitatis, which had been translated at the order of King Manfred (d. 1266) (Heiduk 2004; Burnett 2014). An important multiplier of astrologi-



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cal and mantic knowledge, although not a translation, is the Liber introductorius by Michael Scot (d. 1234?), which the author dedicated to Emperor Frederick II (d. 1250). This scholar, who described himself as the emperor’s astrologer, provided not only an introduction to the basics of astral sciences in his encyclopedic work (Ackermann 2009) but also detailed information on physiognomy, including the topics of dream interpretation and palm reading (Michael Scot, Liber physionomie, ed. Voskoboynikov). Michael Scot’s Liber introductorius is a good example of the reception of the translations based on compiling the new knowledge and, indeed, very soon, Latin scholars became quite creative in mixing and developing the information received from the translations. In the philosophical concepts of Albertus Magnus (d. 1280) or Roger Bacon (d. 1292), magic and mantic knowledge figures quite prominently, and astrology even plays a key role (Hackett 1997; Rutkin 2019, 41–115), so the disciplines of divination qualified as a legitimate approach to reading the signs of nature. The scholars, however, curious and eager to learn, soon found themselves restricted in their freedom, because the Christian doctrine maintained its ban against divination. What was still considered legitimate and what was prohibited became a topic of constant discussion. In the mid-thirteenth century, the anonymous author of the famous Speculum astronomiae attempted to have astrology recognized as a discipline of the natural sciences by strictly distinguishing it from all sorts of magical practices (Zambelli 1992). In their effort to regulate knowledge, the Church authorities went to extremes, intending to send a clear signal, and excluded certain works from lectures at the University of Paris in 1277, among them passages from Aristotle’s works plus, explicitly mentioned, a book on geomancy (Flasch 1989, 90).

Popularisation and Persecution: Late Medieval Tendencies In the long term, these efforts to ban mantic practices from 1277 did not prove particularly effective and, from the legal point of view, nothing had changed. Significant collections of laws, such as the Decretum Gratiani, continued the discourse of whether mantic practices were a form of magic, and practitioners of magic came under suspicion as heretics (Peters 1978, 71–78). Church sanctions, however, were rare. Until the mid-fourteenth century, the practicing of magic was rarely punished. A glance at the manual of the inquisitor Bernard Gui (d. 1331) confirms that wizards, diviners and those who summoned ghosts are listed in a separate section, but the questions for their interrogations sound like standard phrases, unlike the other highly detailed instructions contained in the manual. The wide range of divination is compressed into a single question regarding the suspect’s knowledge about the prognostication of future events (Bernard Gui, Manuel de l’Inquisiteur, ed. Mollat 2, 20–24). In the fourteenth century, however, conspiracy theories about the enemies of Christianity who would not shrink from using harmful spells and magical assassination were on the rise. These theories could easily be adapted to denounce and stigmatize any spe-

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cific group, such as the Knights Templar (1307–1312), lepers (1321), Jews in the context of the plague pogroms (1348–1349) or the presumed members of the witch cult (Heil 2006, 272–299; Utz Tremp 2008, 311–440). According to the doctrine, sorcerers and witches could be identified because of their pact with the devil. The examples of Matteuccia Francisci and Margery Joudemayne in part 2 demonstrate that fortune telling, per se, was not yet considered an offense. The Malleus maleficarum from 1486, which should have become the authoritative standard reference for inquisitors about the witch cult, indicates the shift that occurred at the end of the Middle Ages. The whole range of mantic arts is mentioned there several times as the characteristic evil deeds of witches (Henricus Institoris and Jacobus Sprenger, Malleus maleficarum [print 1494], I, q. 2 and q. 16, fol. vii and fol. xxxviii). Astrologers rarely came under suspicion of heresy. The Christian doctrine clearly considered astrology to be related to determinism and superstition, too, but even the dogmatic Thomas Aquinas gave subtle hints that certain forms of astrology, provided that they were limited to the forecasting of natural events, might be admissible (Rutkin 2019, 173–234). This provided practicing astrologers with arguments to support their activity as well as a line of defense. In the Late Middle Ages, the triumphant advance of astrology could no longer be halted, particularly since it was in high demand among rulers. With his Livre de Divinacions, Nicole Oresme (d. 1382) attempted to persuade his pupil, Charles V of France, not to rely on astrologers for political advice, but in vain (Coopland 1952). The astrologer, as an office-bearer and part of the entourage of courtly advisors, had become a fixture by the Late Middle Ages. This was the only time in medieval history that prognostication was institutionalized, but that did not mean that political decisions were based mainly on astrological or mantic consultations. They were simply one among many aids for decision making, and the sum of all of the information and advice given was to confirm the rightness of a decision. Even Emperor Frederick II, who, as already mentioned in part 2, loved to show off his power by using astrology publicly, seems to have remained skeptical about the prognoses of his astrologists. According to the Liber introductorius, he repeatedly subjected Michael Scot to tests of his abilities (Haskins 1927, 290). Not only astrology but other methods of divination also became increasingly popular again in the Late Middle Ages, despite the Church’s concerted attempts to prohibit them. Texts in vernacular languages, such as farmers’ almanacs with their meteorological and hemerological recommendations or translations of Latin treatises, contributed to their popularity. Instructions for mantic practices were no longer the privilege of scholars, as an increasing number of people at court and in the cities became literate. Translations into vernacular languages had been produced from as early as the thirteenth century, like the Secretum secretorum (↗ Forster, Pseudo-­Aristotelian Sirr al-asrār/Secretum secretorum), and thereafter in increasing numbers. The traditions in the vernacular languages are still scarcely researched. However, a few cursory examples should be mentioned here, such as the fourteenth-century compilation of astrological standard references in French for Mary of



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Luxembourg (d. 1324) (Heiduk 2008, 280), the German translation from the fifteenth century of the astrological basic rules of the Centiloquium Hermetis (Heiduk 2004, 276), and the Dutch version of The treatise of Abdallah on Geomancy, also from the fifteenth century (Braekman 1984). Remarkably, the critics of superstition who wrote their texts in vernacular languages also contributed to the dissemination of mantic knowledge. Of note in this context are the debates on astrology at the French and Burgundian courts (Veenstra 1998) or, in the German-speaking region, the works of Hans Vintler or Johannes Hartlieb, which have already been quoted several times (↗ Heiles, German Texts on Superstition). Another factor which helped to spread mantic knowledge and practices was the increasingly frequent combination of divi­ nation with games and festivals. Apart from the previously mentioned lot books, many of which were also written in vernacular languages (↗ Heiles, Sortes), astrological-cosmological board games, such as the “spherical chess” from the book of games by Alfonso X, King of Castile, were played at the royal courts for entertainment (↗ Heiduk, Games and Prognostication, 779–780). The lotteries based on the random mechanism of casting lots, which had become a standard attraction at fairs since the fifteenth century (Raux 2018), provide another example of this combination of divination and entertainment.

Selected Bibliography Ackermann, Silke. Sternstunden am Kaiserhof. Michael Scotus und sein ‘Buch von den Bildern und Zeichen des Himmels.’ Frankfurt am Main, 2009. d’Alverny, Marie-Thérèse. “Translations and Translators.” Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century. Eds. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable. Oxford, 1982. 421–462. An English Chronicle of the Reigns of Richard II., Henry IV., Henry V., and Henry VI. Written before the Year 1471. Ed. John S. Davies. London, 1856. Annales Fuldenses. Ed. Friedrich Kurze (Monumenta Gemaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum 7). Hanover, 1891. Annales Hirsaugienses, 2 vols. Ed. Johann Georg Schlegel. St. Gallen, 1690. Anonymus. “Visio Vaucellis.” Ed. Paul Gerhard Schmidt. “Die Vision von Vaucelles (1195/1196).” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 20 (1985): 155–163. Aufklärung im Mittelalter? Die Verurteilung von 1277. Ed. Kurt Flasch. Mainz, 1989. Augustine. The City of Gods against the Pagans. Ed. Robert W. Dyson. Cambridge, 1988. Bernard Gui. Manuel de l’Inquisiteur, 2 vols. Ed. Guillaume Mollat. Paris, 1964. Bezzola, Gian Andri. Die Mongolen in abendländischer Sicht (1220–1270). Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Völkerbegegnungen. Berne, 1974. Bianchi, Luca. Censure et liberté intellectuelle à l’Université de Paris. Paris, 1999. Blume, Dieter, Mechthild Haffner, and Wolfgang Metzger. Sternbilder des Mittelalters. Der gemalte Himmel zwischen Wissenschaft und Phantasie, 8 vols. Berlin, 2012–2018. Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Ed. Peter G. Walsh. Oxford, 1999. Borst, Arno. Computus. Zeit und Zahl in der Geschichte Europas. 2nd ed. Munich, 1999 (1st ed. 1990). Boudet, Jean-Patrice. Entre science et ‘nigromance’. Astrologie, divination et magie dans l’Occident médiéval (XIIe–XVe siècle). Paris, 2006.

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Braekman, Willy Louis. De Geomantie in het Middelnederlands. Uitgave van deze voorspeltechniek uit het Münchense handschrift (15de). Brussels, 1984. Brungs, Alexander. “Enzyklopädien und Florilegien.” Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie. Die Philosophie des Mittelalters Band 4: 13. Jahrhundert. Eds. Alexander Brungs, Vilem Mudroch, and Peter Schulthess. Basel, 2017. 217–230. Burnett, Charles. “A Group of Arabic-Latin Translators Working in Northern Spain in the Mid-Twelfth Century.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1977): 62–108. Burnett, Charles. “The Earliest Chiromancy in the West.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987): 189–195. Burnett, Charles. “A Hermetic Programme of Astrology and Divination in mid-Twelfth-Century Aragon: The Hidden Preface in the ‘Liber novem iudicum’.” Magic and the Classical Tradition. Eds. Charles Burnett and William F. Ryan. London and Turin, 2006. 99–118. Burnett, Charles. “Stephen of Messina and the Translation of Astrological Texts from Greek in the Time of Manfred.” Translating at the Court. Bartholomew of Messina and Cultural Life at the Court of Manfed, King of Sicily. Ed. Pieter de Leemans. Louvain, 2014. 123–132. Cadden, Joan. “Charles V, Nicole Oresme, and Christine de Pizan: Unities and Uses of Knowledge in Fourteenth-Century France.” Texts and Contexts in Ancient and Medieval Science. Studies on the Occasion of John E. Murdoch’s Seventieth Birthday. Eds. Edith Sylla and Michael McVaugh. Leiden, 1997. 208–244. Caesarius of Heisterbach. Dialogus miraculorum, 5 vols. Eds. Nikolaus Nösges and Horst Schneider. Turnhout, 2009. Carey, Hilary. Courting Disaster. Astrology at the English Court and University in the Later Middle Ages. Basingstoke, 1992. Caspers, Charles. Een bovenaards vrouw: zes eeuven verering van Liduina van Schiedam. Hilversum, 2014. Coopland, George W. Nicole Oresme and the Astrologers. A Study of his ‘Livre de Divinacions’. Liverpool, 1952. Davies, Owen. Popular Magic. Cunning-folk in English History. London, 2003. Daxelmüller, Christoph. “Schädel, Lotterien und die Macht des Jenseits. Glücksspiele jenseits der Normalität.” Glück – Zufall – Vorsehung. Eds. Simone Finkele and Burkhardt Krause. Karlsruhe, 2010. 103–124. Delisle, Léopold. Recherches sur la librairie de Charles V, roi de France, 1337–1380, 2 vols. Paris, 1905 and 1907. Devereux, Paul. “Talking and Walking with Spirits: Fresh Perspectives on a Medieval Necromantic System.” Divination. Perspectives for a New Millenium. Ed. Patrick Curry. London, 2010. 167–171. Dinzelbacher, Peter. Vision und Visionsliteratur im Mittelalter. 2nd ed. Stuttgart, 2017 (1st ed. 1981). Dohrn-van Rossum, Gerhard. Die Geschichte der Stunde: Uhren und moderne Zeitordnung. Munich, 1992. Dykes, Benjamin. “Practice and Counsel in Guido Bonatti.” Astrologers and their Clients in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Eds. Wiebke Deimann and David Juste. Cologne et al., 2015. 29–41. Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic. An Exegesis of the Visionary Autobiography of a Fourteenth-Century French Monk. University Park, PA, 2015. Fidora, Alexander. “Mantische Disziplinen als aristotelische Wissenschaft. Der epistemologische Integrationsversuch des Dominicus Gundissalinus.” Die mantischen Künste und die Epistemologie prognostischer Wissenschaften im Mittelalter. Ed. Alexander Fidora. Cologne, 2013. 61–72. Fischer, Sebastian. Chronik besonders von Ulmischen Sachen. Ed. Karl Gustav Veesenmeyer. Ulm, 1896.



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Flasch, Kurt. “Augustinus: De civitate dei.” Interpretationen: Hauptwerke der Philosophie, Mittelalter. Ed. Kurt Flasch. Stuttgart, 1998. 9–31. Flasch, Kurt. Das philosophische Denken im Mittelalter: von Augustin zu Machiavelli. 2nd ed. Stuttgart, 2000 (1st ed. 1986). Fried, Johannes. Aufstieg aus dem Untergang. Apokalyptisches Denken und die Entstehung der modernen Naturwissenschaften im Mittelalter. Munich, 2001. Ginzburg, Carlo. Hexensabbat: Entzifferung einer nächtlichen Geschichte. 2nd ed. Berlin, 2005 (it. Orig.: Storia notturna. Una decifrazione del sabba. Turin, 1989). Goez, Werner. Translatio Imperii. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Geschichtsdenkens und der politischen Theorie im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit. Tübingen, 1958. Grant, Edward. “Cosmology.” Science in the Middle Ages. Ed. David C. Lindberg. Chicago and London, 1978. 265–302. Green, Monica. “Women’s Medical Practice and Health Care in Medieval Europe.” Signs 14.2 (1989): 434–473. Gregory of Tours. Historia Francorum / History of the Francs. Ed. Ernest Brehaut. 2nd ed. New York. 1969 (1st ed. 1916). Guido Bonatti. Book of Astronomy, 7 vols. Ed. Benjamin Dykes. Minneapolis. 2010. Guilelmus de Conchis. Philosophia mundi. Ed. Gregor Maurach. Pretoria, 1980. Gurjewitsch, Aaron. Das Weltbild des mittelalterlichen Menschen. Munich, 1980 (Russ. Orig.: Gurevič, Aron. Moscow, 1972). Gutas, Dimitri. “What was there in Arabic for the Latins to Receive? Remarks on the Modalities of the Twelfth-Century Translation Movement in Spain.” Wissen über Grenzen. Arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter. Eds. Andreas Speer and Lydia Wegener. Berlin, 2006. 3–21. Hackett, Jeremiah. “Roger Bacon on Astronomy-Astrology. The Sources of the Scienta ­experimentalis.” Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays. Ed. Jeremiah Hackett. Leiden, 1997. 175–198. Hans Vintler. Die Pluemen der Tugent. Ed. Ignaz Zingerle. Innsbruck, 1874. Harmening, Dieter. Superstitio. Überlieferungs- und theoriegeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur kirchlich-theologischen Aberglaubensliteratur des Mittelalters. Berlin, 1979. Haskins, Charles Homer. Studies in the History of Mediaeval Science. 2nd ed. New York, 1927 (1st ed. 1924). Hasse, Dag. “The Social Conditions of the Arabic-(Hebrew-)Latin Translation Movements in Medieval Spain and in the Renaissance.” Wissen über Grenzen. Arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter. Eds. Andreas Speer and Lydia Wegener. Berlin, 2006. 68–86. Heiduk, Matthias. “Sternenkunde am Stauferhof. Das ‘Centiloquium Hermetis’ im Kontext höfischer Übersetzungstätigkeit und Wissensaneignung.” “in frumento et vino opima.” Festschrift für Thomas Zotz zu seinem 60. Geburtstag. Eds. Heinz Krieg and Alfons Zettler. Ostfildern, 2004. 267–282. Heiduk, Matthias. Offene Geheimnisse – Hermetische Texte und verborgenes Wissen in der mittelalterlichen Rezeption von Augustinus bis Albertus Magnus. Freiburg, 2008. Heiduk, Matthias. “Revealing Wisdom’s Underwear. The Prestige of Hermetic Knowledge and Occult Sciences among Scholars before 1200.” Networks of Learning. Perspectives on Scholars in Byzantine East and Latin West, c. 1000–1200. Eds. Sita Steckel, Niels Gaul, and Michael Grünbart. Vienna, 2014. 125–146. Heil, Johannes. ‘Gottesfeinde’ – ‘Menschenfeinde’. Die Vorstellung von jüdischer Weltverschwörung (13. bis 16. Jahrhundert). Essen, 2006. Heiles, Marco. Das Losbuch. Manuskriptologie einer Textsorte des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts. Cologne et al., 2018. Henricus Institoris and Jacobus Sprenger. Malleus maleficarum. Nuremberg, 1494.

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Herbers, Klaus. Prognostik und Zukunft im Mittelalter. Praktiken – Kämpfe – Diskussionen. Stuttgart, 2019. Jeck, Udo Reinhold. Aristoteles contra Augustinum. Zur Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Zeit und Seele bei den antiken Aristoteleskommentatoren, im arabischen Aristotelismus und im 13. Jahrhundert. Amsterdam, 1994. John Mirfield. “Breviarium Bartholomei.” Johannes de Mirfeld of St. Bartholomew’s Smithfield: His Life and Works. Eds. Percival Smith Hartley and Harold Aldridge. Cambridge, 1936. John of Salisbury. Frivolities of courtiers and footprints of philosophers: Policraticus. Ed. Joseph Pike. Minneapolis, 1938. Johannes Hartlieb. “Book of All Forbidden Arts.” Hazards of the Dark Arts. Advice for Medieval Princes on Withcraft and Magic. Ed. Richard Kieckhefer. University Park, PA, 2017. Jostmann, Christian. Sibilla Erithea Babilonica. Papsttum und Prophetie im 13. Jahrhundert. Hanover, 2006. Knoch, Wendelin. “Kirchenjahr und Endlichkeit. Christliches Leben im Spannungsfeld von zyklischer und linearer Weltdeutung.” Rhythmus und Saisonalität. Eds. Peter Dilg, Gundolf Keil, and Dietz-Rüdiger Moser. Sigmaringen, 1995. 83–92. Lange, Armin. “Literary Prophecy and Oracle Collection: A Comparison between Judah and Greece in Persian Times.” Prophets, Prophecy, and Prophetic Texts in Second Temple Judaism. Eds. Michael H. Floyd and Robert D. Haak. London and New York, 2006. 248–275. Le Goff, Jacques. La naissance du purgatoire. Paris, 1981. Lehner, Hans-Christian. Prophetie zwischen Eschatologie und Politik. Zur Rolle der Vorhersagbarkeit von Zukünftigem in der hochmittelalterlichen Historiografie. Stuttgart, 2015. Lehner, Hans-Christian. “Endzeitentwürfe mittelalterlicher Geschichtsschreiber.” Geschichte vom Ende her denken. Endzeitentwürfe und ihre Historisierung im Mittelalter. Eds. Susanne Ehrich and Andrea Worm. Stuttgart, 2019. 47–59. The Letters of St. Catherine of Siena. Vol. 1. Ed. Suzanne Noffke. Binghamton, NY, 1988. Ludwig, Ulrike. “Hellsichtige Entscheidungen. Kurfürst August von Sachsen (1526–1586) und die Geomantie als Strategie im politischen Alltagsgeschäft.” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 97 (2015): 109–127. Mazal, Otto. Die Sternenwelt des Mittelalters. Graz, 2001. Mentgen, Gerd. Astrologie und Öffentlichkeit im Mittelalter. Stuttgart, 2005. Michel Scot. Liber particularis. Liber physionomie. Ed. Oleg Voskoboynikov. Florence, 2019. Minois, Georges. Geschichte der Zukunft. Orakel, Prophezeiungen, Utopien, Prognosen. Düsseldorf and Zurich, 1998 (fr. Orig.: Histoire de l‘avenir. Paris, 1996). Muessig, Carolyn, George Ferzoco, and Beverly Kienzle (eds.). A Companion to Catherine of Siena. Leiden, 2011. Otto, Bernd-Christian. Magie. Rezeptions- und diskursgeschichtliche Analysen von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit. Berlin, 2011. Page, Sophie. “Richard Trewythian and the Uses of Astrology in Late Medieval England.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 64 (2001): 193–228. Palazzo, Alessandro. “Albert the Great’s Doctrine of Fate.” Mantik, Schicksal und Freiheit im Mittelalter. Ed. Loris Sturlese. Cologne et al., 2011. 65–95. Pedersen, Olaf. A Survey of the Almagest. With Annotations and New Commentary by Alexander Jones. 2nd ed. New York, 2011 (1st ed. 1974). Perler, Dominik. Prädestination, Zeit und Kontingenz: philosophisch-historische Untersuchungen zu Wilhelm von Ockhams ‘Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia Dei respectu futuorum contingentium’. Amsterdam, 1988. Peruzzi, Candida. “Un processo di stegoneria a Todi nel ‘400.” Lares 21 (1955): 1–17. Peters, Edward. The Magician, the Witch, and the Law. Breinigsville, PA, 1978.



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Michael Grünbart

Prognostication in the Medieval Eastern Christian World Basics, Definitions and Terminology From the Byzantine empire (fourth–fifteenth centuries), traces of prophecy and prognostication are apparent in various ways: on the one hand, many Greek texts dealing with the future, fortune telling and prediction are preserved while, on the other hand, reflections of techniques addressing forthcoming events are mentioned in the written sources. The Byzantine learned culture bridges both the period from Late Antiquity to the late Middle Ages and regions lying between the Eastern Mediterranean and Western parts of Europe. Therefore, many modes and forms of entanglement, translation and cross-fertilization can be found in that area (e.  g. Pingree 1989). Since the reign of Constantine I (306–337), the Roman Empire continuously transferred its political power to the East, so the newly-founded Constantinople became the center of the late antique world, providing a multitude of opportunities. It attracted people from the whole Mediterranean basin, thereby creating a melting-pot for ideas and knowledge. At times, scholars found a safe harbor there due to the political changes in the surrounding regions (e.  g. after the Arab conquest of Alexandria in 641). The so-called period of iconoclasm (theological discussions concerning the forms of venerating the divine, eighth/ninth centuries) saw an intensification of contact between Byzantium and the Arabic world. In addition to military confrontations, the transfer of knowledge, the translation of texts in both directions and scholarly exchanges are recorded. In the eleventh century, Arabic astronomy became well-known in Byzantium (see below) and scholars like Michael Psellos (1017/18–ca.1078) studied various kinds of occult sciences. He employed the term ἀπόκρυφος/apokryphos, that corresponds to the Latin occultus. Interested in ancient knowledge, Psellos mentioned several early mantic practices in his writings (scapulomancy, bird-watching), but which no longer reflected a current application. In the twelfth century, the use and abuse of astrology were debated, with Emperor Manuel I (1143–1180) being a fervent adherer to and discussant of the techniques related to prognostication. Although the Byzantine Empire underwent serious changes after the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204), the Late Byzantine or Palaiologan period (1261–1453) witnessed a revival of the exact sciences attested by a flourishing network of learned men (Tihon 2006).

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Terms The terms “prophecy” and “prognostication” form an ideal couple to divide between the two ways of gaining information/knowledge about future developments (see Brodersen 2001) and actions, that influence human life. Prophecy is linked to (divine) inspiration. A person receives a heavenly sign, encounters a dream/supernatural appearance or is struck by a sign, that opens his/her mind to a future event, offering ways to find solutions and make decisions. Prognostication is closer related to experts who seek to identify emerging developments by actively employing techniques based on mathematical calculations and exact surveillance. Observing natural phenomena (celestial objects like the sun, moon, comets, and stars, together with thunder, lightning and earthquakes) also lead to the fixation of dates that organized daily life, administrative processes, ceremonial life and even liturgical feasts. The term “occult sciences” highlights the written and learned tradition of knowledge for both serving the true deity and satisfying one’s curiosity (see Magdalino and Mavroudi 2006; they stress, that dealing with occult sciences request some knowledge of specialised language). The occult sciences are often linked to prognostication and discussions about future events (or the future), and offer tools for interpreting many phenomena (astral, terrestrial or subterranean occurrences) partly based on calculation. The occult sciences stand in contrast to the magical practices that flourished from the ancient to the medieval world. “Magic” is both not restricted to a highly educated tradition and less elitist. That does not mean that magic lacks any written form (ranging from simple signs to magic spells on various media). Starting with the Greco-Roman world magic also connoted the cultural (and religious) Other, a notion that continued in the Greek orthodox world. From the beginning of the spread of Christian thought, especially magical practices were viewed with great scepticism and normally viewed in a negative light. In ecclestiastical jurisdiction and law “magic” became similar to the term heresy. Magic is used to define the usurpation of divine or demonic power in order to influence or protect others. It becomes apparent that “change”, “innovation” and “novelty” were described as negative terms in Byzantine texts, although development was part of God’s plan from the beginning of the world (Magdalino 1993). Life on earth was defined and ruled by Divine Providence, and lead to the end of the world, the Second Coming of Christ. Byzantine eschatology had its roots in the Old Testament (especially the Book of Daniel) and the New Testament (Matt. 24, announcing the Second Coming). According to the creation of the world in 6 + 1 days, the idea of world history was organised according to seven millennia (Podskalsky 1972). Naturally, the disastrous events in Byzantine politics were seen and judged in the context of that eschatological concept (e.  g. the siege of Constantinople in 626 was thought to be the fulfilment of prophecies by Ezekiel or Isaiah; the eruption of an Aegean vulcano in 726 became the starting point for icon-



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oclasm in later argumentation; and Byzantine emperors in the fifteenth century were aware of the ending seventh millennium) (↗ Brandes, Eschatology Eastern Christian World).

Sources and Artefacts Written Sources During the Greek Middle Ages, several classical texts concerning prognostication were available. Ancient treatises were copied and commented on by Byzantine scholars. Since the tradition of classical education never disappeared from the Byzantine realm, knowledge of all kinds was evaluated and preserved in libraries and archives (mainly in Constantinople). Despite the critical political situation, the Byzantine Empire was not hermetically sealed in terms of the transfer of knowledge. The exchange of scholars and written resources between the regions of the Mediterranean is well-attested in every century. The exact sciences and their application must be strictly distinguished from magic and superstition, since they emphasize “scientific” or calculable aspects. The most important written resources dealing with predictions and prognostication will be discussed in brief.

Astronomy Astronomy belongs to the exact sciences and formed part of education (quadrivium/enkyklios paideia; overview Tihon 2009, 392–413). The Byzantines never mixed these terms, clearly differentiating between astronomy (the observation and theoretical aspect of celestial phenomena) and astrology (the practical, interpretative approach). However, these form an inseparable couple (↗ Caudano, Astral Sciences Eastern Christian World). A basic knowledge of astronomy existed in many strata of late antique society. The church authorities, for instance, needed to calculate certain dates in the course of the liturgical year (e.  g. that for Easter); it was also necessary to explain the cosmos, its image and history. In the military sector, the determination of dates and interpretation of celestial phenomena are often mentioned. The beginning of spring marked the time to recruit soldiers, the beginning of winter the end of military duties. Theophilus of Edessa, a Christian advisor of Caliph al-Mahdī (775–785) regarding military affairs, composed a treatise entitled Labours Concerning the Beginnings of Wars, whose original was possibly composed in Greek and partially based on Indian sources (ed. CCAG V.1 233–234). This is the only existing work that discusses exclusively military astrology but unusual events also require explanations: A comet

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could disturb a military camp that a competent officer would need to calm through offering a rational explanation. From the fourth to seventh centuries, commentaries on the Handy Tables (attached to the Almagest of Ptolemy) were composed by Pappos and Theon (fl. 360–380). The Tables were used to execute elementary astronomical calculations (e.  g. identifying the time difference between two towns). Theon produced two versions of his book. The first was directed toward astronomers (only a few manuscripts have been preserved), while the second focused on more practical aspects (complex mathematical computations are omitted; ed. Tihon 1978). The work was summarized in the outline of the Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus (410/412–485) and its introduction by Eutokios, Heliodoros and Ammonios. The Aristotelian philosopher and Christian theologian John Philoponus (fl. first half of the sixth century) wrote books on the eternity of the universe, arguing against Proclus and Aristotle (De aeternitati mundi contra Proclum and contra Aristotelem). John commented on several works of Aristotle (especially the organon, Physica and Meteorologica) and described the construction and usage of the astrolabe (Stückelberger 2015). Stephen (ca. 550–after 619/620) taught actively in Alexandria, the hot spot of mathematical knowledge in Late Antique Egypt, but moved to Constantinople on the eve of the Sassanian conquest (Papathanassiou 2006). Besides several works on Aristotle, he explained the astronomical commentary of Theon (Handy tables) and texts of Hippocrates (Prognosticon and Aphorisms). He also developed an interest in alchemy (Papathanasiou 1990–1991). In the following period, astronomy was mainly practiced outside, but close to, the Byzantine Empire (in Egypt, Syria and Armenia). In the ninth century, astronomical activities returned to Constantinople: Stephen the Philosopher discussed Greek and Islamic tables (around 800) and Leo, “the Mathematician” (first half of ninth century), supported the study of ancient mathematics. In legend, he is described as an astrologer who was able to predict the future. However, he owned a copy of the astrological introduction by Paul of Alexandria (Wilson 1996, 79–84). Leo did not follow the invitation by the Caliph al-Ma’mun to Baghdad, but remained in Constantinople. He invented a system of beacon lights that was constructed to send messages from the Eastern border to the center of the empire. The basis of this system was two clocks, but problems arose since time differed between the regions and the lengths of hours varied throughout the seasons. Using the commentary of Theon (on Ptolemy’s Handy Tables), this problem could have been solved by the scholar. From the eighth and ninth centuries onward, a couple of precious illuminated manuscripts have been preserved, reflecting the revived interest in astronomical topics (e.  g. Vat. gr. 1291, including a sun-table for the years 826–835). A simplified version of Vettius Valens’ text on computing the longitudes of the planets was produced in 906 (ed. Pingree 1986). In the eleventh century, Byzantine scholars became well acquainted with Islamic astronomy. Star catalogues were translated from Arabic into Greek (e.  g. an anony-



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mous treatise from 1072/1088; ed. Jones 1987). Following a gap of more than a century, texts are preserved again from the thirteenth century, although the interest in astronomical discussions did not end there, as the historian George Akropolites notes. At the exiled Byzantine court of Nicaea (after the Fourth Crusade up until 1261), Empress Eirene questioned a young man about the cause of eclipses (after such an event on June 3 1239). He responded that such phenomena were due to the moon’s interposition in front of the sun, but was criticized by a court doctor for lacking a proper theoretical education. The Late Byzantine period witnessed a revival of Ptolemaic astronomy (Manuel Bryennios, Theodore Metochites, Nicephorus Gregoras), promoted by scholars like Nicholas Kabasilas and Isaac Argyros (fourteenth century) and John Chortasmenos and Bessarion (fifteenth century). The historiographer Nikephoras Gregoras left a treatise on the calculation of the solar eclipse based on the Almagest and the Handy Tables from July 16 1330 (eds. Mogenet et al. 1983). That text also reflects the competition between the Byzantine polymath and the Latin Barlaam of Seminara, who provided calculations of the eclipses of 1333 and 1337 (eds. Mogenet and Tihon 1977). Gregoras also dealt with the function and usage of the astrolabe in his treatise περὶ κατασκευῆς καὶ γενέσεως ἀστρολάβου (“On the Mathematical Origin and Construction of the Astrolabe”). During that period, Arabic texts continued to be translated into Greek: Gregory Chioniades investigated Persian and Islamic tables (around 1300, ed. Pingree 1985), followed by George Chrysokokkes. Theodore Meliteniotes dealt with Ptolemaic and Islamic astronomy in his Astronomical Tribiblos, attacking astrology (the “three books” were composed around 1360; ed. Leurquin 1990), but Latin texts were also translated into Greek. In the 1330s, the Cypriot scholar George Lapithes possibly produced the Greek version of the Toledan Tables, which were completed by Arabic astronomers at Toledo around 1080 in order to predict the movements of the sun, moon, and planets in relation to the fixed stars. Mark Eugenikos translated the tables of Jacob ben David Yom-tob in 1444.

Astrology Astrology was understood to be the twin of astronomy. Since the beginning of civilisation, written records demonstrate that astrology was used to make predictions concerning the future or results based on past human affairs. These interpretations rest upon the positions of the planets (in relation to each other) together with the signs of the zodiac and their subdivisions. Celestial phenomena (comets, eclipses, falling stars) were included as well. Astrological interpretations are well-attested in the Greek Middle Age (Tihon 2009, 420–425). There exists a vast amount of manuscripts containing astrological compilations (see the series of editions of Catalogus codicum astrologorum graecorum), and it is highly probable that astrology was still an impor-

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Fig. 6: Nicephorus Gregoras, On the Mathematical Origin and ­Construction of the Astrolabe (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms suppl. gr. 652, fol. 285v; date: saec. XV). Photo credits: BNF - Départment Images et prestations numériques.

tant component of the quadrivium in the sixth century (Westerink 1971). Astrology can be divided into the following areas: a) genethlialogy: when a person is born, the constellation of the stars may predict his/her future. Horoscopes are known from the Byzantine period (emperors, the city of Constantinople, see the list in Pingree 1991) b) catarchic (“from the beginning”): this method is used when the ideal starting point for an action should be fixed (see the above mentioned work by Theophilus of Edessa); c) interrogatory: the expert immediately provides answers by casting a horoscope at the moment when the client poses his/her question/s; interrogational astrology was not performed as part of classical Greek science. Its main goal is to predict how an action that has already started or been taken into consideration will end (Pingree 2006); d) political and e) omen astrology, which deals with discrete, occasional phenomena that were interpreted without including a comprehensive system of celestial calculations. Such omens or signs are attested in all kinds of texts (↗ Brandes, Hagiography Eastern Christian World).



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Iatromathematica Medicine is closely related to all kinds of sciences dealing with prognostication (see Althoff 2010). Iatromathematica or medical astrology combine the knowledge of astronomy and conditions of the human body. Since Hippocrates, it was essential to understand seasonal phenomena in order to understand the health of patients. In addition, the four elements and two pairs of opposite qualities (hot–cold, dry–humid) played an important role. In the Byzantine period, that kind of prognostication was called skillful guesswork (entechnos stochasmos), as Emperor Manuel Komnenos mentions in his defense of astrology (see Papathanassiou 1999).

Dream Divination Dreambooks and dream divination (↗ Oberhelman, Dream Interpretation Eastern Christian World). Since antiquity, the interpretation of dreams and their potential for predicting the future or supporting decisions are well-attested. Dreams were accepted by the church fathers, who explained them as devices for divine revelation, but their interpretation remained problematic, since it was attached to the pagan tradition. Dreams could also be of a demonic or simply earthly origin. The Greek terms for a dream represent a variety of meanings: oneiros is a dream full of symbols that need interpretation; horama reflects prophecy; while chrematismos describes the appearance of God or a saint giving advice during sleep. From the Byzantine period, eight books on dream interpretation have been preserved (oneirocritica). The longest and probably oldest of these is the Oneirocriticon of Achmet ben Sirin, that was compiled from Arabic sources possibly during the reign of Emperor Leo VI (886–912). The Greek text did not depend directly on the oneirocriticon of Artemidorus (second century CE), but incorporated ideas of the antique manual via its Arabic translation (Mavroudi 2002). Some oneirocritica are attributed to patriarchs, such as Nicephorus and Germanos (I or II), that demonstrates the acceptance of dream interpretation (ed. Drexl 1922 and 1923) (further works are ascribed to Daniel, ed. Drexl 1926, Astrampsychus, and Anonymous). Again, a prose treatise on dreams is ascribed to Manuel II Palaeologus (1390–1425) (preserved in Cod. Par. gr. 2419) (Angelide and Calofonos 2014). Dreams are regularly reported in historiography in the context of political divination.

Natural Phenomena Natural phenomena like thunder, lightning and earthquakes influenced and supported the techniques of prognostication. Weather forecasting formed part of meteorology (↗ Telelis, Weather Forecasting Eastern Christian World). Brontologia are texts

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concerning divination by thunder. John the Lydian, who was a high official during the reign of Justinian I (527–565) and as author interested in Roman antiquities, mentions thunderbooks in his treatise, De ostentis (“On Omens”) (also preserving an Etruscan brontoscopic calendar, see Turfa 2012). They were used for political, military and agrarian predictions (see chapter on “Sources”). Although the church denounced brontologia as items with a astrological/diabolic influence, several copies have been preserved (e.  g. Milan, Ambros. A 56 sup., sixteenth century). The position of the sun (or moon) in both the zodiac and the calendar influenced the arrangement of a brontologion. Seismologia, books on earthquakes are preserved in various manuscripts. Such manuals were employed during military campaigns, as Constantine VII describes in his treatise on campaigns (↗ Grünbart, Importance of Thunder).

Oracle-books The Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry composed a (now lost) book entitled On the Philosophy of Oracles, which was a collection of Christian utterances concerning predictions. He and his Neoplatonist colleagues highly esteemed the Chaldean Oracles, because these supported their own view of the world. The Chaldean Oracles, which claimed to be revelations sent by the gods, are based on a dualistic system which divides the world into the intelligibles and a sphere of evil. The future emperor Julian (r. 361–363) dealt with that text and the philosopher Iamblichus created a theurgical concept that magic gains power over the supernatural world. Proclus also discussed oracles, since these rendered divine revelations apparent to human beings. He became one of the most influential philosophers. Michael Psellos and late Byzantine learned men occupied themselves with the Chaldean Oracles (see O’Meara 2013, Seng 2013). The Sibylline Oracles (Σιβυλλικοὶ χρησμοί/Sibyllikoi chresmoi) survived Late Antiquity, since they could be adapted to suit Christian thought. The oracle book consists of 14 parts from different period (second century BCE–seventh century CE). The hexametric predictions are of Jewish origin, with Christian additions. In the prologue (from the sixth century), it is demonstrated that the Sibyl was an independent witness for Christendom. The oracles were accessible at the imperial library at Constantinople and consulted also, as an event mentioned by John Skylitzes demonstrates. Leo V, who re-introduced iconoclasm during his reign (813–820), imprisoned the usurper, Michael, but did not decide to kill him immediately. The end of Leon’s reign was foretold on several occasions: It is said that an oracle had been delivered to him some time earlier which said that he was destined to be deprived both of the imperial dignity and also of his very life itself on the day of the birth and incarnation of Christ our God. It was a Sibylline oracle, written in a certain book in the imperial library which contained not only oracles, but also pictures and the features of those



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who had been emperors, depicted in colours. Now there was a ferocious lion portrayed in that book. Above its spine and going down to its belly was the letter X [= Chi, indicating the name Christos and subsequently the feastday]. There was a man running after the beast and striking it a mortal blow with his lance, right in the centre of the X. On account of the obscurity of the oracle, only the then quaestor could make sense of its meaning: that an emperor named Leo was going to be delivered to a bitter death on the day of Christ’s nativity. (John Skylitzes, Synopsis, ed. Wortley, 23)

Fig. 7: Leo V receives a book containing political prognostication (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, Cod. Vitr. 26-2, fol. 58r; date: saec. XIII). Photo credits: Biblioteca Digital Hispánica.

The emperor attempted to explore future developments, because several signs indicated the end of his reign. Recalling the rich resources at court, he despatched an official to the imperial library. The book delivered by the expert contained the Sibylline oracles. The oracles should not be confused with the Sibylline Books which contained the wisdom of the ancient Etruscans and Romans, which were burned by order of general Flavius Stilicho in 405 (recorded by Rutilius Namatianus, De Reditu 51–60). Another collection of predictions connected to political prognostication formed the so-called Oracula Leonis. Some 15 oracles were attributed to Emperor Leo  VI (3 sections: no.  1–6 reflect the circumstances after 815: 7–10 deal with occurrences around 1204, the Fourth Crusade, and 11–15 lack datable elements). Nr 1–10 form vaticinia ex eventu and the rest can be described as real prophecy. The Oracula Leonis do not belong to the Byzantine apocalypses in a strict sense, although they contain elements of Pseudo-Methodios or the Visions of Daniel. The prophetic elements focus on the emperor, who is presented as the liberator of the endtime or last emperor (Kraft 2012, Bonura 2016). Parts of them are known from late twelfth–century historiogra-

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Fig. 8: Sultan Suleiman depicted with a sickle and a rose in the Oracula Leonis (Venice, ­Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Marcianus graecus VII 3, fol. 4; date: saec. XVI/XVII). Photo credits: Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana.

phy (Nicetas Choniates, see Karlin-Hayter 1987), but the earliest manuscripts date to the fourteenth century. The predictions were translated into Latin in the thirteenth century and known as papal oracles or Vaticinia de summis pontificibus. The significance of the Oracula Leonis lies in its afterlife (after 1453). Several illuminated copies (e.  g. by patrons as Francesco Barocci and George Klontzas; Rigo 1988, Vereecken-Hadermann Misguich 2000, Brokkaar 2002) were produced, adapting the new political situation in the East (Ottoman rulers). The prophecy about an emperor who would defeat the Ottoman empire was appreciated by all Christian rulers.

Numerology and Onomatomancy Methods like numerology, gematria or onomatomancy originated in the Assyro-Babylonian culture. Since Hebrew or Greek letters can also be used as numbers, the interpretation of words (or parts of them) in numerological terms formed a vivid tradition. In the Pythagorean and Neoplatonic philosophy, numbers formed an integral aspect of interpretation. Christian theologians continued to discuss concepts of unity and multitude (e.  g. the notion of the trinity). Numerological interpretations of names were a common practice within prognostication (Dornseiff 1925). In imperial contexts, questions concerning the duration of rulership and succession arose. Maurice thought that his successor’s name would begin with the letter Phi (= Phokas, who executed



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him later) (cf. Theophanes, eds. Mango and Scott, 410). Nicetas Choniates concludes the description of Manuel I (d. 1180) as follows: “I think that the lengthy duration of his reign can be explained by that ancient adage which states, but the last syllable of the word shall bring you profit. The last syllable of his name stands for the number thirty-eight” (Nicetas Choniates, Historia, ed. Magoulias, 125). The ending of Manuel’s name consisting of Eta (=8) and Lambda (=30) produces the result of 38. A passage of the Oracula Leonis Sapientis (PG 107, 1132B) also indicates the prognostic potential of names. The most famous prediction of the Comnenian period is connected to the word aima (“blood”). Following the birth of Manuel I’s son (1168/1169), astrologers provided a horoscope and predicted a splendid future for the baby, and Manuel named his son Alexios, choosing this name neither impulsively nor in honour of the grandfather’s name, but taking heed of the oracular utterance in answer to the question: ‘How long shall the dynasty of Alexios Komnenos reign?’ The oracular response was aima [blood]; if divided into letters and recounted in their order, the alpha clearly designated Alexios, the iota John [Ioannes], and the next two letters Manuel and his successor to the throne. (Nicetas Choniates, Historia, ed. Magoulias, 69).

That prediction was still present at court after Manuel’s death. Andronikos, who usurped power in 1183, eliminating Alexios, Manuel’s legitimate son, was concerned about his own successor. First, he chose as his heir the illegitimate son of Manuel, also named Alexios, who was married to his daughter, but: Later, he changed his mind and elected his son John instead, saying to those to whom he disclosed the secrets of [God’s] purposes that the empire would not pass from alpha to alpha but would rather incline towards iota, and this according to divine plan. (Nicetas Choniates, Historia, ed. Magoulias, 234).

Apocalyptical Traditions (↗ Brandes, Eschatology Eastern Christian World). John’s Apocalypse was the starting point of a long tradition of interpretations in the East and the West; Origen and later theological writers interpreted against an eschatological concept. It means the idea of God’s reign on Earth for 1000 years before the Second coming. However, a couple of apocryphal apocalypses including oracular prophecies and end-time calculations influenced orthodox theological and Byzantine political thought (see Kraft 2018).

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Transcultural Exchange The relations between the Arab-Islamic realm and the Byzantine Empire were mostly characterized by competition, but there was still a constant exchange of knowledge and ideas between the opponents. Particularly during the first decades of the Arabic expansion, relations between the occupied population and the new governors can be found. An influential group of learned men and theologians spoke Greek as their mother tongue and were educated in the Hellenic tradition, but worked in a different religious ambience later. John of Damascus (676–749) wrote in Damascus, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. The Maronite Theophilus of Edessa worked as astrologer at the court of Caliph al-Mahdī (775–785) and left an important treatise concerning catarchic astrology (in Greek). Caliph al-Ma’mun, who took a keen interest in astrology, received an embassy in Damascus in 829. The Byzantine scholar John the Grammarian (patriarch 837–843) accompanied the diplomats and intensive discussions are likely to have arisen; however, Leo the Mathematician (see above) remained in Constantinople. In the ninth and tenth centuries, the interest in Greek knowledge experienced an upswing in the Arab learned world, which can be explained by the Byzantine expansion into the region of Syria (Antiocheia was ruled by the emperor from 969 until 1084). The reaction of the Arabic learned world seems to have been an intensified philhellenism; i.  e., an increasing interest in ancient Greek (pagan) knowledge, directed against a Byzantium that was dominated by Christian thought (Gutas 1998). The so-called book on dream-interpretation of Achmet ben Sirin was translated into Greek around 900 (Mavroudi 2002; see above). Symeon Seth (ca. 1035–ca. 1110), who moved between the Islamic courts of the Middle East and Constantinople, translated the Kalīlah wa Dimnah into Greek (Stephanos and Ichnelates) (Magdalino 2003). Even the last few centuries of Byzantium witnessed an intensive transfer of knowledge (Mavroudi 2007). Theodore Metochites became an expert in oriental wisdom; he was trained by Manuel Bryennios, whose teacher came from Persia. Nicephorus Gregoras and his student, Isaac Argyros, used for their astrological texts and tables of stars material of Persian origin. Gregory Chioniades (thirteenth century) travelled between Constantinople, Trebizond and Tabriz, collecting Eastern sources on astronomy (Pingree 1985–1986). In contrast to former research, the influence of the Byzantine learned circles seems to be relevant for understanding the transfer of ideas and should be investigated more intensively (Mavroudi 2006).

Objects Besides illustrations of calculations, tables and sketches in manuscripts, material evidence of divination is scarce compared with the ancient period (e.  g. the Zodiac and months from the Tetrabiblos of Ptolemy in a ninth–century Byzantine manuscript,



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Fig. 9: A Byzantine Astrolabe, dated to 1062 (Brescia, Museo della Città, Inv. No. 36). Photo credits: Photographic archive Musei di Brescia-Fotostudio Rapuzzi.

now Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. gr. 1292, fol.9). A rare example of an astrolabe bearing a Greek inscription is held in Brescia. It can be dated to 1062 and belonged to the official Sergios “of the race of the Persians.” The usage of that tool has been described by John Philoponus, John Kamateros (twelfth century) and many scholars from the Late Byzantine period (Theodore Meliteniotes, Gregory Chioniades). Sundials must be mentioned as astronomical instruments as well. A telling example (sixth century) is held at the Science Museum in London. The portable metal object comprises two practically independent components: a sundial that can be used at any latitude and a calendrical instrument showing the phase of the moon, the day, and the positions of the sun and moon in the zodiac (Field 1990). The model is probably mentioned by Vitruvius. Techniques of prognostication are depicted in a few manuscripts (↗ Grünbart, Lekanomanteia Eastern Christian World). In an illuminated manuscript containing works by Gregory of Nazianzus, the virgin Justine is shown being protected by Christ as she is about to be seduced by the magician Kyprianos, who is depicted as a pagan philosopher surrounded by a globe and a bowl of water in front of him. Two small golden figures stand in the water (possibly a reflection of lekanomanteia) (Paris. gr. 510, fol. 332v). Magical objects did not serve to predict future events, they protected against the evil eye or provided aid for the hystera (“womb”) (Spier 1993).

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Configurations of Prognostication (see also ↗ Grünbart, Mantic Arts Eastern Christian World) Lots The throwing of lots for prognosis is not mentioned in Byzantine sources, but simply serves to find the right person to guide a monastery of the ecclesiastical hierarchy (the election of an abbot or patriarch) or determine the pole position for a team in the hippodrome (still in use in the tenth century) (see Courcelle 1957, 1248; Grünbart 2018). However, the so-called ticket-oracle is attested several times. A question is written on a piece of papyrus, pergament or paper, including a positive and a negative answer/ version. An expert or priest takes one sheet, influenced by a supernatural power. Physical evidence of that practice provides a papyrus (Youtie 1975; dated to the sixth century), and Anna Komnene (twelfth century) mentions a similar technique in her Alexiad: The emperor Alexios asks whether he should campaign against the Cumans or not. Sheets of paper (?) listing two options respectively were deposited on an altar. After a night full of prayers a priest took one piece the next morning and read the answer that was guided by God (↗ Grünbart, Mantic Arts Eastern Christian World).

Geomancy and Lekanomanteia Geomancy was a method of divination that provides solutions through the interpretation of markings on the ground. A series of 16 figures (that is the dominant pattern) is interpreted, which are formed by a randomized procedure. Geomancy is often combined with astrological observations (the signs produced in sand correlate with celestial objects) (↗ Grünbart, Mantic Arts Eastern Christian World). Lekanomanteia, using bowls of water or dish-divining is an Etruscan form of divination (↗ Engels and Nice, Divination in Antiquity), but also attested in the Old Testament (Gen. 44:5). In the Byzantine period, such practices were still known and even depicted (↗ Grünbart, Lekanomanteia Eastern Christian World).

Signs and Prodigies Although the antique pagan techniques of prognostication vanished or were forbidden, signs and remarkable phenomena continued to be recorded. They still influenced future actions and supported decision-making. In Byzantine written sources, observations of signs and prodigies appear in various contexts influencing actions and decisions. In contrast to ancient times (Engels 2007; Trampedach 2015), the subject of signs and their political dimension have not been systematically investigated for



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the Greek Middle Ages. Signs and prodigies occupied a special place in the perception of the world through the Holy Scriptures. Terrestrial and stellar events need explanations and coping strategies, because they were seen as emanations of the supernatural power or God’s will. Particularly at the imperial court, signs were noted and elucidated; observations have often been interpreted by experts. In contrast to the ancient world, however, there is no longer any active questioning of certain media (e.  g. watching birds’ flight, reading the liver). However, according to the sources, some techniques were still reflected and a small group of them were rarely practiced (↗ Grünbart, Lekanomanteia Eastern Christian World). A few examples should illustrate the importance of animal signs: the eagle, for example, is a meaningful indicator of power. When Marcian was captured by the Vandal king, Genseric (441), he was shaded by an eagle in contrast to the other soldiers who suffered due to the sunshine beating down. The Vandal king interpreted this as a sign of his future imperial office so treated him well and made a non-aggression pact. This story lives on and re-appears in the story of Basileios I (867–886). While his parents were working in the fields, young Basileios was always protected from the sun by an eagle, which portent was seen as a positive sign (Moravcsik 1961). Two eagles appeared after the Bulgarian ruler Simeon and Romanos I had met and parted again (923), which was interpreted as a bad omen, since the two birds had flown away from each other in opposite directions. Animals from the sea were often negative omens, and King Theoderic died after being served an evil-looking fish. The rare sight of a large fish (whale) stranded at Constantinople was interpreted by the historiographer Procopius as an apocalyptical sign referring to Justinian’s rulership (Signes 2005). Such signs and miracles refer to the immediate future and can influence action on the one hand and legitimize processes or place them in a teleological context on the other.

The Social and Historical Context The fourth century saw increasing offences against pagan centers of prognostication. Constans  II enacted a law against fortune-telling. An edict was promulgated that forbade curiosity concerning future events (Codex Theodosianus 9, 16, 4). However, the impact of that edict is unknown, since many oracles continued to operate, particularly supported by Emperor Julian (361–363). At Didyma, in Western Asia Minor, he became the highest prophet (Julian, Letters 88, p. 451bc). Many pagan centers closed during the reign of Theodosius I (379–395), and the laws were strictly executed at that time. However, only a few records refer to damage to temples, etc. In Rome, the Sibylline books, a collection of political oracles, were burnt by the magister militum Stilicho (after 400), and only a few fragments are known to us (but see Sibylline Oracles above). […] It seems that various techniques of prognostication were present

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at the imperial court or in imperial context through the whole Byzantine Millennium. During the sixth and seventh centuries, there was a shift in responsibility and jurisdiction; those accused of engaging in astrology, mantic and magical practices were tried before the ecclesiastical courts (Stolte 2002). Henceforth, the punishment for magical offences became more prominent in canon law. The orthodox church opposed astrology although the Bible is full of prophets interpreting celestial phenomena. The concept of human fate being influenced by the position of a star stands against free will and replaces (divine) Providence by necessity (↗ Grünbart, Treatises for Predicting hora mortis). Prognostication and fortune-telling served as tools for decision-making at the ruling courts since Classical Antiquity (Potter 1990). Knowledge of the future could jeopardize the authority of rulers; predictions of approaching misfortune or even the death of the emperor influenced public opinion and could encourage a coup. The process of monopolization and control of the techniques concerning prognostication during Late Antiquity has been thoroughly investigated (Fögen 1994). Byzantine emperors continued to contain possible criticism of them and therefore took very restrictive action against opinions that were directed against their rulership (on “Kaiserkritik” see Tinnefeld 1973, p. 48, 77, 169; Magdalino 1982). However, prognosticators, fortune-tellers and experts in various sciences were present at court. They often belonged to the inner circle of advisors. Therefore, they could influence or even mislead the process or imperial decision-making. On the other hand, holy men and women were consulted as well. The stylite Saint Daniel came to Constantinople, where he erected his pillar. Due to his spiritual authority, he was visited by Emperors Leo I and Zeno, whom he advised. Reading the sources, it becomes clear that most emperors were interested in prognosis, but they dealt with it in different ways. The spectrum ranges from the rejection of to intensive involvement with, for example, astrology. Extraordinary events and signs were intensively observed and noted, which were interpreted as divine waves or hints at a certain action. Signs also played a role in the private life of the emperor. A significant example is intended to demonstrate this. Emperor Alexios III (1195–1203) wished to move from one palace in Constantinople to another. At the conclusion of these events, the emperor wished to go directly to Blachernai [the imperial palace in the North-West region of Constantinople], but because the season was unsuitable (for the emperors up to our times scrutinize the position of the stars before they take a single step), he remained in the Great Palace through the first week of Lent [11–18 February 1201] against his wishes. Since the sixth day [17 February] was not unpropitious for a change of residence, especially if he departed in the morning twilight, he decided to arrive at Blachernai in the dark, before the sun had begun to cast its rays. The trireme rode at anchor of the shore of the palace, and all the emperor’s kinsmen assembled at this side with lights to sail in company with him. Now God demonstrated that he is the Lord of seasons and years’ and that he guides the steps of some or trips them up: the floor before the emperor’s bed collapsed without visible cause and opened



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into a yawning chasm. Contrary to all expectations, the emperor was delivered from the danger… What were the emperor’s thoughts about these events, I have no way of knowing. (Nicetas Choniates, Historia, ed. Magoulias, 291).

The emperor first observes the notion of good and bad days, but then opposes these “rules” by making an idiosyncratic interpretation. He decides to change his place at night, but almost plunges into misfortune and nearly fulfils the prediction. In military contexts, prognostication is often mentioned. One of the main questions related to the termination and beginning of a battle. The treatise of Theophilus of Edessa has been mentioned already, but many examples taken from historiography underline its significance. Anna Komnene reports an episode concerning her father, Alexios, who was undecided about launching a campaign against Bohemond in 1107. He returned after departing from Constantinople, because the usual miracle in the church of the Theotokos Blachernitissa (situated in the quarter of Blachernae in the north western corner of Constantinople within the land walls) failed to occur. The shrouded icon normally unveiled itself during liturgical services on Fridays and was involved in the processes of decision-making (as Michael Psellos also mentions in an oration). Alexios and his entourage visited the church to attend liturgy and the icon was unveiled at the end. That sign was interpreted as a positive hint that the expedition should be resumed (Anna Komnene, Alexiad XII I 2). Nicetas Choniates sardonically presents an example of a prediction that led to a military disaster. Emperor Manuel was not only interested in occult sciences but also actively involved in astrological computations. He compelled his military leader, Constantine Angelos, to turn back after he had set sail for Sicily, because the tables of the astronomical sphere had been misread and incorrectly calculated. The historiographer pokes fun at the efficacy of the horoscope that was cast a second time: “So advantageous was the determination of the exact moment to the success of Roman affairs that forthwith Constantine Angelos was delivered into the hands of the enemy!” (Nicetas Choniates, Historia, ed. Magoulias, 56). It becomes apparent that techniques of prognostication occur more frequently in contexts of the determination of dates and the right moment for action (kairos). Since success in military affairs was linked to a good timetable even in premodern times, it is unsurprising that such events are often mentioned in the narratives of armed conflicts. The emperor and members of the imperial family are naturally in the limelight of public perception, since their well-being or misfortune had a direct influence on the course of political history and thus on the daily life of the population. In the historiographical narratives, such episodes serve to justify or criticize certain actions and developments of the ruling class.

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Selected Bibliography Alexander Jones (ed.). An Eleventh-Century Manual of Arabo-Byzantine Astronomy. Amsterdam, 1987. Althoff, Jochen. “Das Verhältnis von medizinischer Prognose zur religiösen Divinatorik/Mantik in Griechenland.” Writings of Early Scholars in the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Rome, and Greece. Translating Ancient Scientific Texts. Eds. Annette Imhausen and Tanja Pommerening. Berlin and New York, 2010. 47–68. Angelide, Christina, and George Calofonos (eds.). Dreaming in Byzantium and Beyond. Farnham, 2014. Barlaam de Seminara. Traités sur les éclipses de soleil de 1333 et 1337. Histoire des textes, éd. critiques, trad. et commentaires. Eds. Joseph Mogenet and Anne Tihon. Louvain, 1977. Bonura, Christopher. “When did the Legend of the Last Emperor Originate? A New Look at the Textual Relationship between the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius and the Tiburtine Sibyl.” Viator 47 (2016): 47–100. Brackertz, Karl (ed.). Die Volks-Traumbücher des byzantinischen Mittelalters. Munich, 1993. Brodersen, Kai (ed.). Prognosis: Studien zur Funktion von Zukunftsvorhersagen in Literatur und Geschichte seit der Antike. Münster, 2001. Brokkaar, Walter G. The Oracles of the Most Wise Emperor Leo and the Tale of the True Emperor (Amstelodamus graecus VI E 8). Amsterdam, 2002. Caudano, Anne-Laurence. “Eustratios of Nicaea on Thunder and Lightning.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 105 (2012): 611–634. Dalton, Ormond M. The Byzantine Astrolabe at Brescia. London, 1926. Daniel. Franz Drexl. “Das Traumbuch des Propheten Daniel nach dem Codex Vaticanus Palatinus 319.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 26 (1926): 290–314. Dornseiff, Franz. Das Alphabet in Mystik und Magie. 2nd ed. Leipzig, 1925. Engels, David. Das römische Vorzeichenwesen (753 – 27 v. Chr.). Quellen, Terminologie, Kommentar, historische Entwicklung. Stuttgart, 2007. Field, Judith V. “Some Roman and Byzantine Portable Sundials and the London Sundial-Calendar.” History of Technology 12 (1990): 103–135. Fögen, Marie Theres. Die Enteignung der Wahrsager. Studien zum kaiserlichen Wissensmonopol in der Spätantike. Frankfurt am Main, 1997. Germanos. Eds. Charles Garton and Leendert G. Westerink. Germanos on Predistined Terms of Life. Buffalo, NY, 1979. Germanos. Franz Drexl. “Das Traumbuch des Patriarchen Germanos.” Laographia 7 (1923): 428–488. Gregory Chioniades. The Astronomical Works of Gregory Chioniades, Volume I: The Zij Al-’Ala’ I, Part 1: Text, translation, commentary by David Pingree. Part 2: Tables. Amsterdam, 1985–1986. Grünbart, Michael. “Unter einem guten Stern? Externe Instanzen bei kaiserlichen Entscheidungs­ prozessen in Byzanz.” Prosopon Rhomaikon. Ergänzende Studien zur Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit. Eds. Alexander Beihammer, Bettina Krönung and Claudia Ludwig. Berlin and Boston, 2017. Grünbart, Michael. “Losen als Verfahren des Entscheidens im griechischen Mittelalter.” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 52 (2018): 217–252. Gutas, Dimitri. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture. Tthe Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ʻAbbāsid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th centuries). London, 1998. Hunger, Herbert. Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner. Munich, 1978, II, 219–260 (Mathematics and Astronomy). John Philoponus. De usu astrolabii eiusque constructione / Über die Anwendung des Astrolabs und seine Anfertigung. Ed. Alfred Stückelberger. Berlin et al., 2015.



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John Skylitzes. A Synopsis of Byzantine History, 811–1057. Introduction, Text and Notes translated by John Wortley. Cambridge, 2010. Karlin-Hayter, Patricia. “Le portrait d’Andronic I Comnène et les Oracula Leonis Sapientis.” Byzantinische Forschungen 12 (1987): 103–115. Kraft, Andras. “The Last Roman Emperor Topos in the Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition.” Byzantion 82 (2012): 213–257. Kraft, Andras. “An Inventory of Medieval Greek Apocalyptic Sources (c. 500–1500 AD): Naming and Dating, Editions and Manuscripts.” Millennium-Jahrbuch 15 (2018): 69–143. Magdalino, Paul. “Aspects of Twelfth-Century Byzantine ‘Kaiserkritik’.” Speculum 58 (1982): 326–346. Magdalino, Paul. “The History of the Future and its Uses: Prophecy, Policy and Propaganda.” The Making of Byzantine History. Studies Dedicated to Donald M. Nicol on his Seventieth Birthday. Eds. Roderick Beaton and Charlotte Roueché. Aldershot, 1993. 3–34. Magdalino, Paul. “The Porphyrogenita and the Astrologers: A Commentary on Alexiad VI.7.1–7.” Porphyrogenita: Essays in honour of Julian Chrysostomides. Eds. Charalambos Dendrinos et al. Aldershot, 2003. 15–31. Magdalino, Paul. L’orthodoxie des astrologues. La science entre le dogme et la divination à Byzance (VIIe–XIVe siècle). Paris, 2006. Magdalino, Paul, and Maria Mavroudi (eds). The Occult Sciences in Byzantium. Geneva, 2006. Mango, Cyril. “The Legend of Leo the Wise.” Zbornik radova Vizantološkog Instituta 6 (1960): 59–93. Mavroudi, Maria. A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation. The Oneirocriticon of Achmet and its Arabic Sources. Leiden, 2002. Mavroudi, Maria. “Occult Science and Society in Byzantium: Considerations for Future Research.” The Occult Sciences in Byzantium. Eds. Paul Magdalino and Maria Mavroudi. Geneva, 2006. 39–95. Mavroudi, Maria. “Late Byzantium and Exchange with Arabic Writers.” Byzantium, Faith and Power (1261–1557). Perspectives on Late Byzantine Art and Culture. Ed. Sarah T. Brooks. New Haven, CT, 2007. 62–75. Mavroudi, Maria. “Translations from Greek into Arabic and Latin during the Middle Ages: Searching for the Classical Tradition.” Speculum 90 (2015): 28–59. O’Meara, Dominic J. “Psellos’ Commentary on the Chaldaean Oracles and Proclus’ lost Commentary.” Platonismus und Esoterik in byzantinischem Mittelalter und italienischer Renaissance. Ed. Helmut Seng. Heidelberg, 2013. 45–58. Moravcsik, Gyula. “Sagen und Legenden über Kaiser Basileios I.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 15 (1961): 59–126. Nikephoros. Franz Drexl, “Das Traumbuch des Patriarchen Nikephoros.” Festgabe A. Ehrhard. Beiträge zur Geschichte des christlichen Altertums und der byzantinischen Literatur. Ed. Albert Michael Koeniger. Bonn, 1922. 94–118. Nikephoros Gregoras. Nicéphore Grégoras. Calcul de l’eclipse de soleil du 16 Juillet 1330. Amsterdam, 1983. Niketas Choniates. O City of Byzantium. Annals of Niketas Choniates [= Historia]. Trans. Harry J. Magoulias. Detroit, 1984. Papathanassiou, Maria. “Stephanus of Alexandria: Pharmaceutical Nations and Cosmology in his Alchemical Work.” Ambix 37 (1990–1991): 121–133. Papathanassiou, Maria. “Iatromathematica (medical astrology) in Late Antiquity and the Byzantine Period.” Medicina nei secoli 11 (1999): 357–376. Papathanassiou, Maria. “Stephanos of Alexandria: A Famous Byzantine Scholar, Alchemist and Astrologer.” The Occult Sciences in Byzantium. Eds. Paul Magdalino and Maria Mavroudi. Geneva, 2006. 163–203.

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Pingree, David. “Classical and Byzantine Astrology in Sassanian Persia.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 43 (1989): 227–239. Pingree, David. “Horoscope.” The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium 2 (1991): 947–948. Pingree, David. “The Byzantine Translations of Masha’allah on Interrogational Astrology.” The Occult Sciences in Byzantium. Eds. Paul Magdalino and Maria Mavroudi. Geneva, 2006. 231–243. Pingree, David. “From Alexandria to Baghdad to Byzantium. The Transmission of Astrology.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 8 (2001): 3–37. Podskalsky, Gerhard. Byzantinische Reichseschatologie. Die Periodisierung der Weltgeschichte in den vier Grossreichen (Daniel 2 u. 7) und der tausendjährigen Friedensreiche (Apok. 20). Eine motivgeschichtliche Untersuchung. Munich, 1972. Potter, David S. Prophecy and History in the Crisis of the Roman Empire. A Historical Commentary on the Thirteenth Sibylline Oracle. Oxford, 1990. Rigo, Antonio. Oracula Leonis. Tre manoscritti Greco-Veniceni degli oracoli attribuiti all’imperatore Leone il Saggio. Padua, 1988. Scott, Roger. “From Propaganda to History to Literature. The Byzantine Stories of Theodosius’ Apple and Marcian’s Eagles.” History as Literature in Byzantium. Ed. Ruth Macrides. Aldershot, 2010. 115–132. Seng, Helmut. “Der Kommentar des Psellos zu den Chaldaeischen Orakeln in lateinischer Übersetzung (Vat. lat. 3122  f. 44r–57r).” Platonismus und Esoterik in byzantinischem Mittelalter und italienischer Renaissance. Ed. Helmut Seng. Heidelberg, 2013. 59–74. Signes, Juan. “Der Historiker und der Walfisch. Tiersymbolik und Milleniarismus in der Kriegsgeschichte.” Zwischen Polis, Provinz und Peripherie. Beiträge zur byzantinischen Geschichte und Kultur. Eds. Lars Hoffmann and Anuscha Monchizadeh. Mainz, 2005. 37–58. Spier, Jeffrey. “Medieval Byzantine Magical Amulets and Their Tradition.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 56 (1993): 25–62. Stolte, Bernard. “The Challenge of Change Notes on the Legal History of the Reign of Heraclius.” The Reign of Heraclius (610–641). Crisis and Confrontation. Eds. Gerrit J. Reinink and Bernard Stolte. Louvain, 2002. 191–203. Theodore Meliteniotes. Tribiblos astronomique. Livre I. Ed. Régine Leurquin. Leiden, 1990. Theon of Alexandria. Le ‘petit commentaire’ de Théon d’Alexandrie aux tables faciles de Ptolémée. Ed. Anne Tihon. Vatican City, 1978. Theophanes. The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor. Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284–813. Eds. Cyril Mango and Roger Scott. Oxford, 1997. Theophylactus Simokates. Charles Garton and Leendert G. Westerink (eds.), Theophylactus Simokates on Predistined Terms of Life. Buffalo, NY, 1978 Tihon, Anne. “Astrological Promenade in Byzantium and in the Early Palaiologan Period.” The Occult Sciences in Byzantium. Eds. Paul Magdalino and Maria Mavroudi. Geneva, 2006. 265–290. Tihon, Anne. “Les sciences exactes à Byzance.” Byzantion 79 (2009): 380–434. Timotin, Andrei. Visions, prophéties et pouvoir à Byzance. Étude sur l’hagiographie méso-byzantine (IX–XI siècles). Paris, 2010. Tinnefeld, Franz H. Kategorien der Kaiserkritik in der byzantinischen Historiographie. Von Prokop bis Niketas Choniates. Munich, 1973. Trampedach, Kai. Politische Mantik. Die Kommunikation über Götterzeichen und Orakel im klassischen Griechenland. Heidelberg, 2015. Turfa, Jean MacIntosh. Divining the Etruscan World. The Brontoscopic Calendar and Religious Practice. Cambridge, 2012. Vereecken, Jeannine, and Lydie Hadermann Misguich. Les oracles de Léon le sage illustrés par Georges Klontzas. La version Barozzi dans le Codex Bute. Venice, 2013.



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Vettius Valens. Vettii Valentis Antiocheni anthologiarum libri novem. Ed. David Pingree. Leipzig, 1986. Westerink, Leendert G. “Ein astrologisches Kolleg aus dem Jahre 564.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 64 (1971): 6–21. Youtie, Herbert C. “Questions to a Christian Oracle.” Zeitschrift für Papyrology und Epigraphik 18 (1975): 253–257.

Avriel Bar-Levav

Prognostication in Medieval Jewish Culture In this volume, one can find surveys, entries and sources about various aspects of medieval prognostication in the three Abrahamic religions. The aim of this general review is to introduce this topic in Jewish culture in general, so the reader might notice similarities and differences between the concepts and practices of prognostication within the various cultures. The challenge is considerable, since there remain very few general scholarly surveys of this topic in Judaism, although there are specific discussions of figures and motifs, as well as excellent surveys of medieval Jewish magic (Bohak 2015; Harari 2011). The entry on Jewish divination, by Moses Gaster, in the Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics from 1911 is superb but focuses on the Bible and antiquity (Gaster 1911). Moreover, the cultural connections between Jews and their neighbors – be they Christian or Muslim – at times blurs the line between the various denominations. This is true for diverse groups in society, those who often share texts and concepts with their peers, and those who might differ in terms of their lodging and social organization, but whose magical practices often coincide somewhat with those of their neighbours. Indeed, this is not a claim regarding the identity of the various groups, but regarding the complication associated with distinguishing between the inner and outer influences on them. Furthermore: the question of the periodization of Jewish culture is also complicated (Castaño 2020; Skinner 2003). In this survey “Jewish prognostication” means prognostication as indicated (mainly) in Jewish sources, or in sources about Jews. A note about terminology: “Prognostication” in English is knowing – or aiming to know or predict – the future. It is neutral regarding the source of knowledge, especially when we compare it to the (older) term, “divination,” which presumes that the knowledge of the future (and sometimes of the past, in contrast with prognostication, that is about the future) is divine, and can be conceived through some connection with the divine. In mediaeval Hebrew, there is no direct equivalent for these terms. The biblical word nevu’ah, literally “prophecy,” is the main term employed for receiving divine knowledge (↗ Miller, Prophecy Jewish Traditions), not only about the future but also, for example, about the godhead (Cook 2011). The biblical term ḥover (Isa. 47:13) is used to mark astrologers (↗ Rodriguez-Arribas, Jewish astral science), while niḥush (in later periods, literally: “guessing”) marks some prediction of the future, based on special powers (↗ Bar-On, Jewish mantic arts). Other terms (for example, qesem and qosem) are also used to refer to specific techniques regarding prediction (Gaster 1911).

Acknowledgement: The author is very grateful to his friends and colleagues who read earlier drafts of this survey for their most useful comments and suggestions: Avishai Bar-Asher, Shraga Bar-On, Gideon Bohak, Yuval Harari, Geoffrey Herman, Ruth Glasner, and Gadi Sagiv. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-007

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Knowing the future is a specific case of knowing in general, and knowledge is power. No wonder this power is treated cautiously, and that frequent attempts are made to restrict it. Knowledge about the future can be useful for all, either for state policy, high finance, military challenges, business or just daily survival. Although the need is common, each stratum of society tends to be interested in different questions, and can have its own techniques for answering these. It is useful to differentiate between two fields of Jewish prognostication: personal and communal, the latter relating mainly to the end of days or the redemption, with or without a messianic figure (↗ Latteri, Jewish eschatology). The question of borders is central to prognostication, which itself constitutes the crossing of a border, between the past and the present. As for the sources, it is useful to differentiate (as in Bohak 2015, 268–269; Harari 2017, 15*–17*) between “inner” sources – such as manuals of prognostication for use by experts (cf. Friedlander 1906), and “outer” sources – discussions of magic and prognostication by non-practitioners (for example Maimonides, Mishne Torah: The Book of Knowledge, trans. Hyamson, ch. 11; cf. Halbertal 2014, 217–223). Another useful distinction is between canonical writings, such as the Bible, the Mishna, the Talmud, the Zohar (↗ Margolin, Physiognomy and Chiromancy) as well as legal works (↗ Kanarfogel, Prognostication in Jewish Law), and non-canonical practical works such as Sepher ha-Razim (The Book of the Mysteries, ed. Margalioth) or Shimmush Tehillim (The Use of the Psalms, ed. Rebiger). I suggest viewing prognostication according to several aspects: 1. Agents who bring knowledge 2. Knowledge as a commodity 3. Modes of consciousness 4. Reading a map These perspectives are analytical tools, but do not appear as such in the sources and are not exclusive; some of them can overlap and operate together. However, they might help us to think about the topic (for a different, sophisticated typology, cf. Zuesse 1987).

Background: Biblical Prognostication – The Biblical Prohibition against Forbidden Emissaries and their Techniques As stated, the question of the sources of Jewish prognostication is a complicated one, leading us to wonder if there is indeed a specific Jewish prognostication. Jewish thought is delivered mainly through Hebrew, but not solely – important works were



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written in Jewish languages, especially, during the medieval period, Judeo-Arabic, and there were lines of translation between Hebrew, Arabic, Latin and other European languages (Steinschneider 1893). The first source of Jewish culture is the Hebrew Bible, which was developed against the background of Mesopotamian cultures, often in an attempt to present an opposing position, yet one which is rooted also in the stand to which it is opposed. There are, on occasion, differences in the Bible between the official stand and echoes of continuing forbidden practices. In Jewish culture, knowing and learning the divine lore is central. In contrast to the Mesopotamian religions, in which religious knowledge was restricted to the elite, in Jewish culture, knowledge is open to all (Idel 1995). However, knowledge of the future in the Hebrew Bible is restricted to legitimate agents and techniques alone, and other ways of prognostication are considered foreign and forbidden, as laid down in Deut. 18:10–22: (10) Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, (11) or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. (12) Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord; because of these same detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you. (13) You must be blameless before the Lord your God. (14) The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery or divination. But as for you, the Lord your God has not permitted you to do so. (15) The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. (16) For this is what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, ‘Let us not hear the voice of the Lord our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die.’ (17) The Lord said to me: ‘What they say is good. (18) I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. (19) I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. (20) But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death’. (21) You may say to yourselves, ‘How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?’ (22) If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.

This (among some other Biblical parallels) is a central text for understanding the complex Jewish attitude toward prognostication – in fact, in this case, divination is more fitting, because it is clear that the source of the knowledge of the future here is indeed divine. Several prognostic techniques are forbidden, because God detests them, and only true prophecy is permitted. Most of these detested practices are performed by women and, elsewhere, the Bible directly declares: “You shall not suffer a sorceress to live” (Ex. 22:17). Correct prophecy is the sign of a real connection with the Divine. This is the beginning of the answer to the question – from where does knowledge of the future emanate? Here, it is clear that this knowledge stems from God. The prophet is a mes-

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senger who conveys all sorts of information – for example, how to behave and how to act politically and religiously, but it is the knowledge of the future – or, more exactly, the proof that the future brings about past prophecies – which provides confirmation that this messenger is not a false one but a true prophet (↗ Miller, Prophecy Jewish Traditions). Later, in the rabbinic discussions of these commands and in the medieval Bible exegesis of these verses, this text will be the place for the enquiry about magic in general as well as, specifically, prognostication. Prophecy was initially mainly a Biblical phenomenon, which ceased (with many exceptions) in the time of the Sages (Urbach 1945), so this path to knowing the future was temporarily closed. In the medieval period, we find figures who are named “prophets,” such as the German-Jewish Nehemiah ben Shlomo, the prophet of Erfurt (Idel 2005 and Idel 2018), or the Spanish prophetess Inés (Beinart 1982). Biblical prognostication was supposed to remain the sphere of the true prophets. There is a double channeling here: first, of the only permitted profession – prophets – and then of the right kind of prophets, those who were emissaries of the true God. Prognostication has indeed great cultural capital (as well as, of course, even greater practical implications). In that sense, a theological competition – such as that between the God of the Jewish Bible and the surrounding idols, is also a competition about permitted or true prognostication. One of the implications of prognostication as a measure of a true prophet is that the source of (true) knowledge is divine. Another Biblical technique for divination (in this case, receiving divine information) was the Urim and Tumim (Ex. 28; 1 Sam. 14:37, 28:6). These are an instrument rather than a messenger, although the instrument belongs to the high priest, who is a kind of messenger himself (↗ Bar-On, Mantic Arts Jewish Traditions, 454–455). Another aspect of a Biblical effect on prognostication is the idea of the redemption of the world at the end of days, or “the day of the lord,” (for example, Mal. 3:23) according to some interpretations. Once this idea had been introduced, it initiated calculations of various kinds, seeking to determine when this would occur (↗ Latteri, Jewish eschatology). To sum up, Biblical prognostication is officially permitted through true prophets and also through the priestly Urim and Tumim (although some positive Biblical figures, such as Joseph, are depicted as possessing prognostic powers). Other methods of prognostication were considered foreign and so excluded. The common techniques of divination that were forbidden were occasionally still practiced. An example is the witch of Endor (1 Sam. 28), whose practice of necromancy was strictly persecuted, as we have seen, also by King Saul himself. Yet it was he who approached the witch in order to learn the outcome of the battle in which he was about to engage, during which he was killed, thus showing that some forbidden prognostic techniques had their own life and continued, despite being condemned, and demonstrating the complex relations between magic and political power. In the medieval period, the interpretation of this story was the vehicle for discussions about necromancy (cf. Leicht 2011, 251–264; ↗ Rapisarda, Mantic Arts Western Christian World, 441).



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Agents Medieval Jews differed from their surrounding neighbors due to several factors: their rituals, religion and religious sources (in terms of both content and language), and their political situation. Jews were a minority everywhere they dwelled. They were spread across the east and west, and lacked a unified religious center, but they did have a sense of being one people and a connection with other Jews living among other cultures. This can be seen, for example, by the twelfth-century travelogue of Benjamin of Tudela, who describes, at the beginning of his work, the various Jewish communities that he visited, regarding them all as belonging to the same Jewish people (Benjamin of Tudela – A Medieval Mediterranean Travelogue, ed. and trans. Benjamin 1995). As a minority, and often an alienated one, Jews employed prognostication in a different way to their neighbors. Usually, they had less power and were responsible for the fate of their communities but not the common land. There were many decisions in which they took no part – political treaties, for example, together with war declarations and ancestry matters – and therefore they did not need to prognosticate about such matters. However, some individuals worked as the state leaders’ consultants or officials, which entailed the usage of prognostication tools. The prototype of the Jew as a consultant to a ruler appears as early as the Hebrew Bible, with Joseph and Daniel, who are depicted as prognosticators by dream interpretations (Gen. 40; Dan. 1:17) (↗ Kuyt, Dream Interpretation Jewish Traditions). Perhaps their situation as outsiders enabled Jews to see a broader picture. Certainly, to act as a consultant, prognostication was a necessary course of action. The Chronicle of Aḥima’az is a family chronicle from Southern Italy, written by Aḥima’az son of Paltiel in 1054, which depicts the passage of the author’s family from Babylon to Italy, a story full of magical acts and supernatural powers. The text contains both legendary and historically-based traditions (Bonfil 2009). Aḥima’az interprets correctly (and generously) a special appearance of stars, and his success enables him both to acquire an important place at the court of the Muslim king and to protect his fellow Jews (Bonfil 2009, 314). The chronicle also depicts many misogynistic concepts regarding women as (mainly evil) powerful magicians, but these are unconnected to prognostication. It is possible that the magical capacities attributed to women in medieval Jewish culture were less connected to prognostication (but not totally disconnected, cf. Harari 2011, 74*). The connection between prognostication and cultural capital is prevalent not only in the Hebrew Bible but also in the rabbinic sources. The Mishna (edited about 200 CE), the Talmud (edited about 600 CE) and the Midrash – the main vehicles for transmitting Jewish law in late antiquity – were influenced by the surrounding Babylonian and Hellenistic cultures. Again, Jewish culture developed out of both the competition with and the dependence on those cultures. The shift from Biblical to Rabbinic Judaism should also be explained, as it provides a model for other shifts in Jewish culture. This shift can be termed “cultural translation.” The first and foremost meaningful cultural translation was that of Biblical Judaism to post-Biblical or rab-

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binic Judaism, with the literature of the Sages, that was created orally. The Mishna, Midrash and Talmud maintained a close bond with the Biblical texts, yet they interpenetrated them with striking independence and momentum. On the one hand, the literature of the Sages relies on the Biblical text but, on the other, it transforms it into new cultural values. One of its main features – and one wonders about the influence of this feature on prognostication – is the question and the doubt. The Mishna begins with a (practical) question about the time of prayer, and offers several potential alternatives. Although only one of them is chosen, still it presents a polyphony of opinion, and this polyphony became a central element in Jewish culture. Without the Sages, the Hebrew Bible might have lost its relevance for the Jews, yet they succeeded in translating and transforming it into a new cultural setting. The status of the old text was preserved and, at the same time, a necessary new slant was added to it, and so it continued during the next stages. This was meaningful for prognostication as well. The Sages lacked central Biblical prognostication techniques, such as the Urim and Tumin as well as prophecy, and also lost some of the direct knowledge about the old, forbidden techniques. Yet they had to explain and define the content of the Biblical prohibitions, and did so by using their knowledge of their own surrounding cultures, Babylonian, or in Palestine, Hellenistic (Lieberman 1950). Discussions on prognostications were anchored mainly around the Biblical prohibitions against the foreign ways, and were also connected to relevant practical legal discussions. The literature of the Sages, which was created and first kept orally, was written down during the period of the Geonim (from the seventh to eleventh centuries). This was also the period of the usage of Judeo-Arabic by the Jews. The Jews were flexible about their languages, and did not stick to Hebrew alone. The Bible contains Aramaic (in the books of Daniel and Ezra), and this phenomenon was broadened in the Talmud. During the period of the Geonim, Judeo-Arabic was added and, later, in Europe, Judeo-German, Judeo-Spanish, and more. During the Gaonic period, not only was the literature of the Sages written, but also new literary genres were formed. Saadia Gaon was one of the main pioneers, and the Karaite challenge was a central Catalysis in this process (Drory 2000; Polliack 2005) (↗ Lasker, Karaite Objections). Rav Hai Gaon (939–1038), the last of the Babylonian Geonim, wrote many responsa to questions from the eastern Jewish world. One of them constitutes a thorough discussion of magic, including prognostication, about which Rav Hai is relatively skeptical (Emanuel 2018, 124–146, especially 136–138; Bohak 2015, 271–272). The next stages of translation were Jewish medieval philosophy, Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah), the literature of Jewish law (halakha: “legal texts”), Jewish ethical literature and the German-Jewish Pietists in the twelfth century. All of these had views regarding prognostication, especially the Zohar, the central work of Jewish mysticism that appeared in Spain in the thirteenth century (↗ Margolin, Physiognomy and Chiromancy in the Zohar). Cultural translations had implications also for the ideas concerning prognostication. The old texts regarding the topic were preserved and newly-interpreted, and new ideas, stemming from Greek, Latin, and Muslim science, were



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introduced, such as the power of the stars (Sirat 1985; Leicht 2006; ↗ Rodríguez-Arribas, Astral Sciences Jewish Traditions). The Biblical verses as well as the sayings of the Sages had to be explained in new ways, conveying the new ideas and concepts. Theosophic Kabbalists in Girona and Castile were interested in prognostication (BarAsher 2012). Returning to the question of emissaries, they could also be children; for example, in a German-Jewish ritual of summing up the masters of oil or the masters of fingernails (Trachtenberg 2004, 219; Dan, 1963; Bilu 1981). In this ritual, the practitioner (or his young male messenger) is caused – by chants or other magical means – to see visions in liquid or shining elements, such as oil in a bowl, or the fingernails, especially the thumb, which is wider. Those visions are interpreted according to the relevant question (↗ Bar-On, Mantic Arts Jewish Traditions, 455–456).

Knowledge as a Commodity The following passage is from a late Midrash, the medieval Pesiqta Rabbati. It describes the journey of Moses to the sky on his way to receive the Torah. Moses is, of course, a messenger, but we can see here also the concept of knowledge – including that of the future – as a protected commodity. As [Moses] walked by, he was confronted by the Rigyon, the river of fire, the burning coals which burn and burn human beings. But the Holy one took Moses and led him past it. [Then] Gallitsur confronted [Moses] about whom it is written: Is it not from the mouth of Most High that good and bad come? (Lamentations 3:38). [Gallitsur] is the revealer of the Rock [megaleh tsur] (disclosing the sealed reasons for God’s ways]. His wing spread out to absorb the (fiery) breath of the creatures [of the chariot]; if he had not absorbed it, the ministering angels would be burnt by the breath of the creatures. He is also another angel, his name is Gallitsur, he stands and proclaims: this year, [wheat] will do well, and wine will be cheap. And still another angel takes iron shovels filled with burning coals from the Rigyon, and holds them up against kings and rulers, so that fear will strike the world. The Holy one took Moses and led him past [Gallitsur]. (Pesiqta Rabbati, ed. Ulmer 2017, 585)

The angel Gallitsur is responsible, according to this understanding of the text, both for hiding secrets and for proclaiming the future. Agricultural knowledge is, of course, crucial not only for pre-industrial society, and here we see the connection between agriculture and the economy – knowing in advance what products will be profitable is invaluable. The decision is made in the heavens, and the knowledge of it is concealed from humans. However, it can be heard: in a story in the Babylonian Talmud (Berakhot 18b), a poor pietist, who escapes from his wife and sleeps in the cemetery on New Year’s eve, overhears a conversation between the souls of the dead, concerning profitable crops of the coming year, as determined in heaven. He uses this information to improve his financial situation, and returns to the cemetery the following year

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(Bar-Levav 2002, 28). Such knowledge is transferred orally, and can be overheard. Later, this was used to explain the ability to interpret birds as omens: since they fly in the sky, they can hear celestial gossip and so reveal it (Trachtenberg 2004, 211) (↗ BarAsher, Ornithomancy). The angel Gallitsur is protecting the borders of the divine realm, while the flying birds bring news from it. Prognostic knowledge can be especially revealed at the borders of time – for example, the beginning of the day, week or year, in border areas, such as cemeteries (the border between the living and the dead), and in borderline conscious situations, like dreams or ecstasy. According to the aspect of commodity, knowledge exists in a certain (divine) place, and can be transferred – usually by hearing, but sometimes by other means, such as via a note from heaven (for example, Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metiza 86a). Hearing is not necessarily overhearing – bat qol, a divine voice, can also be heard, according to the Sages, and reveal information (Kuhn 1989). The commodity is concealed, and acquiring it is usually connected with some kind of opening – of a cover, curtain, and so on. At times, in order to raise the barrier and reveal the divine secrets, one must perform a ritual of purification.

Modes of Consciousness According to Abraham Abulafia’s system, prophetic kabbalah, the kabbalist could use techniques in order to enter a state of ecstasy or, to use the internal term, “prophecy.” These techniques included, for example, intensive meditation on calculations and combinations of letters from the Torah or other Jewish texts (Scholem 1941), which brought the practitioner to an altered state of consciousness, in which he experienced visions and gained knowledge, including about the future. This altered state is compared in the text to a divine source of light, a temple lamp. Ecstasy is an example of a state of consciousness that differs from the normal one, during which one can acquire knowledge. Ecstasy can be obtained through breathing techniques, bodily postures (especially ones based on lowering the head), concentration or meditation on texts (either remembered or read), or a combination of all of these. Similarly, an altered state of consciousness can be gained while asleep, through experiencing either a manipulated dream (“dream question”) or a regular one (Bazak 1972; Bellusci 2016). For the manipulated dream, a pre-sleep ritual is performed, sometimes involving chants, bodily postures, seclusion, or writing down the question to which one seeks an answer (↗ Kuyt, Dream Interpretation Jewish Traditions). This idea is presented in a totally negative way by Maimonides, who argues that the claims for prognostication are merely a fantasy of the imagination (Bar-On 2020, 153–156).



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Reading the Map According to the aspect of the map, knowledge is grounded in the world, or in certain aspects or parts of it. One needs to understand the map, or have a key to it, in order to obtain the knowledge. The two main maps are the Torah and astrology. The Scriptures are considered not only the blueprint for the world, according to which God created it, but also a divine presence, especially the Divine names, that contains all of the secrets of the world, and therefore can serve as a source of knowledge for those who know how to read them, including knowledge of the future (Wolfson 2001). According to certain traditions, all of the scriptures are divine names (Scholem 1965; Idel 2011b; Schäfer 1997). These concepts are the basis for Jewish bibliomancy (Bar-On 2020, 183– 199; ↗ Bar-On, Mantic Arts Jewish Traditions, 460–461). This knowledge can be derived in a variety of ways; for example, by symbolic reading, by understanding the relations between certain words of the Torah, by counting words or the numerical value of letters (gematria) or verses (↗ Idel, Gematria and Prognostication), by dreaming about verses, by asking children to recite verses that they use arbitrarily (Lieberman 1950), by entering ecstatic states in relation to the texts, and so on. As the Spanish ecstatic kabbalist Abraham Abulafia wrote in 1280, “The entire world is within the Torah, and we are all of us in the Torah, and from within it we see and from it we do not stray” (Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Sitrei Torah, trans. Idel 2011b, v). Since everything is in the Torah, it can be used as a source of light, mirror and source of knowledge, as we can see in the following text, also by Abraham Abulafia: The Torah shows to us today everything depicted in front of us, supernal and lower things, everything is known in accordance with it when you will be willing to follow it in accordance with the divine, prophetic intention, and fathom it in an appropriate manner, as it is said: ‘Turn it and turn it, because everything is in it, she is entirely within you, and you are entirely within it, and by it we see, and from it you should not stray’ (Mishnah Avot 5:22). And insofar as our matter dealing with esoteric issues is concerned we should compare the Torah to the menorah and its lamps, because the lamps are the very Torah because it illumines every spirit from six extremities, and the four directions of the world, and it is the median between all [things] in gematria[—] and according to the subject matter. Without Kabbalah, what are we, and what would our life be! This is why it is said: ‘Blessed be He who precedes the [creation of a] medicine to the malady’ (Babylonian Talmud, Megilah 13A) […]. He left us a remnant related to the Torah and the language. This is the reason it is incumbent to inquire into the understanding of the Torah in a manner that man will know himself within it, like someone who contemplates a mirror in order to see his face and himself and the other within it, and from there he who looks into it will ascend to the contemplation of God, blessed be He, and referring to this speculative principle they said (Num. 8:2): ‘When you make the lamps ascend in front of the menorah, all the seven lamps will light up’ (Abraham Abulafia, Mafteah ha-Sefirot (164b–165a), trans. Idel 2011b, 446).

Since everything is in the Torah, it provides the potential to know everything. This knowledge is not immediate but should be inferred.

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Stars The second central aspect of the map of medieval prognostication was the stars, as interpreted by astral science (↗ Rodríguez-Arribas, Astral Sciences Jewish Traditions). The main prevailing concept was that of talismanic magic; that is, attempts to draw down a heavenly flux in order to benefit the world, by means of amulets or talismans. Therefore, it was concerned not only with inspecting the stars but also with manipulating the powers that they evoked (Leicht 2006; Schwartz 2004). Saturn was considered particularly connected with the Jews (Idel 2011a). In the following text, this relationship is explained: [Saturn is] supreme and noble, higher than all the other planets, which is the reason that the ancient sages said about it that it generated all the other planets […]. And they say that Saturn is the true judge and the planet of Moses, peace be with him. The angel of Saturn is Michael, the great minister, so called because of his great power in divine matters, and he is the ministering angel of Israel. And the astrologers who described Saturn say that it endows man with profound thought, law, and the spiritual sciences, prophecy, sorcery, and prognostication and the sabbaticals and jubilees. The Jewish people and the Hebrew language and the Temple are under its jurisdiction. Saturn’s major conjunction with Jupiter in the dominion of Pisces occurred to assist the nation and the Torah and its prophets. This planet endows the people with perfection in sciences and divine matters such as Torah and its commandments, out of its sublimity, because it is spiritual […]. It is concerned only with thought, understanding, and design, esoteric knowledge and divine worship and His Torah, and the Sabbath day is in its sway […] and if they will keep its spiritual rules and laws, it will impart a spiritual influx abundantly. But if they will not keep the way of God, it will spit out everything which is bad: prophecy will occur to the fools and babies in an insufficient manner, and to women and melancholiacs and those possessed by an evil spirit, and maleficent demons that obliterate the limbs and bad counsels and sorceries and anxieties and erroneous beliefs (Alemanno, untitled, MS Paris BN 849:94b–95a, trans. Idel 2011b, 149–150).

The connection between the stars and the angels forms part of the explanation of the power of the stars in the framework of the traditional metaphysics. Saturn has a strong influence on the wisdom of the Jews, but materially it can have a positive influence only if the Jews abide by the spiritual laws of God. The power of ruhaniyat, spiritual forces, was the explanation of both the influence of the stars as well as the ability to influence them and draw heavenly flux from them (Pines 1988). The proper behavior of the nation will result in good, respected prophets, whereas improper conduct will result in inappropriate emissaries, such as fools, children, women, and melancholic, unbalanced people. Alemanno points also to the possibility of manipulating the future by way of proper behavior (and according to the Biblical warnings; for example, Deut. 30). Knowing the future indeed also provides the possibility of manipulating it, as can be seen in the Biblical story of Jonah in Nineveh: once the people of the city heard of their future punishment, they repented and saved themselves. Apart from the two large maps – the scripture and the stars – other elements can also function as maps, or parts of maps: animals – interpreting their behavior (↗ Bar-



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Asher, Ornithomancy in Jewish Literature), or their physical appearance (overall or of their inner parts); natural phenomena – such as rain, heat, thunder, and so on (↗ Schwartz, Weather Forecasting Jewish Traditions); dreams; human bodily appearance – interpreting the movements or physical features of the people whom one meets (↗ Dubrau, Physiognomy among Jews; ↗ Margolin, Physiognomy and Chiromancy in the Zohar); and so on. Interpreting their signs correctly enables an understanding of the future.

National Prognostication – the Coming of the Messiah The notion of a Messiah or redeemer appears in the three Abrahamic religions. However, for the Jews, the world is yet to be redeemed (Scholem 1971). There are two main approaches to the role of human beings regarding the time of redemption and the Messiah (↗ Latteri, Eschatology Jewish Traditions). According to the first, this time is fixed and set as part of a divine plan, and there is nothing that individuals can do in order to facilitate the end; they can only calculate when this end will occur, although this is not recommended. According to a different approach, redemption will occur when certain conditions are met, and therefore one who wishes to be redeemed should try to influence the world, and bring about these conditions (Bar-Levav 2006). The Jewish messianic idea was diverse. It ranged between the apocalyptic, the natural (for example Maimonides, Mishne Torah, Laws of Kings, trans. Hyamson 1974, 417) and the personal (as with Abulafia; Idel 2011c). Abraham Abulafia was interested in prognosticating his own idea of redemption, one that was completely personal and not national. He was expecting redemption in 1281, 40 years after the new millennium, according to the Jewish calendar. Apparently, in this context, he also tried to meet Pope Nicholas III in Rome, a dangerous encounter for Abulafia, since the Pope refused to see him and gave instructions for his execution if he arrived despite this rejection. The meeting was canceled following the sudden death of the Pope (Idel 1982/1983). The Sages regarded it as fitting that one does not know the time of one’s death, because they thought that this might cause depression and apathy (Midrash Tanhuma, ed. Salomon Buber 1885, Kedoshim, 8). Similarly, the Sages implore: “Blasted be the bones of those who calculate the end. For they would say, since the predetermined time has arrived, and yet he has not come, he will never come” (BT Sanhedrin 97b). Nonetheless, such speculations were almost endless (Silver 1927). Silver divides the messianic speculations into five major techniques: relying on the book of Daniel, relying on other Biblical texts, comparison with other exiles, making numerical calculations (↗ Idel, Gematria and Prognostication), and astrology (Silver 1927, 243–259). To these we might add prophets, who are mentioned throughout his book but were

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not categorized as such, probably because they usually used one of the techniques. Apart from the prophet who is an emissary, it seems that most speculations belong to the aspect of the map.

Conclusion Medieval Jewish prognostication is varied, and relies on both Jewish as well as non-Jewish sources. The special political and social situation of the Jews as a religious and cultural minority, both in Christian and Muslim lands, along with their common role as mediators and translators, combined at times with the instability of their communities, affected their usage of prognostication. The centrality of the text in Jewish culture left its mark also on their prognostication techniques and, at the same time, they shared many common features with their neighbors. This is also because of the nature of magic, which tends to be regional rather than national. However, the categories suggested above, although not exclusive, might serve as means for organizing this diverse material.

Selected Bibliography Abraham Abulafia. Mafteah ha-Sefirot, Ms. Milan-Ambrosiana 53. Bar-Asher, Avishai. “Samael and His Female Counterpart: R. Moses de León’s Lost Commentary on Ecclesiastes.” Tarbiẕ 80 (2012): 539–566 [Hebrew]. Bar-Levav, Avriel. “We Are Where We Are Not: The Cemetery in Jewish Culture.” Jewish Studies 41 (2002): 15–46. Bar-Levav, Avriel. “Cercles messianiques: les mouvements messianiques des Juifs d’Orient.” Le monde sépharade. Ed. Shmuel Trigano. Paris, 2006. 171–190. Bar-On, Shraga. Lot Casting, God, and Man in Jewish Literature: From the Bible to the Renaissance. Ramat Gan, 2020 [Hebrew]. Bazak, Jacob. Judaism and Psychical Phenomena: A Study of Extrasensory Perception in Biblical, Talmudic and Rabbinical Literature in the Light of Contemporary Parapsychological Research. Trans. Simon M. Lehrman. New York, 1972. Beinart, Haim. “The Prophetess Inés and her Movement in Puebla de Alcocer and Talarrubias.” Tarbiz 51 (1982): 633–658 [Hebrew]. Bellusci, Alessia. The History of the Sheʾelat Ḥalom in the Middle East from the Medieval Era Back to Late Antiquity. Ph.D. Dissertation, Tel Aviv University. Tel Aviv, 2016. Benjamin, Sandra (ed. and trans.). The World of Benjamin of Tudela: A Medieval Mediterranean Travelogue. Madison, 1995. Bilu, Yoram. “Pondering ‘The Princes of the Oil’: New Light on an Old Phenomenon.” Journal of Anthropological Research 37.3 (1981): 269–278. Bohak, Gideon. “Catching a Thief: The Jewish Trials of a Christian Ordeal.” Jewish Studies Quarterly 13 (2006): 344–362. Bohak, Gideon. Ancient Jewish Magic: A History. Cambridge, 2008.



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Bohak, Gideon. “Jewish Magic in the Middle Ages.” The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West: From Antiquity to the Present. Ed. David J. Collins. Cambridge, 2015. 268–299. Bohak, Gideon. “A Jewish Charm for Memory and Understanding.” Jewish Education from Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Studies in Honour of Philip S. Alexander. Eds. George J. Brooke and Renate Smithuis. Leiden, 2017. 324–340. Bonfil, Robert. History and Folklore in a Medieval Jewish Chronicle: The Family Chronicle of Aḥima’az ben Paltiel. Leiden, 2009. Castaño, Javier. “A European History.” Quaderni Storici 161 (2020, forthcoming). Cook, Stephen L. On the Question of the ‘Cessation of Prophecy’ in Ancient Judaism. Tübingen, 2011. Dan, Joseph. “The Princes of Thumb and Cup.” Tarbiẕ 32 (1963): 359–369 [Hebrew]. Drory, Rina. Models and Contacts: Arabic Literature and its Impact on Medieval Jewish Culture. Leiden, 2000. Emanuel, Simcha. Newly Discovered Geonic Responsa. Jerusalem, 2018 [Hebrew]. Friedlander, Israel. “A Muhammedan Book on Augury in Hebrew Characters.” Jewish Quarterly Review 19 (1906): 84–103. Gaster, Moses “Divination (Jewish).” The Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. Vol. 4. Edinburgh, 1911. 806–814. Halbertal, Moshe. Maimonides: Life and Thought. Princeton, 2014. Harari, Yuval. “Jewish Magic: An Annotated Overview.” El Prezente: Studies in Sephardic Culture 5 (2011): 13*-85* [Hebrew]. Harari, Yuval. Jewish Magic before the Rise of Kabbalah. Detroit, MI, 2017. Idel, Moshe. “Abraham Abulafia and the Pope.” AJS Review 7/8 (1982/1983): 1–17 [Hebrew]. Idel, Moshe. “PaRDeS: Some Reflections on Kabbalistic Hermeneutics.” Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys. Eds. John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane. Albany, 1995. 249–264. Idel, Moshe. “On Judaism, Jewish Mysticism and Magic.” Envisioning Magic. Eds. Peter Schäfer and Hans Kippenberg. Leiden, 1997. 195–214. Idel, Moshe. “Some Forlorn Writings of a Forgotten Ashkenazi Prophet: R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo haNavi.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 95.1 (2005): 183–196. Idel, Moshe. Saturn’s Jews: On the Witches’ Sabbat and Sabbateanism. London, 2011a. Idel, Moshe. Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation. New Haven, 2011b. Idel, Moshe. Messianic Mystics. New Haven, CT, and London, 2011. Idel, Moshe. “Prophets and their Impact in the High Middle Ages: A Subculture of Franco-German Jewry.” Regional Identities and Cultures of Medieval Jews. Eds. Javier Castaño, Talya Fishman, and Ephraim Kanarfogel. London and Liverpool, 2018. 285–337. Kuhn, Peter. Bat qol: Die Offenbarungsstimme in der rabbinischen Literatur – Sammlung, Übersetzung und Kurzkommentierung der Texte. Regensburg, 1989. Leicht, Reimund. Astrologumena Judaica: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der astrologischen Literatur der Juden. Tübingen, 2006. Leicht, Reimund. “Nahmanides on Necromancy.” Studies in the History of Culture and Science: A Tribute to Gad Freudenthal. Eds. Resianne Fontaine et al. Leiden, 2011. 251–264. Lieberman, Saul. “Bath Kol.” Hellenism in Jewish Palestine. New York, 1950. 194–199. Margalioth, Mordecai. Sepher Ha-Razim: A Newly Recovered Book of Magic from the Talmudic Period. Jerusalem, 1966 [Hebrew]. Moses Maimonides. “Laws Concerning Idolatry.” Mishne Torah: The Book of Knowledge. Trans. Moses Hyamson. Jerusalem and New York, 1974. Pines, Shlomo. “On the Term Ruhaniyyut and Its Sources and on Judah Halevi’s Doctrine.” Tarbiz 57 (1988): 511–540.

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Polliack, Meira. “Wherein Lies the Pesher? Re-Questioning the Connection between the Medieval Karaite and Qumranic Modes of Biblical Interpretation.” JSIJ – Jewish Studies; an Internet Journal 4 (2005): 151–200. Rebiger, Bill (ed. and trans.). Sefer Shimmush Tehillim: Buch vom magischen Gebrauch der Psalmen. Tübingen, 2010. Schäfer, Peter. “Magic and Religion in Ancient Judaism.” Envisioning Magic. Eds. Peter Schäfer and Hans Kippenberg. Leiden, 1997. 19–43. Scholem, Gershom G. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Jerusalem, 1941. Scholem, Gershom G. “The Meaning of the Torah in Jewish Mysticism.” On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism. Trans. Ralph Manheim. New York, 1965. 32–86. Scholem, Gershom G. The Messianic Idea in Judaism, and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality. New York, 1971. Schwartz, Dov. Studies on Astral Magic in Medieval Jewish Thought. Leiden, 2004. Silver, Abba Hillel. A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel: From the First Through the Seventeenth Centuries. New York, 1927. Sirat, Collette. A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, 1985. Skinner, Patricia. “Confronting the ‘Medieval’ in Medieval History: The Jewish Example.” Past and Present 181 (2003): 219–247. Steinschneider, Moritz. Die Hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher. Berlin, 1893. § 534, 871; § 539, 893; § 541, 905; § 522, 849; § 533, 867–871; § 575, 963. Trachtenberg, Joshua. Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion. Foreword by Moshe Idel. Philadelphia, 2004. Ulmer, Rivka (ed.). A Bilingual Edition of Pesiqta Rabati. Vol. 1. Berlin, 2017. Urbach, Ephraim E. “When did Prophecy Cease?” Tarbiz 1 (1945): 1–11 [Hebrew]. Voss, Rebekka. “Messianic Thought and Movements.” Oxford Bibliographies, https://www. oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199840731/obo-9780199840731-0032. xml?rskey=KIt83H&result=1&q=Rebekka+voss#firstMatch (25 March 2020). Wolfson, Elliot R. “Phantasmagoria: the Image of the Image in Magic from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages.” The Review of Rabbinc Judaism 4 (2001): 78–120. Wolfson, Elliot R. A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination. New York, 2011. Zuesse, Evan M. “Divination.” The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 4. Ed. Mircea Eliade. New York, 1987. 375–382.

Petra G. Schmidl

Medieval Traditions of Prognostication in the Islamic World According to verse 34 of the late Meccan sūra 31, only God knows the five hidden things (al-mughayyabāt al-khams); i.  e., the hour of the Last Judgement, when rain will come, what is in a woman’s womb, what a soul will gain tomorrow and where it will die. Interpreting this verse literally, prognostication in Islamic societies would have remained a very limited topic. All these divine secrets, however, are subjects of prognostic practices, as the rich heritage of prognostic texts and artefacts in the Islamic world demonstrates.

Terminology and Definitions Since the rise of Islam, starting with Muḥammad’s prophecies until more recent times, prognostic practices are widespread in everyday life in Islamic societies and widely attested by treatises, artefacts and performances. The attitude toward them – particularly toward mantic practices and astrology –, however, changes vastly from place to place, from time to time, between different social and religious settings, in particular the Sunnī and Shīʻī body of thought, scholarly levels and even between single scholars. The related methods, procedures, practices, and manifestations that induce or aim toward learning more about the future or the arcane, change only gradually. Rather frequently resurfacing commonalities shine through. These seek always to discern the hidden, be it hidden in present space or in future and past time, when prognostication unveils what has not yet come into being or explains what has happened.

Terminology Modern written Arabic knows mainly two roots that are related to prognostic practices, k-h-n and n-b-w. Although their meanings partially overlap, the former, k-h-n, refers to divination – kihāna denotes “divination” in general, kāhin the “diviner, soothsayer, prognosticator, fortune-teller,” but also the “priest,” the person in charge of the cult. Acknowledgements: The author likes to thank the staff of the IKGF and all colleagues who helped in improving this paper, in particular Charles Burnett, Glen Cooper, Delia Cortese, Matthias Heiduk, Klaus Herbers, Hans Christian Lehner, Barbara Löhden, Ulrich Rebstock, Josefina Rodriguez-Arribas and Daniel Varisco. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-008

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The latter, n-b-w, points rather to prophecy – the Prophet; i.  e., Muḥammad, is called al-nabī. Both terms are also mentioned in the Qurʼān, kāhin twice in two related early Meccan sūrāt and in a pejorative sense denoting a “soothsayer, diviner” (lii,29 and lxix,42); nabī appears far more frequently indicating a “prophet” of the Old or the New Testament, e.  g., Noah (Nūḥ) or John (Yaḥyā). Further related to this semantic field are three roots, kh-m-n, sh-kh-ṣ, and ʻ-r-f. In general, the first, kh-m-n, comprises rather a numerical component and an element of guesswork –takhmīn implies “appraisal, estimation,” the feminine, takhmīna, also “prediction.” The second, sh-kh-ṣ, is rather connected to medical diagnosis and prognosis – shakhkhaṣa marḍan means “to diagnose a disease.” The third, ʻ-r-f, implies in its basic forms ʻarafa “to know,” maʻrifa “knowledge” and maʻrūf “well-known” and denotes in the form ʻirāfa “knowledge of the unseen, the hidden” and therefore ʻarrāf “fortune-telling, divination,”, the person who performs it. For ʻ-r-f, k-h-n and n-b-w, pre-modern Arab lexicographers mention similar meanings. They describe by kāhin and ʻarrāf in general the “diviner,” although without a complete overlap of meaning. These, at times, denote even the same person, although the latter probably describes a person of lower rank than the former. While ʻarrāf appears to be limited to divination and mantic practices, kāhin narrows from pre-Islamic to Islamic times from a person who guards the sanctuary, transmits the oracle, offers sacrifices and interprets signs by divination to only the last-mentioned aspect. Further, for “diviner,” several terms related to specific prognostic and mantic practices are used, probably as pars pro toto, e.  g., munajjim (lit. “astrologer”) or ṭabīb (lit. “physician, doctor”). Apparently shāʻir (lit. “poet”), albeit rarely, was also used in this sense, since the poet’s utterances rest on the same source of inspiration; namely, the jinn. Most of these terms find their way into Ottoman and Persian languages. In this context, also important is the term kashf, “removing, unveiling.” It denotes in its technical sense, mainly in Ṣūfī and Shīʻī theological writings, the lifting and tearing away of the veil between humankind and the arcane (al-ghayb); those things usually beyond their grasp, the knowledge that only God possesses. In the sixth prefatory discussion of his Muqaddima li-Kitāb al-ʻIbar, the introduction to his universal history, situated to the end of the period considered here and which was, particularly in modern times, recognized as an important source of historical, political and sociological observations and developments, Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406) specifies three ways of doing so. The first is open to all humans; knowledge is gained, e.  g., while sleeping or through sainthood. The second is restricted to certain persons who sought knowledge by acquisition and technique; as an example, Ibn Khaldūn mentions soothsaying and amplifies that this knowledge is not only obtained by devilish and demonic insinuation and, therefore, always remains imperfect, but also from the soothsayers’ own soul. The third way can be achieved by mystical and meditative exercises; e.  g., the ritual invocation of God (dhikr Allāh) performed by the Ṣūfīs.



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Finally, a discourse, prevalent particularly among Shīʻī and Ṣūfī thought as well as in some philosophical groups, is also related, the contrastive pair of esoteric, inner, hidden and exoteric, outward, apparent sense or knowledge (al-ẓāhir wa-lbāṭin). This was particularly applied to the Qurʼān and other sacred texts undergoing several extensions; e.  g., in Ismāʻīlī thinking, when the lower world (al-ʻālam al-suflī) is considered an outward manifestation of a hidden higher world (al-ʻālam al-ʻulwī) for which access needs a tool that is, however, due to the fall of Adam and all men, no longer accessible to anyone, but in need of intermediaries, particularly the prophets, but also the Shīʻī imāms.

Definitions This terminology reflects that Islamic societies of pre-modern times knew different kinds of prognostication. Understood as all methods, procedures, practices and manifestations that induce or aim at learning more about the future or the arcane, this knowledge can be gained by prophecies, eschatological or apocalyptical scenarios, dreams and their interpretation, different mantic practices and procedures including, first of all, astrology and astronomy, including the determination of time and use of calendars, forecasting weather and medical diagnosis and prognosis. Pre-modern written sources dealing with prognostication can be organized, in general, into two main groups. The first covers instructive treatises that describe step-by-step prognostic practices and explain how to perform them. Usually, these manuals and handbooks fail to reflect on their topic, simply aiming instead to offer technical instructions on ways to observe or generate and calculate the signs to be interpreted and which lead to a prognostication. Often, these instructions are written in protasis and apodosis form or provided in the form of lists, tables, and schemes. In some cases, their prefaces might include a few sentences about the raison d’être and/or the author’s causa scribendi. Thus, both are rather found in a second group of written sources that describe prognostic practices observed or evaluate them. Legal texts discuss their legality, while philosophical treatises classify them and determine their place between other arts. In historiographical and chronological writings, prognostic practices help to explain past events, in belles-lettres such as the Arabian Nights, they are part of everyday life, but none of these texts allow one to perform a prognostic, mainly mantic practice. They might even mention a specific mantic method that is no longer practiced, e.  g., haruspicy. A comparable bifurcation is observable regarding artefacts; on the one side, those constructed and used for prognostic purposes, either exclusively such as geomantic devices or non-exclusively such as astrolabes that can be also used, for instance, for observation, measurement and calculation (↗ Cooper and Schmidl, Geomantic Artefacts; ↗ Rodríguez Arribas, Mathematical Instruments). On the other side belong

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artefacts that make use of the pictorial language of prognostic practices, especially that of astrology, e.  g., for decorative or magic purposes.

Difficulties Arising from the Sources and the State of Research The current stage of research concerning treatises and artefacts related to prognostication in Islamic societies differ according to the practices described and the contents they present. Those related to religious issues (Günther and Lawson 2017), such as prophecies and visions (↗ Cortese, Prophecy Islamic World), apocalyptic and eschatological scenarios (↗ Cortese, Eschatology Islamic World), but also those considered scientific, such as branches of astronomy (↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World) or of medicine (↗ Cooper, Medical Prognostication Islamic World), appear to attract more attention, while the mantic arts are rather treated as orphans – except for astrology and geomancy (Savage-Smith and Smith 2004; Melvin-Koushki 2018). Editions and translations remain a desideratum, especially of instructive texts. The greater amount is investigated only in parts and/or in outlines (Fahd 1966; Sezgin 1970 and 1979; Ullmann 1970 and 1972; Savage-Smith 2004), partly due to the tendencies and fashions of modern research that led in the past to a selective, not to say eclectic, choice of topics and texts deemed worthy of further research. However, the situation is slowly improving. New research on the occult sciences also informs on prognostic practices such as arithmancy and geomancy (El-Bizri and Orthmann 2018; Gardiner and Melvin-Koushki 2017). Concerning what is done on eschatology (Lange 2016) and magic (Günther and Pielow 2018), there also exist points of contact. The overall situation, however, still resembles the description of the pre- and early modern sciences in Islamic societies, that “is, for the most part, episodic […]” due to “the lack of study, let alone editions, of the thousands of manuscripts dealing with scientific subjects that remain unexamined […]” (Ragep and Ragep 2008, 15). In many cases, this situation prevents from obtaining an overall picture and tracing historical developments of single prognostic practices.

Techniques and Manifestations Historical Outline Concerning the Traditions of Prognostication Knowledge of prognostic practices in Islamic societies relies, by one means or another, on those traditions that were recorded and practiced in the regions falling under Muslim rule especially in the first three centuries after Muḥammad’s death. Commencing at the Arabian Peninsula and conquering a territory stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to India, from Spain to the Yemen, established contact with many dif-



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ferent traditions aboundingly preserved in the indigenous societies in Ancient and pre-Islamic Mediterranean, Egyptian, Arabian, Mesopotamian and Indian territories that might have been based on and intermingled with even older traditions, whether preserved orally or in written form. In general, different prognostic traditions have different origins and are based on different roots. The dividing line runs nearly parallel to those practices using signs emerging from inspiration and intuition opposed to those emerging from observation or generation and calculation. The former, prophecies and visions, eschatological and apocalyptical scenarios, are grounded in the context of the religious movements of late Antiquity, mainly influenced by the Jewish and Christian, but also the gnostic traditions. Regarding the latter, they draw on a mix of practices that coexisted or were adapted and Islamised. There were what modern research labels folk, or popular, and scientific, or scholarly, astronomical, astrological and weather forecasting traditions; e.  g., geomantic procedures were augmented by astrological knowledge and bibliomantic practices used the Qurʼān and other books of religious significance. Translations play a pivotal role concerning the continuation and development of these prognostic traditions. Before the extension of Muslim rule, Greek texts were translated into Syriac and Pahlavī, the Middle Persian of the Sasanids, fostered by the political changes that occurred during Late Antiquity and answering to manifold needs, though being neither a systematic nor a continuous endeavour. While the main interest in the translations into Syriac seems to be related to a changing attitude toward Greek knowledge, from one of refusal to acceptance, those into Pahlavī appear to be rooted in a religious and imperial ideology that sought to restore lost knowledge to the Sasanid empire. Translating Greek but also Syriac texts into Arabic began after the shift in the political power center from the Arabian Peninsula to Syria in the seventh century, that constituted a closer vicinity to the Byzantine Empire and Greek culture. In the beginning, under Umayyad rule, the Byzantine administration remained in force, so the use of Greek language for official purposes continued; Umayyad coins with Byzantine remnants remained in circulation, although an increasing Arabisation and Islamisation are observable. These translations were dictated especially by the everyday need for communication between foreign rulers and their local subjects, and, therefore, were mostly incidental and mainly consisting of treatises for practical use, e.  g., related to administrative affairs or mercantile topics. Incidentally, the picture is similar further east for Persia after the Arab conquest, where translations from Pahlavī to Arabic were produced for comparable reasons. The major impact came from the ʻAbbāsid translation movement, which lasted roughly from the eighth to the tenth centuries, a period when manuscripts were actively sought, either by official delegations or individual scholars, and texts on prognostication were translated – or rendered – mostly into Arabic, while the source language was mainly Greek, but also Syriac and Pahlavī. If Sanskrit texts were translated

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directly into Arabic at all, then most likely astronomical treatises were foremost among them. Supported by the society’s entire elite, and therefore neither being the venture of a minority nor based on the patronage of occasionally interested rulers, the ʻAbbāsid translation movement provided a means of contact with the hitherto unknown scholarly traditions of prognostication, above all astrology and medicine. Several factors promote or enable this overall patronage that relates, one way or the other, to the ascent to power of the Sunnī ʻAbbāsids. Besides the general needs for applicable, practical, helpful and useful knowledge, there was the necessity to legitimize the new, ʻAbbāsid rule, mainly to manage the divergent political interests. Further, the shift of the power centre from Syria to Iraq in the eighth century diminished the influence of Greek orthodoxy and opened up new possibilities. Finally, the re-unification of the formerly separated territories resulted in a simplified exchange of both material and non-material goods, such as increased agricultural productivity based on new plants and farming technologies. Not to be underestimated is the availability of a cheap, durable writing material, since, in the mid-eighth century, Chinese prisoners of war, who were brought to Samarqand, introduced the technology of making paper from linen, flax, or hemp rags. Besides these rather general observations, two lines link the translation movement and prognostic practices more concretely. First, astrological history plays a major role in legitimizing the ʻAbbāsid rule, since, in simple terms, the transition of power and change of dynasty are written in the stars (↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World, 545–546). Second, the sources report a dream of al-Maʼmūn (d. 833), the seventh of the ʻAbbāsid Caliphs and son of Hārūn al-Rashīd (d. 809), in which he meets Aristotle and is allowed to ask a couple of question, that the philosopher answers. Although different versions exist, they all witness the Caliph’s encounter with the Greek scholar and, therefore, his closeness to the rational sciences, although modern research discusses controversially the report’s interpretation, the two extremes ranging from promoting to attacking al-Maʼmūn’s attitude. Regarding prognostication, some of the most influential translations prepared in these times include such pivotal texts as the dream manual by Artemidorus (second century), the astronomical and astrological texts by Ptolemy (second century), the didactical poem on astrology by Dorotheos (first century), plus the Meteorologika (Μετεωρολογικά; in the translation of Abū Yaḥyā al-Biṭrīq (with the title al-Athar al-ʻulwiyya) [“The Higher influences”] by Aristotle (d. 322 BCE) and the medical treatises by Galen (second century) (↗ Cortese, Dream Interpretation Islamic World; ↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World; ↗ Cooper, Medical Prognostication Islamic World; ↗ Burnett, Weather Forecasting Islamic World). The translated texts, however, cover only a small proportion of the prognostic practices inherited by Islamic societies. Parallel to the scientific literature, they reflect how influential Greek texts were in the fields of astronomy, astrology and medicine, but also in dream interpretation, mantic practices and weather forecasting, while the influence of the Syriac, Persian and Indian, and even Latin and Chinese, traditions is mainly discernable through con-



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cepts that are integrated. Not all prognostic techniques of former times were continued with equal enthusiasm. Haruspicy and oracles no longer played a role in Islamic times, although some Qurʼanic verses appear to draw on a form of pre-Islamic rhymed oracular utterances (sājʻ); e.  g., sūra 84. Still in ʻAbbāsid times, a further development loomed; a regionalisation observable in the establishement of the Umayyads in al-Andalus in 756 and centrifugal forces in North Africa under the successors of al-Manṣūr (d. 775), that led to the de facto independence of these territories from the ʻAbbāsid Caliphate in Baghdad under the rule of local dynasties. With the rise of the Fāṭimids, being Shīʻīs of the Ismāʻīlī branch, in distinction to the Sunnī ʻAbbāsids, and the foundation of Cairo in 969 a third center of power and learning, besides Baghdad and Córdoba, was established. A similar regionalisation can be observed in the East, where the ʻAbbāsid Caliphs lost, step by step, their political power until only a representative role remained for them, first under the Būyids, then under the Saljuqs. One might assume a parallel regionalisation of prognostic practices, observable at least in the emergence of regional astronomical traditions from the tenth century onward, that rely on different authorities, pursue different interests and develop different specialities. Writing in Persian about prognostic practices reflects another aspect of this trend; e.  g., the Kitāb al-Tafhīm fī ṣināʻat al-tanjīm (“The Book of instruction into the art of astrology”) by Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī (b. 973) exists in both an Arabic and a Persian version. In the thirteenth century, the balance of power in the eastern part of the Islamic realm changed radically, when the Mongol invasion and conquest of Baghdad in 1258 finally brought the ʻAbbāsid dynasty to an end. In the western part, the situation also changed fundamentally, when the Mamlūks established themselves in Cairo in 1252 in succession to the Ayyūbids – their first sulṭān, Ṣalāh al-Dīn (lat. Saladin; d. 1193) played a pivotal role during the crusades – who had superseded the Fāṭimids around 70 years earlier. The prognostic practices continued during these developments, becoming further elaborated and enriched. With the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453, the surrender of Granada to the Catholic Kings in 1492, and the Ṣafawid takeover of Iran and major parts of Iraq, including Baghdad in 1509, two antagonists enter the scene: the Sunnī Ottomans and the Shīʻī Ṣafawids, both of whom show a great interest in prognostic practices.

Principles Macrocosm and Microcosm What texts and artefacts concerning prognostic practices present, emerges against a background of the history of thought that was mainly shaped by Islamic theological and traditional studies and Greek philosophical and rational sciences based on Aristotelian principles and incorporated into a neo-Platonic body of thought. This finding

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becomes, e.  g., perceptible in the descriptions of the universe’s structure preserved in the sources, a basic concept that links signs and their interpretation, especially in prognostic practices, by means of celestial phenomena (↗ Burnett, Weather Forecasting Islamic World; ↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World; ↗ Varisco, Calendrical Calculations Islamic World), but also in physiognomy, where the human body is seen as a microcosm (↗ Cooper, Medical Prognostication Islamic World). Although the models presented might differ in detail, the earth being of spherical shape as the immobile center of the world is common to all. Uniformly rotating around the earth in seven circular orbits are the moon, the two lower planets (al-kawākib al-sufliyya), Venus and Mercury, the Sun, and the three upper planets (al-kawākib al-ʻulwiyya), Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, the most distant planet observable to the naked eye. While the fixed stars occupy the eighth sphere, some authors describe two additional ones beyond it, the first presenting God’s footstool followed by His throne, drawing on sūra 2:255, the throne verse (āyat al-kursī): “His throne extends over the heavens and the earth.” Others place in the sublunar sphere, between the earth and the moon, further spheres for the three elements: water, air and fire. The heavenly objects are supposed to be unchanging regarding their substance and magnitude; the fixed stars also regarding their location. Therefore, all changes observed in the sky must occur in the sublunar sphere. Consequently, for instance, shooting stars (shihāb, pl. shuhub), meteors (nayzak, pl. nayāzik), and comets ([kawkab] dhū dhanab or kawkab al-dhanab; lit. “[star] with a tail” and also [kawkab] dhū dhuʼāba or kawkab al-dhuʼāba; lit. “[star] with a tuft of hair”) are considered atmospheric phenomena and often regarded as bad omens.

Prognostication as the Interpretation of Signs A possibile way to tie together all these prognostic methods, procedures, practices and manifestations reckon, in the broadest sense, prognostication as the interpretation of signs (often dalīl, pl. dalāʼil, but also ʻalāma, pl. ʻalāmāt and, slightly different in meaning, āya, pl. āyāt). Be they considered supernatural or natural, immanent in the emergence of all of these signs is an uninfluenceable, random element, regardless of whether they emerge from inspiration and intuition or from observation or generation and calculation. On the former, inspiration and intuition, rest prophecies, often drawing on visions, occassionally on auditions, eschatological or apocalyptical scenarios as well as dreams and their interpretation. For instance, the Qurʼān mentions as signs of the Day of Resurrection (yawm al-qiyāma) or Day of Judgement (yawm al-dīn; also Day of Reckoning [yawm al-ḥisāb]), besides others, the blast of the trumpet and the reunion of souls. The latter, observation or generation and calculation, are based on different mantic methods and procedures, including astrology. While observation has to be



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performed exactly and continuously – when spotting convulsions in specific parts of the human body (ikhtilāj), when observing heliacal risings of stars and groups of stars (anwāʼ) or when examining urine – generation and calculation rely on elaborate, complicated mechanical and numerical methods and procedures; e.  g., drawing a geomantic tableau or casting a horoscope. Signs and prognostication are associated with presuppositions and assumptions, be these associations perceptible and comprehensible or not, established by causality, probability, analogy, simultaneity, sympathy, antipathy, contingency, or other factors. While, for example, Abū Maʻshar (787–886) compares in the first part, chapter three, of his opus magnum al-Mudkhal al-kabīr ilā ʻilm aḥkām al-nujūm (“The great introduction to astrology”) – a treatise of major impact, in Arabic and in its Greek and Latin translations  – the influence of the celestial on the terrestrial bodies to that of a magnet on iron, the search for underground water resources probably provides an example of a practice that relies on signs that might be linked either by cause and effect, by empirical values or by occasion, although this needs further research. For a final assessment, however, one must bear in mind that what nowadays appears a random, acausal link, might occur due to information stirring out of their original contexts. Broadly speaking, and by reducing it to a common denominator, this bifurcation according to how these signs emerge might be reduced to prophecy and divination as opposite poles, often described in pairs as, e.  g., intuitive and inductive, i­ n­ductive and deductive, direct and indirect, independent and dependent, passive and active, or receiving and generating practices of prognostication. While the knowledge that the former provides is non-reproducible, accessible only at times and solely for ­receptive or even inspired people, that of the latter can almost always be reproduced and accessed, if the necessary materials and expertise are available. While the former could happen to anybody, the second must be learned. Muslim traditions reflect this bifurcation when describing prophets as those gaining their knowledge of the future from angels, and diviners as those learning about it from demons or jinns, regarded as envoys of the devil who tempts souls and leads astray those who do not be­lieve. It also becomes obvious in the written sources because, regarding those practices that are based on signs emerging from inspiration and intuition, a subdivision into reflexive and instructive texts proves problematic. Although there are reports about prophecies and visions as well as descriptions of eschatological and apocalyptical scenarios, and texts that comment on them, of course, no instructive texts exist that instruct their readers on how to observe, generate and calculate them, or manuals that provide them with lists of single elements and inform them about their interpretation. Concerning those practices that are based on signs emerging from observation or generation and calculation, a broad technical literature, however, provides instructions and recipes. Ibn Khaldūn explains this in the sixth prefatory discussion of his Muqaddima by ascribing direct access to divine knowledge for a prophet, while a diviner depends on intermediaries and auxiliaries.

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A specific case is oneiromancy. On the one hand, because of their emergence, dreams are closely related to prophecies and visions, eschatological and apocalyptical scenarios. Like them, they could have a transcendental aspect, but this is not compulsory. On the other hand, a reflexive oneiromantic literature exists. In particular, manuals containing lists of single dream elements circulate and provide a standardized method for their interpretation. With regard to application, however, the separating line between these two kinds of prognostication is blurred. Receiving practices intermingle with generating ones. Transcendence is, however, not immanent in prognostic techniques; for instance, a prophet might interpret also omens and a person who has a question or a problem might perform specific rituals before going to sleep, confident that the dream will reveal an answer or word of advice; e.  g., by writing a magic formula on one’s hand that is placed during sleep under the right cheek or by pronouncing a few unintelligible words. Especially in mantic practices, the practitioner might utter a prayer and seek divine inspiration before beginning his performance. Ibn Khaldūn in the sixth prefatory discussion of his Muqaddima also blurs this line by equalizing the perceptive states – e.  g., of a saint, of a geomancer that he might achieve by concentrating on his tableau and of a Ṣūfī who practices especially the ritual invocation of God.

Concepts All prognostic practices share certain common concepts concerning their relation to science, religion and magic. The same holds for the role authority, time, and hazard play.

Prognostic Practices and the Sciences The methods and procedures involved in all prognostic practices require a certain degree of expertise. It might be sufficient simply to receive, watch or listen, or they might call for complicated computations and calculations. The more complex and specialised they become, the more an expert is needed to perform them and interpret their results. A prophet or visionary might represent one pole, while an astrologer the other, who uses highly complicated computational procedures to cast a horoscope and interpret it. Ensuing from the different niveau of these prognostic practices, they might be denoted, on the one hand, as simple, popular and folkloristic or, on the other, as scientific, scholarly, learned and elite, e.  g., timekeeping by means of shadow schemes, on the one hand, and by spherical astronomy, on the other. Some of these prognostic practices are explicitly called ʻilm al-… (“science of …,” “knowledge of …”), e.  g., ʻilm al-raml (lit. “science of the sand”) for geomancy, ʻilm al-kaff (lit. “science of the hand”) for chiromancy or ʻilm al-ḥurūf (lit. “science of the



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letters”) for arithmancy. Several manifestations appear in the pre-modern classifications of the sciences; e.  g., in the Rasāʼil of the Ikhwān al-Ṣāfāʼ (“Epistles of the Brethren of Purity”; tenth century[?]), a group of men of letters whose epistles on various topics were widely received, or the Mafātīḥ al-ʻulūm (“Keys of the sciences”), an early encyclopedia by Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Khwārizmī (fl. tenth century). Both mention the astral sciences (ʻilm al-nujūm, ↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World), meteorology (ʻilm ḥawādith al-jaww or ʻilm athār al-ʻulwiyya, respectively, ↗ Burnett, Weather Forecasting Islamic World) and medicine ([ʻilm] al-ṭibb, ↗ Cooper, Medical Prognostication Islamic World). The former also include the science of omens (ʻilm al-zajr wa-l-faʼl) that might be understood as a pars pro toto for mantic practices in general. Another encyclopedia of the same period, the Jawāmiʻ al-ʻulūm (“The summaries of the sciences”) by Ibn Farīghūn (also Ibn Farīʻūn or Ibn Furayʻūn; fl. tenth century) who apparantly adresses court secretaries, lists in a separate chapter of what he calls sciences of doubtful substance. With regard to prognostic practices it mentions the science of omens (ʻilm al-zajr and ʻilm al-ʻiyāfa), the science of divination (ʻilm al-ʻirāfa and ʻilm al-kihāna), the science of dream interpretation (ʻilm ʻibāra al-ruʼyā), and the science of astrology (ʻilm aḥkām al-nujūm). The chapter also includes what is often classed as occult sciences, among others, alchemy, physiognomy and magic. Although occult sciences (al-ʻulūm al-gharība, also: al-ʻulūm al–khāfiyya or ʻilm al-ghayb) and prognostic practices share certain commonalities, e.  g., Ibn Farīghūn class them both in the same chapter, they do, on the one hand, not overlap when it comes to those branches that do not aim to predict the future or the arcane, but to alter it; e.  g., magic and alchemy. On the other hand, those prognostic practices are excluded that are regarded as non-scientific, e.  g., casting lots, and those assigned to the rational or natural sciences, such as astronomical timekeeping or medical diagnosis and prognosis. To their intersection belong particularly astrology, but also arithmancy and geomancy.

Prognostic Practices and Religion Prognostic practices and religion intersect at different levels, from normative statements to popular manifestations. This intersection is related to people, practices and objects. Concerning the former, the attitude of the religious authorities toward the traditions of prognosticaton, as reflected mainly in the commentary literature and legal texts and based on the Qurʼān and ḥadīth literature recording the deeds and sayings of the Prophet Muḥammad, sets the normative and theoretical frame for dealing with prognostic practices. The Shīʻī imāms’ infallibillity is due to the divine endowment of foreknowledge appertaining to them. Further, holy or religious figures might predict future events. These manifestations of inspired prognostication concern not only prophets and Shīʻī imāms, but also saints (mainly wālī, lit. “friend”; but also zāhid, lit. “ascetic,” ʻabīd, lit. “worship-

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per” and nāsik, lit. “recluse”) and Ṣūfīs. The former might, e.  g., possess clairvoyance by God’s generosity or receive divine inspiration to unfold hidden truths. Ibn Taymīyah (d. 1328) in his critique of those believing in miracles lists as possible the albeit neglectable deeds of saints predicting the death of a person, flying in the air, walking on water and telling people about stolen property or missing persons. The Ṣūfī practice of ritually invocating God might lead to an ecstatic situation accompanied by visions. A rather loose relation exists in seeing prophets and saints in visions and dreams and the resulting prognostication. Additionally, the religious identities of scholars and practitioners, be they, especially in Umayyad and ʻAbbāsid times, Muslims, Christians, Jews or others, might have some influence, as well as in later times being Sunnī or Shīʻī, let alone those affiliated to the different schools and branches of these two main groups. Concerning the practices, the sources report recourse to God’s authority or invocations at the beginning of mantic performances. An example is given in a lot book attributed to Jaʻfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 765), the imam, that both Imāmīs and Ismāʻīlīs, two Shīʻī branches, still recognize and an authority not only in religious law (fiqh) and the transmission of sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muḥammad (ḥadīth), but also allegedly in mantic practices. In the introduction, it recommends, following ablution, the recitation of first the opening sūra 1, then three times sūra 112, followed by the throne verse in sūra 2:255/256 before finally placing the finger on the page while keeping the eyes closed. Another example is verses of the Qurʼān quoted in the prefaces of astronomical and astrological texts; e.  g., al-Ashraf ʻUmar (d. 1296) quotes sūrā 10:5 and 15:16 in the introductory paragraph of his Kitāb al-Tabṣira fī ʻilm al-nujūm, and Abū Maʻshar sūra 78:6 in the first paragraph of his Mudkhal al-kabīr. Together with the occasionally expressed belief that God controls the hand of the diviner, these religious borrowings illustrate the widespread assumption that only with the help of God knowledge of the future and the arcane can be gained, by His will a wish be realized. The dictum “And God knows best” (wa-Allāh aʻlam), uttered while being concerned with even the nearest future, but also appearing as an ending in pre-modern scholarly treatises and in the conclusion of contracts, illustrates this fundamental attitude. Further, several religious obligations call for the correct orientation in space and time so that they remain legal or valid; for example, the five ritual daily prayers (al-ṣalawāt) must be performed facing the Kaaba in Mecca at a specific (period of) time. The afternoon prayer (al-ʻaṣr), e.  g., begins when the midday shadow has increased by the shadow length of the gnomon that casts it, describing a specific point in time that depends on the geographical latitude and day of the year. If a person who likes to pray does not wish to install a gnomon and wait until this increase can be observed, this point in time must be calculated or determined in advance  – one might say, predicted. Finally, the two realms overlap while using religious objects for prognostic practices; e.  g., the Qurʼān for bibliomancy and arithmancy or the rosary (al-subḥa) for a kind of cleromancy, but also when sleeping in religious buildings, such as mosques or



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sanctuaries for dream incubation (istikhāra, lit. “seeking or requesting what is good or best,” but also “casting lots,” “asking God for guidance” and “consulting an oracle”). When leaving these concrete intersections, prognostic practices and religion share another commonality; namely, regarding their psychological, social and anthropological functions. The main purpose of prognostication, to learn more about the future and the arcane, goes hand in hand with further functions that find their parallels within religion. Both provide a framework of deeds and words that meet similar needs, such as preventing, reducing, and mastering fear, particularly of the unknown, handling uncertainties and contingencies, providing reliability and certainty, conveying belongingness and emotional security, but also entertaining, easing decision-making and counselling. Both answer similar questions that are essential to all human beings, such as “what is the meaning of my life?,” but also help to solve concrete problems through providing guidelines and unveiling hidden knowledge, such as “shall I marry this person?” Birth and death, but also other life crisis and situations of transition, are fraught with uncertainty. The same holds for periodical changes in natural phenomena on earth, but also in heaven. Ritual patterns, albeit differing in terms of their origin and manifestation, help in coping with them.

Prognostic Practices and Magic In general, one might define prognostication as all methods, procedures, practices and manifestations that aim at predicting the future and the arcane, while magic seeks to alter it, but this definition falls short, since they often go hand in hand; e.  g., in texts on lunar elections such as in al-Ashraf ’Umar’s Tabṣira or the Shams al-Maʻārif of Muḥyī l-Dīn Abū l-ʻAbbās al-Būnī (fl. thirteenth century). In this instance, the stationing of the moon in one lunar mansion defines a period of time appropriate to make talismans. Further, magical elements might form part of prognostic practices, such as the magical formula written on a sleeper’s hand that helps to find answers in a dream. Likewise, and when seen from a different angle, the definition is only partially sufficient. A prognostication might change a client’s behaviour, whether it aims to actively seek or avoid what is predicted. Not for nothing is there the dictum of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Prognostic Practices and Authority Prognostic, mainly mantic, texts show a tendency to appeal to authorities, although their authorship is, in most cases, more than dubious. Ascribing a book to an authority makes it all in all more reliable and judgeable, and incidentally also more attractive for inclusion in the libraries of noblemen. Only if the author is known might the reader rate his knowledge of the field and the trustworthiness of his exposition as,

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e.  g., Abū Maʻshar explains, in the first chapter of his Mudkhal al-kabīr, where he presents himself as the author of this treatise. Appealing to an authority aligns a treatise with the established traditions, so that they, and particularly their foreign elements, are easier acclimatized, assimilated and internalized. To the authorities, treatises on prognostic practices refer to, belong prophets and other persons mentioned in the Old Testament, scholars and the great rulers of Antiquity, Indian and Persian sages as well as religious leaders and renowned scholars of early Islam. To Daniel (Dāniyāl), for instance, is attributed, besides others, a Kitāb al-Jafr, probably of apocalyptic character, and texts belonging to the malḥama literature. He is further credited with being the alleged inventor of geomancy. Behind his name might hide at least two men, Daniel the Elder (Ezek. 14:14,20 and 28,3) and Daniel the Younger (Dan. 1–14). Although not mentioned in the Qurʼān, he shows up in the Islamic traditions as a wise man, inspired by God, and legends developed around him. At times he appears not only as being of Greek origin, but also as the father of Jāmāsp, according to the historiographical sources a close confidant of Zoroaster (7th and 6th century BC [?]), and as an ancestor of Buzurgmihr (6th century), famous for his wisdom and dream interpretation. Although legendary, by drawing a line from a prophet of the Old Testament to a Greek scholar and to two Persian sages, this alleged linkage raises an awareness of where the prognostic traditions find their roots. A specific role among these pre-Islamic authorities is played by Hermes Trismegistos, the Threefold-Great, (Hirmīs, called al-Muthallath bi-l-ḥikma, “the Threefold-in-Wisdom,” also al-Muthallath bi-l-niʻma, “the Threefold-in-Grace” and others), a relatively idiosyncratic figure who is identified in Greek texts with Thot and in the Islamic traditions associated mainly with Idrīs, who is mentioned in the Qurʼān (sūra ­19:56/57–58 and 21:85–86) and identified with Enoch of the Old Testament (Deut.  5:18–24). Based on sources probably from late Antiquity, Abū Maʻshar introduces, in his Kitāb al-Ulūf (“The Book of Thousands”), three men of this name. One, an antediluvian sage, who dwelled in Egypt and who is identified with Enoch/Idrīs, was the first to discuss astrology and medicine, investigated the sciences and protected all of this knowledge from the Flood. The other two lived after the Deluge, one in Ancient Mesopotamia who rediscovered this knowledge, was skilled in medicine and philosophy and knew the natures of numbers, and another in Egypt of later times, a philosopher and doctor. Hermes, who also found a home in the Christian and Jewish traditions, gives his name to the Hermetica, a corpus of treatises attributed to him, mainly on alchemy and astro­logy, but also on medicine, magic and mantic practices; e.  g., on scapulimancy. Further, Hermes is credited in the Islamic sources with various inventions; e.  g., regarding prognostic practices, that of geomancy and of a variety of arithmancy called zāʼirja (for more details, see ↗ Regourd, Mantic Arts Islamic World, 473–476). Concerning the authorities of early Islam, the fourth Caliph, ʻAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (d. 661), cousin and son-in-law of Muḥammad, and the imām Jaʻfar al-Ṣādiq, are credited with promoting mantic practices such as those employing letters and numbers



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(ʻilm al-ḥurūf, jafr) and those interpreting omens, convulsions and dreams (faʼl, ikhtilāj, taʻbīr). Further, several texts related to prognostic practices are attributed to them, probably since both are held in great esteem by the Sunnī as well as the Shīʻī traditions. For instance, ʻAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib appears as the author of a didactical poem on the lunar mansions and also of a short treatise on the weekdays at the beginning of the Muslim months: the notae. Jaʻfar al-Ṣādiq is credited with astronomical, astrological, medical and mantic treatises that deal, e.  g., not only with calendrical problems and electional astrology, but also present cleromantic and geomantic practices as well as interpretations of omens, lots and spontaneous convulsions of the human body.

Prognostic Practices and Time Aside from philosophical and theological reflections on time and how they are linked to prognostication, e.  g., discussions on the notion of time as either being linear, cyclic or spiral or expectations of the end of time, time is related to prognostic practices by measuring, qualifying, interpreting, describing and accessing it. Periodical celestial phenomena describe points, and intervals of time. The Sun and Moon, but also the fixed stars, function as a time base. Their regular movements can be calculated or determined in advance and accordingly time kept – one might say, predicted. Through their interaction, also together with the planets, they define auspicious, ambiguous and inauspicious moments, periods and intervals of time for beginning or avoiding an activity. The interpretation of signs might depend on the time when they occur, e.  g., when the interpretation of a dream depends on the time of its occurence or when prognostication by spotting a halo around the sun changes from month to month. It is most significant in casting a horoscope, not only for persons but also for social or political entities or activities, that means to interpret a reconstruction of the sky at a specific moment in time (↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World; ↗ Varisco, Calendrical Calculations Islamic World). Further intersections concern eschatological expectations of the mahdī at the end of time (↗ Cortese, Eschatology Islamic World) and the time dependence of prognostic practices. Some of them can be performed all the time, e.  g., by setting a geomantic tableau where, although the practitioner might need some time for preparation and reflection, the time for acting must be appropriate. Others are only temporarily and occasionally available; e.  g., prophecies.

Prognostic Practices and Hazard Several prognostic practices involve a great deal of hazard, an aspect they share with gambling and that is particularly inherent in all varieties of lot-casting in the broadest sense, be it, for instance, by book opening, dice rolling, pebble arranging, pit casting, arrow shooting, rod throwing and other, similar practices. Despite its prognostic use,

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these techniques support choosing between possible ways, distributing goods, determining a course of action and making decisions. Especially in cases when there are no rational reasons for preferring one option over another or no viable path for a just distribution, they bring about a decision that might be taken to mean entrusting God’s selection and decision. One practice, for instance, operates with the rosary (al-subḥa) that consists of a chain of 99 beads partitioned into three groups of 33 by three additional elements of different shapes, sizes, materials or colors. A tassel completes the rosary. As its name suggests, the rosary might be used to praise God by repeating the formulae “glory be to God” (subḥāna llāh), “praise belongs to God” (al-ḥamdu li-llāh) and “God is greater” (Allāhu akbar). It can also serve as an aide-mémoire of the 99 beautiful names of God (al-asmāʼ al-ḥusnā). Further, the rosary protects, as an amulet, persons and things; as a cleromantic device, it assists decision-making. Concerning one possible application, usually after first reciting sūra 1 (al-fātiḥa) and seeking God’s help, one grasps with both hands, randomly and unconsciously, part of the rosary and counts out the intervening beads, in groups of two or three at a time. In the first case, if, after counting, one bead remains, this indicates a positive answer to the question asked, and, if not, a negative one. In the second case, the first bead in each group is deemed positive, the second ambiguous, and the third negative. From early times onward, Muḥammad is described as casting lots; e.  g., when he had to decide which of his wives should accompany him on travels or how he shall distribute the loot obtained from raids. Apparently, the Prophet’s deeds serve, then, as an example, e.  g., for judges who might rely on casting lots in certain cases, if their decision is liable to be unjust toward one party, or for Shīʻī imāms when determining the sex of a hermaphrodite.

Manifestations Prognostic practices might be understood, in the broadest sense, as those methods, procedures, practices and manifestations that facilitate the interpretation of signs, be they emerging from inspiration and intuition or from observation or generation and calculation, to learn more, whether the knowledge sought is hidden in time or in space.

Practices Resting on Signs Emerging from Inspiration and Intuition Prophecies Prophecies play a pivotal role in Islamic societies, particularly in Islamic thinking and reasoning, since their vital spark is found in Muḥammad’s prophethood, who



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received the word of God, the Qurʼān, written in Arabic, by Gabriel, the bearer of the revelation and messenger of God. Without going into further details, all developments and debates, varieties and ambiguities that later arose share, at least, this kernel. Prophecies always arise with a transcendental aspect. For a prophet, but also a Shīʻī imām, knowledge descends on him naturally and passively because of his goodness. According to Ibn Khaldūn in the sixth prefatory discussion of his Muqaddima, the souls of prophets are specific and belong to one of three different kinds of human souls that God freed of the hindrances of their corporeal and spiritual humanity. The other two kinds concern, first, those relying on the perceptions of the senses and imagination through memory and estimation. Scholars ground on this. The second is intuitive and based on inward observations due to saints, men of mystical learning and divine knowledge. The Qurʼān, the prophetic text of Islam per se, recognizes fewer than 30 prophets (nabī; also rasūl, lit. “messenger” with a decisively different meaning), Islamic tradition in the sequel a few more who belong to three groups; first, those more than ten who are also mentioned in the Old Testament and who are held in high honor; among others, Noah (Nūḥ), after whom sūra 71 is called, Abraham (Ibrāhīm), Moses (Mūsā) and Elijah (Ilyās). The same holds for a second group, figures of the New Testament. John the Baptist (Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyāʼ) is called a prophet (sūra 3:39) as well as Jesus (ʻĪsā, sūra 29:30), who announces the coming of a prophet after him (sūra 61:6). Besides these prophets from the Jewish and Christian tradition and further passages in the Qurʼān, where the figures are too generally described to identify them, the “Arab prophets” form a third group. Independent of their context, the prophets’ stories in the Qurʼān mainly follow a common narrative, after commission and installation follow rejection and punishment. What begins in the Qurʼān continues in the ḥadīth literature. al-Bukhārī (d. 870) includes in his Ṣaḥīḥ (lit. “the sound”), one of the six Sunnī canonical ḥadīth collections, a chapter entitled “ḥādīths of the prophets” (ahādith al-anbiyāʼ). With the Qiṣāṣ al-anbiyāʼ (“Prophets’ stories”) developed a genre of texts that relate the lives of the prophets of the Old Testament, even if they are not mentioned in the Qurʼān as, e.  g., Jeremiah (Irmiyā), on whom Wahb ibn Munabbih (b. 654–655) and Kaʻb al-Aḥbār (d. shortly after 650/651) wrote. Muḥammad marks a turning point in the perception of prophets and prophecies, since he is, as the Qurʼān denotes, “the messenger of God and the seal of the prophets” (rasūl Allāh wa-khātam al-nabiyyīn; sūra 33:40, but also: khatm al-nubuwwa, or: al-anbiyāʼ), and there is, according to the Muslim traditions, “no divination after prophethood” (lā-kihāna baʻd al-nubuwwa). Both of these claims to absoluteness, however, deserve, particularly with regard to prognostic practices, a closer look. The former passage appears to be interpreted differently in the first years of Islam under imminent expectation and then to have been reconsidered later – with different thrust in Sunnī and Shīʻī traditions that view, generally speaking, the imāms as the heirs of the prophets. The latter faces the long, rich tradition of prognostic practices in Islamic societies.

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Eschatological and Apocalyptical Scenarios In general, by relying on revelation, eschatological scenarios describe the last things to come, be it when individuals cease or the world ends. They usually include a series of elements whose emergence and composition depend on a place and period of time as well as religious and social contexts. Although widely varying and expanded in several ways, the eschatological topography and chronology especially comprise the coming of the last hour (al-sāʻa), forging a bridge from resurrection (al-qiyāma) to annihilation (al-fanāʼ), judgement (al-dīn) and gathering (al-ḥashr), further the delights of heaven (janna, lit. “garden,” also with a slightly different meaning firdaws, “paradise,” ʻadn, “Eden” and others) and the torments of hell (nār, lit. “fire,” also jahannam and others). An important eschatological element are the apocalyptical scenarios that describe future events, particularly the (imminent) end either of the world, of time or of history. As signs that herald it, frightening and terrorising occurrences are interpreted, mainly unusual geological, meteorological and celestial phenomena, e.  g., natural phenomena and disasters such as earthquakes, thunderstorms, comets and solar eclipses, but also unnatural animal and human behaviour, occurrences or appearances such as monstrosities, pest infestations or epidemics. In addition to these, political, social, cultural and religious changes for the worse are also regarded as signs of the coming end. Further, concepts of linear, spiral and cyclic time connect with eschatological and apocalyptical scenarios. The immiment occurrence of a specific date might have raised expectations of the near end or of a religious renewal, as described in the ḥadīth literature. Especially the end of a century or millennium is regarded as a fateful turning point; for instance, when the centenary of the Islamic hijra era during the reign of the eighth Umayyad Caliph ʻUmar ibn ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz (d. 720) looms, eschatological expectations run wild. The same happens 100 lunar years later (815/816) when, following the death of the ʻAbbāsid Caliph Harūn al-Rashīd (d. 809), two of his sons, al-Amīn (d. 813) and al-Maʼmūn (d. 833), fought over the succession. Thus, eschatological and even more apocalyptical scenarios comment rather about political and religious developments, aim at the future of a dynasty and society in its entirety rather than at an individual’s fate. Accordingly, they often occur in times of considerable change, so their claim might result in political and/or religious movements. One of the earliest examples, the Kitāb al-fitan (“Book of Tribulation”) by Nuʻaym ibn Ḥammād al-Marwazī (d. 843 [?]), was written during the miḥna (“testing”), initiated by al-Maʼmūn (d. 833) and continued by his two successors, al-Muʻtaṣim (d. 842) and al-Wāthiq (d. 847), that urges the view that the Qurʼān had been created. The literature where these eschatological and apocalyptical scenarios are described also reflects their rather general audience. Their foundation forms the Qurʼān that concentrates its eschatological and apocalyptical scenarios in a couple of Meccan sūrāt, mostly from the early period, whose elements draw on former concepts of the Jewish and Christian traditions. The eschatological features include elements of



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announcement, weighting (al-wazn; sūra 7:8) and reckoning (al-ḥisāb; sūra 13:40 and passim), detailed descriptions of paradise and its delights as well as hell and its torments (especially sūrāt 23, 37, 39, 69, 70, 74 and 76). These descriptions are, however, only loosely linked to prognostic practices by informing one about what one envisages when the end of time comes and what one might expect in the afterlife. The apocalyptic elements focus on harbingers of what will be happen. Series of if-clauses, presented in a powerful language, provide signs of the immiment end, e.  g., when earth shakes, sun darkens or mountains move (especially sūrāt 77, 81, 82, 84, 99, 101). Other signs precede the actual hour, e.  g., the blast of the trumpet (sūra 33:101 and passim), the emergence of the beast (sūra 27:82) or the sight of angels (sūra 25:22). These Qurʼānic verses, together with the Jewish and Christians traditions, form the basis for the eschatological and apocalyptical scenarios emerging in the next two to three centuries that were compiled into eschatological handbooks. Further, they find entry into the hadīth collections and become an issue in the commentary literature. Also linked to prognostic practices, by describing expectations concerning the end of time and afterlife, are texts dealing with the nightly journey of Muḥammad (isrāʼ, also with a slightly different meaning miʻrāj, lit. “ladder,” thus “ascent”). Although differing in detail, the kernel consists of the Prophet’s encounters with prophets and angels, his conversation with God and his visit to the seven heavens, paradise and hell. The eschatological and apocalyptical figures and events, but also the related topography and chronology are expanded and augmented by more colorful and more concrete details in the later traditions. Already in Umayyad times, the concept of the mahdī (“the rightly [or: divine] guided one”) emerges, a term that itself does not occur in the Qurʼān. In general, put simply, the mahdī, often viewed as a member of Muḥammad’s family, will rule, according to a widely-held belief, before the end restoring religion, justice, and peace. His advent will be heralded by signs; e.  g., the rising of the sun from the west and the emergence of the dajjāl (“the deceiver”), although the chronology of events slightly differs in the sources. Further, the mahdī himself and his restoration is a signal that the end is near. Over time, this concept developed in its details and underwent several reassessments; e.  g., by gaining increasing messianic characteristics and by inspiring political movements and changes. Several historical figures were regarded as the mahdī; e.  g., the Umayyad Caliph Sulaymān (d.  717), the Fāṭimid Caliph al-Mahdī ʻUbayd Allāh (also al-Mahdī ʻAbd Allāh; d. 934) or the spiritual leader of the Almohad movement, Ibn Tūmart (d. 1130), and the accompanying political events were interpreted accordingly, so being identified or presented as the mahdī also provides a tool for political propaganda. In Sunnī doctrine, the belief in the mahdī never became that essential and intense than in Shīʻī thought; for instance, according to Imāmī doctrine, and put in highly simplified terms, the twelfth imām lives in concealment and will return as

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the mahdī, restoring justice and religion. In Ismāʻīlī doctrine, very briefly summarized, developed an elaborated concept of cyclic time consisting of seven eras, each comprising seven imāms, the last of the sixth era being identified with the mahdī and heralding the seventh, eschatological era. Probably the earliest example where these more elaborate eschatological and apocalyptical scenarios can be found is the Kitāb al-fitan by Nuʻaym al-Marwazī, a traditionist who is said to have sought transmissions in Iraq and on the Arabian Peninsula and transmitted, e.  g., to al-Bukhārī. He organizes his information beginning with definitions and warnings, proceeding with political events concerning the Umayyads and the ʻAbbāsids and ending with apocalyptic elements. In those Sunnī ḥadīth collections, that are organized according to subject-matter, e.  g., the Ṣaḥīḥ by al-Bukhārī, traditions with eschatological and apocalyptic elements are grouped into sections entitled “tribulations” (fitan; sometimes also malāḥim, “wars”, also “apocalyptic scenarios”) and usually either attributed to Muḥammad or, to a less extent, also to ʻAlī ibn Ṭālib, the fourth Caliph and his son-in-law, and other companions of the prophet (ṣaḥāba). Further, they are included in texts described by the term malāḥim, whose characteristics are somewhat confused in the sources and in the research literature, probably due to the use of its singular, malḥama, to denote another group of prognostic texts and also due to further commonalities that they share, so both refer to similar authorities, in particular Daniel. They mention partially the same signs, e.  g., earthquakes and winds, and show the close dependence on the Syriac traditions. Despite these similarities, malāḥim texts are of an apocalyptic character, and their knowledge Daniel obtains through vision and audition. They focus either on communities’ future or the fate of dynasties, whereas the malḥama literature describes mantic practices by means of celestial, albeit sublunar, as well as atmospheric, meteorological and geological phenomena, often presented as a series of if-then-constructions. According to the general narrative framework, their knowledge was stored in a cave to save it from the Deluge and recovered by Daniel. Another, rather distinctive text genre in this context comprises treatises on jafr, a term that, in general, designates a complex set of concepts related to prognostication. On the one side are to be found eschatological contents at times, although this remains disputable, combined with elements of malāḥim texts. On the other side, jafr books include mantic practices and magic applications mainly focusing not only on the numerical values of the letters but also on their occult properties, probably also to be understood as a tool for understanding their eschatological contents. Although the subject of controversial discussion, in modern research, an outline is emerging that appears to consign the first jafr books attributed to ʻAlī, Fāṭima and Jaʻfar al-Ṣādiq rather to the realms of the foundation legends and to reject their emergence in a Shīʻī context. Further, with that said, the assumption of a change in those practicing jafr, namely, no longer only the imāms, but all wise men, apparently becomes obsolete. Seemingly, over time, a close link developed between mystical thinking and jafr.



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Further, eschatological and apocalyptical scenarios were discussed in the theological and philosophical discourses. Their statements range between favouring allegorical and literal interpretations. Interpreting and/or Reporting Dreams Dreams (ruʼyā, but also manām and ḥulm with slightly different meanings), the images and impressions a person receives mainly while sleeping, have been held in high esteem since pre-Islamic times and provide, according to Muslim traditions, a share of prophecy (↗ Cortese, Dream Interpretation Islamic World). Ancient Mesopotamian and antique traditions, although only orally transmitted and therefore difficult to grasp, gave an additional impetus to their handling and formed the state of the art with which Muḥammad probably became familiar. According to the sources, the Prophet highly estimated dreams and interpreted those of his companions. Muḥammad’s conduct laid the groundwork for the later development of texts and artefacts related to dream interpretation and dream reports. In general, different aspects of dreams are considered in order to categorize them, particularly their emergence, contents and reliability. They are distinguished in dreams that are divine in origin, often through an intermediary, those coming from Satan, and those arising from causes within the body or soul. The contents and reliability might interact, e.  g., dreaming of the prophet Muḥammad describes a good, true dream that does not require any further interpretation. Similar to other prognostic practices that rest on signs emerging from inspiration and intuition, dreams are only occasionally accessible, although techniques were applied that allow the fostering of their emergence. Their nucleus forms dream incubation, describing sleeping in a sacred area, in a mosque or near the Kaʻba with the intention of experiencing a divinely-inspired dream or cure, while a prayer of invocation (duʻāʼ) might precede sleep and dreams. Another difference to prophecies and visions, eschatological and apocalyptical scenarios, consist in a need for experts and the existing instructive literature. The former is reflected, e.  g., in Joseph’s interpretation of the pharaoh’s dream (Gen. 41:1–36 and sūra 12:43–49), although dream interpretation can occur without them, e.  g., in the narrative of al-Maʼmūn dreaming about meeting Aristotle. The existing instructive literature, oneiromantic treatises with their organized arrangement of dream elements, simplify and formalize their interpretation (taʻbīr al-ruʼyā, sometimes also tafsīr al-aḥlām); i.  e., oneiromancy proper. Both, practicing dream incubation and providing instructive texts on dream interpretation bring oneiromancy closer to those prognostic practices that rest on signs emerging from observation or generation and calculation – even though, in general, oneiromantic treatises and Muslim traditions regard the knowledge provided in dreams as a share of prophecy and, therefore, these outrank other mantic practices.

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In the oneiromantic treatises, dream elements and their interpretation are mainly arranged either according to topical categories or alphabetically. Often woven into them are brief stories and anecdotes that, rather, belong to the group of reflexive texts. A specific case forms practices devoting a pivotal role to the point in time when the dream happened, although the general situation that leads to the final interpretation, e.  g., the circumstances of a dream, the role of the dreamer, and the context of the narration, should always be considered; for instance, the days of the lunar month are specified when true dreams occur and when they do not. Oneiromantic manuals are usually bifurcated. A first, theoretical part introduces the general rules, basic procedures and methods as well as the duties of the person who interprets the dream. According to a narrative in the Nuzhat al-nufūs wa-muḍḥik al-ʻabūs, a collection of serious and humorous poetry and prose by the Mamluk literary figure Ibn Sūdūn (d. 1464), artefacts were also used in oneiromancy. He pictures a man sitting by the River Nile, apparently occupied with mantic practices, surrounded by artefacts, including an astrolabe, and using a magnetic device for oneiromancy. It consists of an ivory fish floating in a glass container filled with water, whose mouth is of magnetic stone and whose tail of coral. The anecdote and exact circumstances regarding how this artefact is related to oneiromantic practices, however, needs further research. Probably, the Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-kubra, a biographical encyclopaedia designed as a tool for ḥadīth studies by Ibn Saʻd (d. 845) includes the earliest list of dreams and their interpretations by Ibn al-Musayyab (fl. seventh century), who worked under the Umayyad Caliph ʻAbd al-Malik (d. 705). They all follow the same pattern. First, the dream is narrated, e.  g., a man dreamed of himself urinating into his hands, which was interpreted by Ibn al-Musayyab as an indication of an illicit marriage (cf. Fahd 1966, 311). There sometimes follows further explanation; in this case, that the wife is a foster sister. Although Ibn Saʻd records only one dream interpretation by Ibn Sīrīn (d. 726), the latter’s renown as an authority on oneiromancy grew over the centuries. Even in the time of the ʻAbbāsid Caliph al-Mahdī (d. 785), Abū Isḥāq al-Kirmānī (fl. eighth century) lists him together with Abraham, Daniel and Ibn al-Musayyab as one of his sources in his Dustūr fī l-taʻbīr that serve as a model for later oneiromantic treatises. Further treatises with varying titles appear under his name, taking advantage of his prestige as a dream interpreter. In ʻAbbāsid times, two main treatises lead on to the establishment of an authoritative method for organizing dreams by sorting them into groups of similar elements, the translation of Artemidorus of Ephesus’ oneiromantic treatise commissioned by the Caliph al-Maʼmūn and the composition of the al-Qādirī fī’l taʻbīr by Abū Saʻīd al-Dīnawarī (d. ca. 1009) who relies heavily on it and combines sources of Greek and Indian, Muslim, Christian and Jewish origin. Of the more recent developments, two become noticable in the oneiromantic oeuvre by Ibn Ghannām (d. 1294): first an encyclopaedic arrangement of dream elements and, second, didactic poems that couch in rhymes their interpretation to facili-



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tate learning and knowing them by heart as well as to help to cope with the ephemeral aspect of dreaming. Reflexive texts that report dreams, be they accompanied by an interpretation or not, do not belong to a specific literal genre, but appear in all kinds of texts, non-­ fiction and fiction; e.  g., in biographical, historiographical and hagiographical sources as well as in belles-lettres. To include dream reports in these serves several purposes; e.  g., justification, evidence of authority, support for demands or explanation either to entertain or to warn the audience. Besides these dream reports, other treatises, particularly with philosophical and mystical contents, focus on the nature of dreams. The Qurʼān reports dreams in several sūrāt; e.  g., Abraham’s dream, in which he is ordered to sacrifice his son (sūra 37, 102, cf. Gen. 2:1–19) and the fulfilling of Muḥammad’s dream that he will return to Mecca (sūra 48:27). Although only sūra 12, which takes its title from its protagonist “Joseph,” deals with dream interpretation. It starts with Joseph’s own dream, that he is at that moment unable to interpret (sūra 12:4–5), and continues with the pharaoh’s dream and Joseph’s interpretation of it (sūra 12:43– 49), even using the terminus technicus for dream interpretation (taʼwīl al-aḥlām; sūra 12:44). Additionally, early dream manuals and Qurʼān commentaries, both relying on numerous aḥādīth, however, interpret the “good tidings (al-bushrā) in the present life and in the world to come” (sūra 10:65) for “those who believe and are godfearing” (sūra 10:64) as the true dreams one sees – or are seen for him. They serve in defence of oneiromantic practices, although other interpretations of this verse are also taken into consideration, particularly that these “good tidings” announce the closing of a person’s death and his attainment of paradise. Similar to the arrangement of the eschatological and apocalyptical elements in specific chapters in those ḥadīth collections, that are organized according to subject-matter, they also include sections entitled “dream” or “dream interpretation” (ruʼyā and taʻbīr, respectively); e.  g., in al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ, where he somewhat anticipates the bifurcation of later dream manuals by first classifying dreams into those sent by God and those coming from Satan. Second, he deals with specific dream elements and their interpretation. One of the characteristics of dreams, namely that their boundaries with prophecies and visions are blurred, is still discernable in these sūrāt and becomes more explicit in the ḥadīth literature, where dreams are described as the 40, 46 or other fractional part of prophecy and where a saying of the prophet Muḥammad is recorded that only good dreams will remain of prophecy. Altogether, the ḥadīth literature clearly demonstrates in what high esteem prognostication by dreams and their interpretation have been held since the earliest days of Islam. When examining the theoretical and philosophical foundation of dreams and their interpretation with a focus on their use for prognostication, particularly the distinction betweeen true, significant and false, insignificant dreams is helpful, since only the former might guide a dreamer. One scholar who discusses this topic is Ibn

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Khaldūn, in the sixth chapter of his Muqaddima; another is Ibn Sīnā (b.  980), the Avicenna of the Latin-speaking world and author of more than 200 scholarly treatises. At the beginning of his book on dream interpretation, he describes true, significant dreams arising from a cause outside the dreamer, a cause he calls a divine power, and false, insignificant dreams occurring inside him, being, e.  g., the remnants of objects observed while awake, reflections of feelings or an imbalance in the humors (Lamoreaux 2002, 70–71). Concerning the place of dream interpretation in the pre-modern Islamic organization of knowledge, the authors of dream manuals tend to regard it as the first science, since it was practiced from the start by prophets. Other scholars, e.  g., Ibn Khaldūn, in the sixth chapter of his Muqaddima, subsume dream interpretation among the religious sciences while, in a relatively late example, Ḥājjī Khalīfa (d. 1657), also known as Kātib Čelebī, the prolific Ottoman historian, bibliographer and geographer, in his bibliographical dictionary Kashf al-Ẓunūn, it stands side by side with, among others, medicine and astrology, and forms a branch of the natural sciences (cf. Kātib Čelebī [Flügel] 1842, i, 34).

Prognostic Practices Resting on Signs Emerging from Observation or Generation and Calculation On signs emerging from observation or from generation and calculation rest the fields of the mantic arts with their manifold varieties, of astronomy and astrology including calendars and almanacs, of weather forecasting and of medical prognosis. One way to organize this plethora of signs that these practices interpret is to follow, first, the pre-modern Weltbild with its dichotomy of a sublunar world, where all changes take place, and an unchanging supra-lunar world, and to consider next weather forecasting, and medical diagnosis and prognosis, since these are not defined by the signs they interpret, but by the purpose they serve. Mantic Arts The practices employed in the mantic arts make use of mainly all signs that appear to be random and interpret them. Although, in the widest sense, astronomical, astrological and calendrical prognostications also belong to them, they grow, from the earliest times onward, into specific branches of knowledge. In general, the mantic practices make use of sub-lunar signs. They are either spotted, heard or otherwise noted in nature or generated and calculated using specific techniques, after which the results or resulting patterns are then interpreted. The range of people who undertook this interpretation might range from persons dabbling in a mantic practice for their personal use to experts earning a living by applying it at the request of their clients.



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All irregularities and oddities in inanimate or animate nature are suitable for prognostication. Commonly, these natural signs are referred to as omens (faʼl, but also ʻiyāfa, ṭāʼir or ṭīra, and zajr, respectively and slightly different in meaning). They exist in very varied manifestations, that all make use of randomly, occasionally and spontaneously occurring incidents, events and encounters, e.  g., spotting a rainbow, discerning peculiarities of animal and human behaviour, and occurrences and appearances such as stumbling, crowing, sneezing or convulsing. Generally, there are two ways of interpreting these natural signs, the first relying on common knowledge, folk sayings, and proverbs that find their way into poems and belles-lettres; for example, crows, jays and other birds, particularly those with dark green or black plumage are considered bad omens; the passing of an animal before a person was interpreted as either bad or good, depending on the direction from which it approached. The second way calls for manuals that record the signs in texts, lists, schemes and tables, sometimes in correlation with a specific point of time, so that an interested person can search there and look up for the sign to find what it indicates – just as in dream manuals. Inanimate natural signs used for prognostication comprise celestial, albeit sublunar, as well as atmospheric, meteorological and geological phenomena, e.  g., comets and meteors, both in general regarded as bad omens, rainbows and halos, clouds and winds, lightnings and thunders as well as earthquakes, often interpreted as signs sent by God. They are interpreted mainly in two groups of instructive texts: the malḥama literature and, less prominently, in treatises on Nabatean agriculture (al-filāḥa al-nabaṭiyya). In these textual contexts, however, certain astronomical phenomena are also considered; e.  g., eclipses or conditions of the lunar crescent, i.  e., if it is upstanding or lying in the sky. The former, the malḥama literature, is mainly associated with the prophet Daniel and should, however, not be confused with the malāḥim texts, with their relatively apocalyptical contents and their main focus on predictions not for individuals but for communities or dynasties. In pre-modern usage, the term malḥama designates writings with specifically mantic contents that, in general, relates these phenomena with their occurrence in a specific time-period, usually a solar month, and interprets it. So, by the backdoor, astronomy enters the stage by providing a time base for these mantic practices (↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World). The interpretations concentrate on weather forecasting, so that such texts are sometimes associated with this branch of knowledge. Related topics, such as agriculture, are also treated. Several manifestations show apocalyptical tendencies or provide a more general prognostication of medical, social, economic or political relevance that resembles those used in electional astrology. The roots of the malḥama literature and the further intermediate steps toward an Arabic version are still under discussion. Apparently, instead, a cluster of Greek and Syriac rather than Persian texts, whose dependency is not yet properly established, serves as a basis. A certain Ancient Mesopotamian influence, however, shines through. Equally, the relationship of the treatises belonging to the Arabic malḥama

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literature deserves further research. Persian translations and revisions, one probably by Abū l-Faḍl Ḥubaysh ibn Ibrāhīm al-Tiflīsī (d. 1232 [?]), apparently exist also. The basis of the latter, texts on Nabataean agriculture, forms a treatise with this very same title, al-Filāḥā al-Nabaṭiyya, by Ibn Waḥshiyya (late ninth, early tenth century [?]), a scholar, with whom further treatises with mantic, magic, alchemical and medical contents, partially also claiming to be of Nabatean origin, are associated. Besides agriculture, it includes other topics; e.  g., religious, cultural and magic knowledge. The parts related to prognostic practices only form a subplot and appear less prominently and less exhaustively than in those of the malḥama literature. Albeit the work itself claims to be a translation from Syriac into Arabic based on earlier Ancient Mesopotamian works, Ibn Waḥshiyya’s authorship, the origin and formation history of his treatise are strongly disputed among scholars. Nevertheless, apparently, some of its agricultural material stands in the Greek and Latin traditions, so seemingly there is a link to Ancient Mesopotamia. Other information appears to refer to local customs and conditions, probably in Northern and Central Iraq in the time just prior to the Muslim conquest. Similar to the malḥama literature, there seems to be a link to the traditions of the Geoponicae. Ibn Waḥshiyya’s Nabataean Agriculture was very popular and gave rise to many works summarizing it or relying on it; e.  g., the voluminous Kitāb al-Filāhā (“Book on agriculture”) by Ibn al-ʻAwwām (twelfth century [?]), the epitome by Ibn al-Raqqām (d. 1315) and the treatise by Shams al-Dīn al-Dimashqī (b. 1256), who combines the Nabatean agriculture probably with Byzantine traditions. Of the practices interpreting inanimated signs, the small amount of information we have concerning those linked to water should be mentioned briefly. Hydromantic practices proper interpret signs of water, e.  g., emerging on its or other shining surfaces, but also ebbing and flowing of rivers. Due to the lack of research concerning this topic and their nevertheless presumed variety and apparantly minor significance, it appears at least certain that they are located in a grey area not only between natural and artificial signs, but also between mantic and magical practices. Also related to water are those manisfestations that should help to find underground water and rely on different kinds of signs, e.  g., the smell of the earth, the distribution of plants and the instinctive behaviour of certain creatures, particularly the hoopoe. The latter two still belong to the animate natural signs used for prognostication. They comprise, besides the distribution of plants, comprise mainly the occurrence, behaviour, and appearance of animals, particularly their sound and their passing, and of humans – the use of deformities, malformations and multiple births in this context deserves further research. What these signs indicate belongs again either to common knowledge, e.  g., the stereotype of the raven whose appearance announces the departure and separation of two beloveds, or it is found in scholarly treatises. They deal more generally with zoomancy and consider different animals, or concentrate on one specific manifestation, particularly ornithomancy. An example is found in the Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab, a voluminous, comprehensive reference work, by al-Nuwayrī (d.  1333), a



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Mamluk historian and encyclopaedist, who organizes, as short, elaborate if-then-constructions, mainly animal signs and their interpretation. In the previous chapter, he concentrates on ornithomantic practices attributed to al-Jāḥiẓ (b. 766), a man of letters and prolific writer from early ʻAbbāsid Baghdad, whose Kitāb al-Ḥayawān (“Books on animals”), one of his major works, presents an entertaining and relatively literary anthology regarding this topic. The whole chapter shares many commonalities with what is found on ornithomancy in the Ancient Mesopotamian sources. In general, although treatises on this topic are still mentioned in the tenth century by Ibn al-Nadīm in his Fihrist, they are systematised relatively late. A specific, elaborate terminology, closely related to texts on hunting, describes the directions considered, e.  g., where the raven croaks with respect to the person involved, but also in a more general way, to describe where a bird flies or cries, or an animal steps or makes a noise, since it makes little difference if the animal in question occurs with respect to the hunter, the traveller or the practitioner of mantic arts. While the practice that al-Nuwayrī describes restricts itself to observation, a second one, also described in the sources, prompts a bird’s reaction, e.  g., by throwing a pebble at it, a technique that makes the bird’s behaviour less of a natural but rather an artificial sign. To the same grey area belong practices that rely on the body parts of animals, e.  g., hepatomancy, that considers animals’ livers, and scapulimancy, that usually takes into account sheep’s, but also goats’, shoulder blades, since they require a certain degree of preparation before being used for prognostication. The former was an important practice in the Ancient Mesopotamian traditions, that was renounced centuries before the rise of Islam, although Ibn Khaldūn still includes it in his list of mantic practices provided in the sixth prefatory discussion of his Muqaddima. The latter, however, proceeds, although the descriptions in the sources slightly differ in the preparatory steps they describe. In general, two methods were employed: either a non-calcinating technique by boiling the meat until it fell off the bone, or a calcinating one that involved extracting first the shoulder blade and then heating it until cracks appeared. In both cases, the overall appearance, e.  g., lines, grooves, hollows and meat remnants, was then interpreted or read by considering one side to be related to the individual and family and the other to community affairs. One of the scapulimantic sources, the Risāla fī ʻilm al-katif (“Treatise on the science of the shoulder blade”), is attributed to Yaʻqūb ibn Isḥāq al-Kindī (d. 870), the “philosopher of the Arabs,” who wrote, next to his philosophical works, also treatises on astrology, the mantic arts and magic. It appears to be a revised version of an earlier treatise of Maghribī origin that was attributed to Hermes. Both texts were also translated into Latin. Signs related to human behaviour, occurrence, and appearance are employed in mantic practices similarly to those of animals and should not be confused with physiognomic practices (usually firāsa or qiyāfa, though with a slightly different and broader range of meaning). While the former is used to predict future events and reveal arcane knowledge, the latter’s focus rests on learning more about the character of a person, his condition and constitution. By doing so, if one will, physiognomy

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makes accessible another kind of hidden knowledge, which may explain why it is often presented in scholarly treatises together with other mantic practices. Physiognomic knowledge is also employed in other prognostic practices, e.  g., in astrology, when planets and zodiacal signs are associated with a person’s character or appearance (↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World, 537). Accordingly, these signs are found, on the one hand, in scholarly treatises intermingled with animal omens; e.  g., in the treatises by al-Ashraf ʻUmar and al-Nuwayrī where, however, less frequently, zoomancy prevails. On the other hand, a rich scholarly literature on specific practices developed; e.  g., treatises that interpret the spontaneous convulsions or trembling of parts of the human body (ikhtilāj). Another example comprises chiromancy (also: palmistry; ʻilm al-kaff, lit. “the science of the hand,” but also with a slightly different meaning ʻilm al-asārīr, lit. “science of the lines of the palm [or: the forehead]”) that takes into account the uniqueness of a person’s hand, either its shape or its palmar creases, particularly the length of the lines, their distances and patterns. Sometimes, even the finger joints and their nails are considered or the related parts of the sole of the foot. Based on the Greek and Indian traditions, only very few treatises are known; e.  g., the Maʻrifat khuṭūṭ al-kaff wa-mā fīhi min al-ḥikma attributed to Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1209), one of the most renowned Islamic theologians and philosophers to whom are also ascribed, among others, astrological, physiognomic and medical treatises. Besides these natural signs, all kinds of techniques were used to generate and calculate artificial signs that were then read or interpreted; first, all of those practices that involve the casting of lots in the broadest sense (qurʻa, lit. “lot,” but also istikhāra), also known as cleromancy or sortilege. A second group interprets letters (ʻilm al-ḥurūf, lit. “the science of letters,” but also sīmiyāʼ, usually denoting [white] magic and jafr), particularly by taking into account their occult properties (al-khawāṣṣ) and their numerical values. Sometimes, these practices are summarized by the terms arithmancy, numerology, gematria or lettrism, although all of these terms are associated with problems. In general, by casting lots, the practitioner randomly and unconsciously chooses between two or more items, the first resulting immediately in one specific outcome. In the second case, a limited number of random patterns is produced and then interpreted. To obtain them, further steps are conducted that reduce and regroup the set of items that might be generated by book opening, dice rolling, pebble arranging, pits casting, arrow shooting, rod throwing, or other practices. The huge amount of items possibly employed leads to a great variety of cleromantic practices, not all of them equally common, popular or widespread, and some of them receiving their own name depending on the items on which they rely; e.  g., belomancy, when arrows are used, bibliomancy when books. Obviously, also specific artefacts are used for casting lots as witnessed by, e.  g., two rectangular cuboids made of bone preserved in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art. Of unknown provenance and date, they are engraved, among other



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features, on the four rectangular surfaces with one, two, three or four sets of three concentric circles with a dot in the center (Maddison and Savage-Smith 1997, 1, 158). How they were employed, however, requires further research. The most popular cleromantic practice, geomancy (ʻilm al-raml, lit. “the science of sand” but also khaṭṭ al-raml, lit. “the line in the sand” and ḍarb al-raml, lit. “the striking of the sand”), is based on casting four times four lines of dots arbitrarily onto sand. Then, each line is reduced to one dot, if the amount is odd, and to two – or a short stroke – if it is even. These four initial figures (shakl, pl. ashkāl) form the basis of further regroupings, that finally lead to the geomantic tableau of 16 figures that are then interpreted (for more details, see ↗ Regourd, Mantic Arts Islamic World, 472–473). A vast number of instructive treatises on geomancy is preserved, their majority dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth century and most of them anonymous. Most influential and widespread was the text by Abū ʻAbd Allāh al-Zanātī (fl. before 1232), who is otherwise unknown and might be a member of the Berber Zanāta tribe of North Africa, and the compiling treatise by Ibn Maḥfūf al-Munajjim whose identification with a scholar from thirteenth century has to be reconsidered due to Latin translations of his treatise from the twelfth century. Both sometimes form parts of larger works. Given al-Zanātī’s time and role, together with the fact that geomantic practices are usually not treated with dream interpretation and/or physiognomy, they might be employed in a different milieu and might not date back before the rise of the Islam and related, especially to Greek roots, but rather have emerged in Islamic times in (North) Africa. Geomancy is one of the few prognostic practices, besides astrology, that employs instruments only made for that specific purpose (↗ Cooper and Schmidl, Geomantic Artefacts). This is clearly documented by a rectangular metal tablet preserved in the British Museum that helps to generate a geomantic tableau. Because of its age (it dates to 1241/1242), it makes an important contribution to our knowledge of pre-modern geomantic practices (Savage-Smith and Smith 2004). Bibliomancy (ṭarīq al-istikhrāj, lit. “the way of choices,” sometimes also qurʻa, lit. “lot”), another, very popular cleromantic practice, is characterized by the twofold role that books play in it, on the one hand informing us in detail about bibliomantic practices and, on the other, the typical random patterns necessary to apply these practices are produced by books. Usually chosen are books either of religious signifi­cance or of poetry, sometimes with a bibliomantic appendix, so that they turn into mantic artefacts. The simplest method is to ask a question, then randomly open a book and select a passage – usually the first upon which the eye falls. Next, the finding is interpreted in view of what the client wishes to know. For this practice, aside from the Qurʼān, there might be used books of tradition, such as the Ṣāḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī, one of the six Sunnī canonical ḥadīth collections, and on poetry, such as the Dīwān of Ḥāfiẓ (fourteenth century), written in Persian and rather belonging to a Shīʻī environment. Concerning bibliomancy by means of the Qurʼān, more ingenious practices are reported, such as counting the words of Allāh on the page chosen and then skipping the relevant number of pages before reaching the relevant verse. Qurʼān manuscripts

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were produced, at least in Ṣafawid times, that might include either rearranged text in schemes and tables or a bibliomantic appendix. Both features blur the borderline with lot books, a specific variety of a cleromantic practice by means of books. They are, especially in Eastern Islamic societies, known by the Persian term fāl-nāma (lit. “omen book,” and therefore “book of divination”), a term that can also denote bibliomancy in general. These lot books arrange their data in differing variations and are often attributed to well-known authorities, such as Daniel, Jaʻfar al-Ṣādiq and al-Kindī. A very popular, widespread variety of lot books, that also became quite popular in early modern Europe under the title “Liber Alfadhol,” consists of three main parts: an introduction with operative instructions, a list of 144 questions and 12 answers to each question. This 12-part lot book (“Zwölffelderlosbuch” [Kunitzsch 1984, 284]), with its intricate transmission history, dates back to an Arabic original, which was, in turn, probably based on Persian or Indian traditions. It is alternatively and allegedly attributed to al-Faḍl ibn Sahl (ninth century), probably the courtier and astrologer of this name at the court of the ʻAbbāsid Caliph al-Maʼmūn, and al-Kindī, the famous ninth-century philosopher and prolific author of many scholarly treatises. A relatively late example of a bibliomantic practice is documented at least in Ottoman and Ṣafawid times, identifiable from a group of manuscripts that transmit elaborate pictures and prognostic texts, although the sources provide hints that these pictorial lot books had already been in existance for a long time. The pictorial material of these Fāl-nāma draws on a wide repertoire of well-known objects, narratives and figures issuing from Ancient Greek, Indian and Persian as well as (early) Islamic traditions and taken mainly from the Qurʼān, the ḥadīth literature, historiographical and astrological treatises; e.  g., Alexander the Great erecting the wall against Gog and Magog, Jonah and the Whale, Muḥammad’s nightly journey or the planet Saturn. Some of the presentations restore an eschatological topography and chronology; e.  g., by depicting paradise, hell, the arrival of the antichrist or the last judgment. As a consequence, this bibliomantic practice, belonging to those that rely on signs emerging from observation or generation and calculation, is linked to another whose signs rely on those emerging from inspiration and intuition. According to hints in the sources further artefacts were used to support bibliomantic practices; e.  g., dice and rods. Besides these cleromantic practices, a second group rests on interpreting letters (ʻilm al-ḥurūf, lit. “science of the letters”) and draws on two fundamental issues; first, and similar to inanimate and animate nature, the letters also possess occult properties (khāṣṣa – khawāṣṣ). Accordingly, they might be treated in a similar way to minerals, plants, and animals, particularly by taking into account the sympathy and antipathy between them, and they provide ample scope for further interpretation. Second, alphanumerical notation assigns to each letter of the Arabic alphabet a number (see Tab. 1) similar to the usage in Greek, Syriac and Hebrew. Due to a re-grouping of the alphabet in earlier times, the modern ordering of the Arabic alphabet differs from that of the abjad-system, which is named according to the first four letters (alif, bāʼ, jīm, dāl), corresponding to the first four digits (1, 2, 3, 4). This alpha-



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numeric system is widely used in pre-modern astronomical, astrological, mathematical and other contexts, not only for writing values in texts and tables, but also to denote specific points, e.  g., in geometric schemes or in depictions of instruments, mainly to relate them to the accompanying descriptions. Tab. 1: Numerical values of the Arabic (Eastern/Western part of the Islamic realm), Hebrew and Greek letters. (The assignments differ slightly for the Western part of the Islamic realm.)

 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 20 30 40 50

Arabic

Hebrew

Greek

‫ا‬ ‫ب‬ ‫جـ‬ ‫د‬ ‫ه‬ ‫و‬ ‫ز‬ ‫ح‬ ‫ط‬ ‫ي‬ ‫ك‬ ‫ل‬ ‫م‬ ‫ن‬

‫א‬ ‫ב‬ ‫ג‬ ‫ד‬ ‫ה‬ ‫ו‬ ‫ז‬ ‫ח‬ ‫ט‬ ‫י‬ ‫כ‬ ‫ל‬ ‫מ‬ ‫נ‬

Α Β Γ Δ Ε Ϝ Ζ Η Θ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν

  60   70   80   90  100  200  300  400  500  600  700  800  900 1000

Arabic

Hebrew

Greek

‫س‬/‫ص‬ ‫ع‬ ‫ف‬ ‫ص‬/‫ض‬ ‫ق‬ ‫ر‬ ‫ش‬/‫س‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ث‬ ‫خ‬ ‫ذ‬ ‫ض‬/‫ظ‬ ‫ظ‬/‫غ‬ ‫غ‬/‫ش‬

‫ס‬ ‫ע‬ ‫פ‬ ‫צ‬ ‫ק‬ ‫רּ‬ ‫ש‬ ‫ת‬ ‫ך‬ ‫ם‬ ‫ן‬ ‫ף‬ ‫ץ‬

Ξ Ο Π Ϙ Ρ Σ Τ Υ Φ Χ Ψ Ω Ϡ

Reading a combination of letters either as a word or number facilitates a wide variety of arithmantic and magic uses. To provide a simple example, the combination of yāʼ and dāl in Arabic might be read either as yad, “hand,” or “14” with yāʼ for ten, dāl for four. Although it only works properly with alphabets that use letters as numbers, i.  e., Greek, Syriac, Hebrew, and Arabic, some of these practices reached Europe, too, forming, e.  g., the basis of a group of Latin texts dealing with simple arithmancy and astrology called the Alchandreana but, there, they obtained another status, becoming less common and less scientific, probably because the link between letters and numbers relaxes and the rules connecting them became unclear. A widely described onomantic practice, called “The victorious and the vanquished” (al-ghālib wa-l-maghlūb but also ḥisāb al-nīm, lit. “the calculation of nīm”), sums up the numerical values of the letters in two combatants’ names and, after performing various intermediate steps of calculation, the two results are looked up in a list or table that provides a prediction regarding who will win and who will lose the fight. It is presented in Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Latin and several vernacular manuscripts; e.  g., in the Arabic version of the Sirr al-asrār (↗ Forster, Sirr al-asrār/ Secretum secretorum).

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These practices interpreting letters acquire further levels of meaning and interpretation through the superimposition of additional components; e.  g., the grouping of the letters according to the four elements or relating them to the seven planets of pre-modern astronomy. An example is a procedure called zāʼirja al-ʻālam (approx. “the circular scheme of the world”), whose first term includes a wider range of meaning. With regard to arithmantic practices, these consist of a number of concentric circles and axes or diameters in a reactangular frame filled with numerological, but also astrological and geomantic information, and relate these data to each other. Ibn Khaldūn provides a highly detailed description of this in the sixth prefatory discussion of his Muqaddima, so he appears to have been familiar with this practice (↗ Regourd, Mantic Arts Islamic World, 472–473). Closely related is jafr, a term designating, in pre-modern times, a complex set of concepts related to prognostication. How this concrete relationship is described, however, in modern research differs slightly. While already in Umayyad and then in ʻAbbāsid times, jafr apparently denotes a group of esoteric texts with an apocalyptical character that arose due to the struggle for the Caliphate by the descendants of ʻAlī and the persecutions following their defeat, it later developed into writings on mantic practices and magic applications that make use not only of the numerical values of the letters but also of their occult properties. To the great variety of procedures belong the transposition, combination, composition and substitution of letters, either to reveal or conceal specific knowledge. Accordingly, the prognostic element, in contrast to, for instance, onomantic practices, is relatively unclear. Jafr appears rather to exist in a transition zone, where occult, magical, mystical, spiritual and religious practices meet. Numerous authors wrote on this subject, among others, al-Būnī in his Shams al-maʻārif, Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn al-ʻArabī (d. 1240) in his Miftāḥ al-jafr al-jāmiʻ, Ibn Ṭalḥa al-ʻAdawī al-Rājī (d. 1254) in his Miftāḥ al-jafr al-jāmiʻ (or: al-Durr al-munaẓẓam fi l-sirr al-aʻaẓam) and ʻAbd al-Raḥmān al-Bisṭāmī (1454) in his Miftāḥ al-jafr al-jāmiʻ (or: al-Durr al-munaẓẓam fi l-sirr al-aʻẓam). In some cases, jafr even includes descriptive astrological and folk astronomical procedures as well as prognostic practices as found in the malḥama literature, for instance elections, the directions of the winds, the visibility of the lunar mansions, and the predictions of the year and omens, altogether rather descriptive than calculating methods. The attitude toward mantic practices, as reflected in examples taken from reflexive texts, is ambiguous and differs from practice to practice, while other contextual factors might also prove influential; e.  g., the overall political situation, religious movements, scholarly climate or personal intentions. While inanimate natural signs appear in the Qurʼān, particularly in eschatological and apocalyptical contexts, e.  g., sūra 99, that even bears the title “The earthquake,” animate natural signs are regarded as bad omens and condemned as a pagan practice, an interpretation based on sūra 36:17–18. Both verses use terms with the same root as ṭīra, that denotes the interpretation of flight of birds, an early mantic practice in Ancient Mesopotamia that continued into Antiquity until pre-Islamic times. It was later extended to include all mantic practices



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by means of animal and human behaviour. The semantic shift in this term, however, does not lead to an overall prohibition of these practices, probably related to the traditions reporting that the Prophet distinguishes between two kinds of omens: ṭīra, signifying a bad one, and faʼl, a term that does not occur in the Qurʼān, a good one. Concerning artificial signs, on the one hand two verses in sūrāt v,3 and 90 prohibit the casting of lots by arrows without a head and feathers (istiqsām), probably referring to pre-Islamic belomantic practices. In the second case, they are condemned together with wine (khamr) and the game of the left-handed (maysir), likewise involving arrows, but also the slaughter of animals, forming the basis for the ban on drinking and gambling (qimār) under Muslim law. These findings, however, create the impression that, rather being widely practiced in pre-Islamic times that led to their condemnation then the practices themselves, probably further influenced by accusations brought forward by Muḥammad’s adversaries that he was a soothsayer and by getting out of hand in that time. Casting lots (qurʻa), however, was, in general, regarded as a licit practice, legitimated by the example of the Prophet, who employed it to make decisions, e.  g., regarding distribution issues. At least concerning bibliomancy by means of the Qurʼān, however, critical voices arise that regard this practice as illicit. Other critical voices are more general, e.  g., Ibn Waḥshiyya doubting the truth content of soothsayers’ sayings (cf. Hämeen-Anttila 2006, 270–272) or Ibn Khaldūn querying in the sixth prefatory discussion of the Muqaddima their capability to gain access to hidden knowledge. Nevertheless, in some cases, mantic practices find their place among the sciences and their branches; e.  g., in Ḥājjī Khalīfa’s Kashf al-Ẓunūn. He includes the mantic arts in general (ʻilm al-kihāna), twice, in medicine (al-ṭibb) as well as in magic (al-siḥr). Further, he assigns chiromancy (ʻilm al-asārīr), scapulimancy (ʻilm al-aktāf), and palmomancy (ʻilm al-ikhtilāj) to physiognomy (al-firāsa), geomancy (ʻilm al-raml), the science of (good) omens (ʻilm al-faʼl), cleromancy (ʻilm al-qurʻa), and the science of (bad) omens (or: ornithomancy; ʻilm al-ṭīra) to astrology (ʻilm aḥkām al-nujūm; cf. Kātib Čelebī [Flügel] 1842, I, 34–35). In particular, what belongs to common knowledge, folk sayings and proverbs finds its way into poems and belles-lettres; e.  g., the raven that announces a departure, a well-known motif that also features in the Arabian Nights. Several stories in this collection draw on geomantic practices, particularly to answer the question of whether a person is dead or not (Savage-Smith and Smith 2004, 220–221). Some of these passages deserve, however, a careful re-interpretation, because a dust board might also serve as an auxiliary device for calculation (↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World, 543). Astral Sciences While mantic practices interpret sub-lunar signs, the interpretation of supra-lunar signs belongs to the realm of the astral sciences (usually ʻilm al-nujūm, lit. “the science

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of the stars”), a term coined to cover astronomy (ʻilm al-hayʼa, lit. “the science of the configuration”) and astrology (ʻilm aḥkām al-nujūm, lit. “the science of the judgement by means of the stars;” for more variations and details, see ↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World). They address issues such as determining the position of the sun or the movements of the planets to learn more about the future, be it, e.  g., to determine the prayer times for a specific place and time or to describe the character of a newborn child. Ptolemy’s two major works, the Almagest and the Tetrabiblos, translated for the first time into Arabic in the eighth century, together with further Greek, but also Syriac, Indian, Persian, for al-Andalus even Latin, and pre-Islamic traditions form the kernel of those concepts and methods that developed into the characteristic manifestations of what is nowadays often called “Islamic” or “Arabic” astronomy and astrology, although both terms are problematic (↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World, 532–533). Interpreting supra-lunar signs that, according to Abū Maʻshar, “do not alter and are not subject to coming-to-be and passing-away, for as long as God wills” (Abū Maʻshar ([Yamamoto & Burnett] 2019, 71, 2.25c), however, is not the only reason why astrology plays a specific role regarding other mantic practices. As ʻAlī ibn Riḍwān (eleventh century), a doctor and author of medical texts in Fāṭimid Cairo, states, in his commentary to Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos: […] the science of prognostication is of many kinds, we will say that this art of astrology is one of them, and you will understand first that it is more certain than all of them, more true, more general and in every respect, complete. (ʻAlī ibn Riḍwān, trans. Burnett 1996, I, 14–15)

Recalling Ibn Khaldūn’s statement that geomancy developed because astrology was so complicated, one might even add “more difficult” and “more elaborate.” Both authors, however, might rather consider a high-end astrology whose understanding requires an advanced niveau of education, particularly an adequate knowledge of astronomy and mathematics. Instructive texts on the astral sciences are known from the eighth century onward. They either include both aspects (astronomy and astrology), or concentrate on only one of them. Among the first, one might number zījes, astronomical-astrological handbooks (↗ Gaida, Zījes) and taqwīms (lit. “correcting”, “rectifying”), a term sometimes rendered by ephemeris, although the tables that present the positions of sun, moon and planets for every day of the year only form their core and allow, therefore, the prediction of their movements as well as their interpretation. Additional information broadens the use of taqwīms for prognostic purposes. Often enclosed are, e.  g., the aspects of the planets and the solar altitude at the beginning of the midday (al-ẓuhr) and afternoon prayer (al-ʻaṣr) and, less frequently, the lunar latitude, a parameter that is important in predicting eclipses, and the time, location and condition of the first lunar visibility, the basis of the hijra calendar. Other examples with less mathematical, but more descriptive – sometimes denounced folk – methods are ­almanacs



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and ­calendars, whose basic organisation follows, similar to the taqwīms, the yearly course of the sun or the moon against the background of the stars, albeit simplified and ­standardized (↗ Varisco, Calendrical Calculations Islamic World, 641–643). Besides zījes and almanacs, instrument books might include not only astronomical but also astrological information and form a bridge to the use of instruments for astrological purposes (↗ Rodríguez Arribas, Mathematical Instruments). Due to the descriptive character of the included mantic practices, but also by providing predictions by means of eclipses, the malḥama literature might be regarded as crossing boundaries to the astral sciences, an issue that deserves further research. In the second category, treatises dealing exclusively with astronomy, one might include those of the hayʼa tradition that become graspable at least as early as the eleventh century. In the third category, astrological treatises, one might include the texts of the mudkhal genre, introductory literature into astrology (↗ Gaida, Introductions to Astrology) and texts concentrating on specific topics; e.  g., historical, electional or interrogational astrology (↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World). While texts on mantic practices barely discuss the philosophical and theological aspects of their contents, astrological treatises might include them; e.  g., Kūshyār ibn Labbān (fl. ca. 1000) at the beginning of his Mujmal al-uṣūl fī aḥkām al-nujūm (“Summary of the principles in astrology”), also called al-Mudkhal fī ṣināʻat aḥkām al-nujūm (“The introduction to the craft of astrology”), or Abū Maʻshar in the first book of his Mudkhal al-kabīr, one of the earliest, most elaborate examples (↗ Gaida, Zījes). He lists ten kinds of critics and refutes them systematically; e.  g., the motif of envy that finds its expression in criticizing astrology, returns, this time by those who have tried but failed to master astrology. His list also allows a glimpse at the practices of astrologers in early ʻAbbāsid times. He describes their use of zījes to find planetary positions, but states that they are not responsible for their accuracy and recommends instead measurement by reliable instruments. Reflexive texts on the astral sciences and astronomical and astrological artefacts cannot be systematized so easily. In fact, a major part does not concern the related practices but the pictorial and symbolic language of astronomy and astrology that stands out due to its enormous charisma, attractivity and appeal. It interacts with other occult sciences, e.  g., alchemy and magic, and is widely applied in the fields of literature, craft, art and architecture for rhetorical, metaphorical, decorative, aesthetic and related purposes; e.  g., when comparing a beautiful human face with the full moon or using the sun as a royal symbol, as attested, e.  g., by Saljūq coins from the thirteenth century. In the Qurʼān and the ḥadīth literature, the sun, moon and stars are mentioned prominently. With regard to prognostic practices, however, two verses of the Qurʼān are of particular interest. The first is sūra 10:5 which is widely interpreted as meaning that God created the sun and moon as a time base. Their movements regulate the lunar calendar with its feast and fast days and the five daily ritual prayers, although their being five in number is not yet indubitably established in the Qurʼān: “It is He

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who made the sun a radiance, and the moon a light, and determined it by stations, that you might know the number of the years and the reckoning.” Second, in sūra 6:97, the stars are more generally described as a guidance set for humans by God: “It is He who has appointed for you the stars, that by them you might be guided in the shadows of land and sea.” ʻAbd al-Malik ibn Ḥabīb (d. 853), e.  g., a versatile Andalusī scholar of Umayyad times not only in ḥadīth and religious law, but also in the fields of history, medicine, genealogy, poetry, and linguistics, interprets this verse in a strict non-astrological sense – whereby the opposite interpretation might also be insinuated. While several ḥadīths of the Sunnī collections organized according to subject-matter refer to mantic practices and their practitioners, only Abū Daʼūd (b. 817) equalizes in his Sunna, in the chapter dedicated to divination and omens, the acquisition of knowledge by means of the stars (ʻilm min al-nujūm) with the acquisition of a branch of magic. This equalization already points to a major issue in religious, theological and legal studies: the legitimacy and validity of astrology. Together with discussions in other branches of the scholarly literature, particularly in philosophical, mathematical and even astronomical treatises, they might fill entire libraries. The positions range from a rigoros refusal to absolute approval, with all shades of grey in between. In general, the debate is sparked less by the contents proper and the applied prognostic practices, apart from the subject of errors in astrological predictions, but more from the philosophical and religious concepts and implications; e.  g., the claim to reveal knowledge that is usually inaccessible to humans or the place of astral sciences in the overall organiation of knowledge. Three examples might suffice to illustrate the diversity and complexity of this issue, the first coming from an Ismāʻīlī setting, albeit disputable if mainstream, in tenth-century Iraq and Iran. Abū Yaʻqūb al-Sijzī (fl. tenth century), a leading figure in his community, treats in his Ithbāt al-nubūʼāt (“Proofs of prophecies”) a treatise whose textual history is still not completely clear, astrology on a par with all sciences and techniques that are revealed to prophets and imams. The second originates from a Sunnī context of fourteenth-century Syria and Egypt. Ibn Taymīyah deals in three formal legal opinions (sing. fatwā) with those who believe in the influence of the planets and stars. In relying on verses of the Qurʼān and the ḥadīth collections, he declares this belief as corrupt, and the art of astrology as forbidden. The third describes, in retropect, what one might understand as the place of astrology in al-Andalus probably until the end of the Umayyad Caliphate in 1031. al-Maqqarī (d. 1632), a historian, biographer and man of letters, who lived and worked in seventeenth century Maghreb and Egypt, provides, in the first part of his Nafḥ al-ṭīb, remarks by Ibn Saʻīd al-Maghribī (d. 1286), a poet, anthologist, historian and geographer from the same region. What starts as an equalization of astrology with philosophy, a term with a certain range of meaning, and a clear and general disregard of them, is put into relative perspective in the following sentence, that refers to the



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interest in these two branches of knowledge by what might be described as the innermost circle, close to the ruler: All sciences are well considered and studied in al-Andalus, except philosophy and astrology (tanjīm), but these two sciences deeply interest aristocrats who do not show towards them the same fear plebeians seem to feel. (Samsó 1979, 228)

Regarding the classification and organization of the sciences, in general, the astral sciences were regarded as part of either the natural or the mathematical sciences (↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World, 542). Due to the ambiguity of the terms used, however, it is, without checking the text, often difficult to decide if the astral sciences, astronomy or astrology are addressed. This is not always as clear as in the case of the third epistle of the Brethren of Purity who give it the title asṭurnūmiyā by rendering the Greek term into Arabic and use, in the preface, ʻilm al-nujūm. In the subsequent text, they deal accordingly with astronomy and astrology. Reflexive texts also provide more insights into the everyday business of the practitioners of the astral sciences. The administrative sources that deal with the training and employment of those supervising the markets in the widest sense (al-muḥtasibūn) draw a relatively negative image of astrologers who earn their living in these public places. They are compared with barrowmen and tricksters who madden women and bring death to men. It should be forbidden. Elsewhere, writers of letters and astrologers are stipulated to attend to their business in the middle of the main streets, rather than in shops and alleyways, since the necessary supervision is simplified there. The reason for this ordinance is apparently a concern that men might exploit the situation because the clientele of these writers of letters and astrologers tend to be women. In the Arabian Nights, when advice and information are required particularly concerning the future and fate of children, astrologers appear several times. Their demeanor, however, also gives rise to mockery them (↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World, 535). In the lengthy story of the slave women, Tawaddud, whose skills in all branches of knowledge are tested before the Caliph by the most learned scholars (Nights 436–462), one gains an impression of the quantity and quality of astronomical and astrological knowledge available to a broader, albeit scholarly, audience (Night 454–457). It comprises, e.  g., the nature of the planets and further information as found, albeit with more details, in the mudkhal literature (↗ Gaida, Introductions to Astrology), predictions depending of the weekday of the first day of a year that resemble those prognostic practices provided in the malḥama literature and the four elements including their association with the zodiacal signs, but also the five things that only God knows. A great number of instruments used for astronomical and astrological purposes in the widest sense are preserved  – leaving aside all artefacts that only make use of the pictorial language of the astral sciences mainly for decoration. They comprise relatively small, transportable objects up to huge installations used in observatories,

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e.  g., in Maragha in thirteenth, Samarqand in the fifteenth and Istanbul in the seventeenth centuries, that facilitate measurement, calculation, illustration and demonstration. Related, directly and indirectly, to prognostication are all kinds of timekeeping devices that were in use, such as different types of water-clocks and sundials, plus measuring tools such as quadrants, calculating instruments and models. Different functions are combined in astrolabes, partially also in celestial globes and armillary spheres (↗ Rodríguez Arribas, Mathematical instruments). Weather Forecasting Different to mantic arts and astral sciences weather forecasting (ʻilm aḥdāth al-jaww, lit. “the science of the phenomena of the atmosphere” or sometimes simply fī l-maṭar [or: fī l-amṭār; “on rain[s]”, but also and including meteorology ʻilm al-āthār al-ʻulwiyya, lit. “the science of celestial effects”) is not defined by the signs interpreted, but by the purpose it serves. Therefore, its prognostic repertoire is far broader, including answers to the question of when rain will come, one of the five hidden things only God knows, through interpreting signs and predicting weather phenomena linked either by cause and effect, empirical values or occasion. Compared with the broad variety of practices, the clients’ interest in weather forecasts is highly specific and often determined by their work and profession; e.  g., farmers wish to know when it will rain in order to decide when to sow or harvest; seafarers need to know when the wind will be favorable for them to set sail; military personal are interested in the weather conditions for an envisaged campaign; physicians need breaks in the weather in order to promote human health through interactions. Weather forecasting practices comprise mainly three lines: one that makes use of sublunar natural signs, another that employs supra-lunar signs, and a third that might be best rendered by scientific weather forecasting. All require different levels of experience, from an alert mind via fundamental astronomical and astrological knowledge to an advanced experience of different branches of knowledge, including astronomy, astrology, mathematics and physics, presented in their own kind of instructive literature. Weather signs, all sublunar natural signs, or omens, mainly inanimate but sometimes also animate, that indicate rain and other weather phenomena, form the first traditional line. They belong to a stock of common knowledge, folk sayings and intergenerational experience, as is also known from the Ancient Mesopotamian and Greek traditions. In particular, atmospheric phenomena, such as the color of the sky, halos around the sun and moon or rainbows, indicate rain and breaks in the weather. They occur, e.  g., in the malḥama literature, together with other kinds of prognostication: Dāniyāl (P) said: If there is a halo around the Moon in the month of Nīsān this indicates a multitude of winds, earthquakes and clouds; but the fruits will be good. If this takes place in Ayyār the barley will be better than the wheat, and the oil will be good in that year. If this happens in Ḥazīrān heat and diseases will be frequent in that year. If this happens in Tammūz the cold will



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be severe, most of the people will perish in that year and the price of large olives will rise. (Fodor 1974, 112 [English translation] and 39 [Arabic text])

Ibn Waḥshiyya, in his Nabatean agriculture, also mentions as weather signs the behavior of mammals, birds and insects: If cows keep turning their head towards the south, this indicates rain. If ants appear from their nest and spread around carrying their eggs from one place to another this indicates rain. If chickens cluck a lot and cocks crow continuously at unusual times and both the chickens and the cocks shiver and louse themselves, this indicates either rain or cold. If all of a sudden many crows which continuously croak appear, this indicates severe cold. (Ibn Waḥshiyya [Fahd], 212 [Arabic text]; Hämeen-Anttila 2006, 82 [English translation])

If all else fails, one might even draw on scapulimantic practices. Some Arabic manuscripts mark out a place on the shoulder blade that indicates abundant rain. The second line employs supra-lunar signs, sometimes denoted as astrometeor­ ology, but in two different ways, with the first considering the apparent movement of the sun and moon, but also of specific stars, as a time base (↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World, 544). The sun’s position against the background of the zodiacal signs or, more precisely, its ecliptic longitude, answers for the seasonal and, accordingly weather, changes, and provides a basis of all solar calendars; e.  g., when the sun enters Aries in the northern hemisphere, the days become longer, the nights shorter, and spring begins. This parallelism of the seasons and dates is its main advantage over a lunar calendar. Therefore, the related information can be easily organized according to the date in a solar year, as far back as the Ancient Greek traditions, and is recorded in calendars and almanacs. Besides the sun and moon, the concept of the anwāʼ, whose different aspects are often confused, is used in a similar way, relying on the pre-Islamic traditions and Arab star lore. While it appears to denote, originally and commonly, the rain falling at the acronychal setting of a star, it also describes the heliacal risings and acronychal settings of a system of 28 stars and groups of stars positioned alongside the ecliptic, the apparent path of the sun around the earth before the zodiac. In Islamic times, merging with the lunar mansions, these risings and settings subdivide the year into 28 intervals of, usually, 12, 13 and 14 days (nawʼ – anwāʼ) that run parallel to the seasons, providing a stellar calendar that can, therefore, be used for weather forecasting. Sometimes, nawʼ only designates the setting, and less often the rising, as discussed in the sources, that marks the beginning of such an interval. Further, in such an interval, a shorter period of up to seven days might also be called nawʾ, apparently possessing its own weather characteristics. The anwāʼ system is mainly discussed in a specific genre named after it, that might not only include its explanation and tables with the dates of the risings and settings of the stars, and information on wind and rain, but also proverbs and poetry. Accordingly, information on weather forecasting might be more difficult to access than in a calendar or almanac.

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The other method employs astrological concepts for weather forecasting; e.  g., considering the association of the planets with certain weather phenomena, such as the opening of the doors (fatḥ al-abwāb), that takes into consideration the positions of two planets and also that of their houses to each other. Another example provides the lot of rain (sahm al-maṭar); that is, e.  g., mentioned also in al-Bīrūnī’s Tafhīm, whose practical or prognostic use is, however, not specified beyond its name (↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World, 542). Since the borderline with astrology is blurred, the topic might be included not only in treatises on weather forecasting but might also appear scattered in astrological texts; e.  g., in Abū Maʻshar’s Mudkhal al-kabīr, accordingly called astrological meteorology and understood as a branch of mundane astrology. The third tradition, scientific weather forecasting, comprises, if one wills, the instructive part, while meteorology provides the theoretical background. It becomes first noticeable in al-Kindī’s treatises dealing with this topic, that are, however, only preserved in Hebrew and Latin, as the Arabic original is lost. Familiar with Aristotle’s Meteorologica probably from the translation by Yaḥyā ibn al-Bitrīq (fl. mid-ninth century), he makes this treatise fruitful for weather forecasting and integrates the other two traditions. Medical Diagnosis and Prognosis Similar to weather forecasting and opposite to mantic practices and astral sciences, medical diagnosis and prognosis are not defined by the signs they interpret, but by the purpose they serve. Therefore, its prognostic repertoire is also far broader. Predictions might cover, e.  g., the appearance or disappearance of health and disease, death or survival, and, if so, the period of time required to recover. They both form a branch of medicine ([ʻilm] al-ṭibb) and comprise only a part of the medical process. In general, medical diagnosis and medical prognosis both interpret signs in the widest sense; e.  g., a patient’s temperament and humoral balance, but also seasonal and environmental circumstances. They, however, pursue different objectives – and, in the narrower sense of the word, take place in different parts of the medical process. Not always sharply separated and easy to distinguish, the differences might be approached by describing the practices of medical diagnosis in order to narrow down and finally determine a disease’s causes, while medical prognosis constitutes those practices that make it possible to predict a disease’s progress and the impact of treatment. Due to the inherent uncertainties and imponderabilities, both might be regarded as a kind of prediction based on signs observed and ascertained (↗ Cooper, Medical Prognostication Islamic World). Since medicine and medical processes include medical diagnosis and prognosis, they both belong to the remits of the authors and practitioners working in these fields. Accordingly, what is known about doctors (ṭabīb – aṭṭibāʼ), and further medical practitioners and their clients, or patients, holds true, in general, also for them; e.  g., findings concerning different kinds of training, levels of expertise or places of practice.



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With regard to prognostication, the question of whether a doctor has to be an astrologer is of some significance. The answer, parallel to the general attitude toward astrology, varies widely. A couple of scholars were trained in both fields, as documented in the treatises they wrote; e.  g., ʻAlī ibn Riḍwān. For Abū Maʻshar, this is unquestionable, as he states in the first book of his Mudkhal al-kabīr, where he also refers to doctors’ different levels of experience. A specific case of medical diagnosis and prognosis is due to midwives. As Abū Maʻshar describes in the first book of his Mudkhal al-kabīr, they possess a wide prognostic repertoire related to pregnancy, childbed and birth; e.  g., specific changes concerning the tips of a women’s breast point to pregnancy, and the form of a pregnant woman’s belly indicates the gender of the unborn child, therefore providing answers to one of the five hidden things that only God knows (namely, what is in a woman’s womb). Apparently, medical diagnosis and prognosis by doctors was mainly available in the bigger cities, but not in the countryside, and for influential, affluent persons who were usually attended at home. There is, however, some evidence that, on the one hand, experienced but uneducated women provided these practices in the rural areas, and, on the other, that doctors were obliged to refrain from requesting payment from patients who were unable to afford it. Concerning their origins, the astral sciences and medicine share some commonalities; e.  g., the influences of the Greek, but also the Persian, Syriac and Indian traditions; the pivotal role attributed to the oeuvre of one author, this time, Galen; and the writing of instructive texts from the eighth century onward. Usually, diagnostic and prognostic practices form part of larger treatises where they are combined with other information; e.  g., in the Mudkhal fī ʻilm al-ṭibb (“Introduction to medicine”) by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (fl. ninth century), a prolific translator from Greek to Arabic and sometimes Syriac, or in the Kitāb Kāmil al-ṣināʻa aṭ-ṭibbiyya (“The complete book on the medical art”; also al-Kitāb al-Malakī [“The royal book”]) by al-Majūsī (fl. tenth century), a doctor of Būyid times, that deals in the seventh chapter, among other things, with inspecting urine and feeling the pulse; if one will, sublunar signs, whose importance for medical diagnosis and prognosis is stressed, e.  g., in the Kitāb al-Sūmūmāt (“The Book on Poisons”) by Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (lat. Geber; fl. eighth century), a pupil of Jaʻfar al-Ṣādiq and mainly renowned due to his alchemical work. Both practices, highly popular and widely used, might be, e.  g., included in case histories such as those collected by the students of al-Rāzī (d. 925) in the Kitāb al-Ḥāwī (“The comprehensive book”) that was later translated into Latin, like many other Arabic medical treatises, or described in treatises solely focussing on one of these two subjects as, e.  g., in two smaller treatises by Ibn Sīnā. Besides interpreting these bodily signs, mantic practices were also used for medical diagnosis and prognosis; e.  g., arithmancy that helps to identify the best treatment by taking into account the numerical values of the letters of a patient’s name. In general, questions concerning health, disease, diet and treatment play a prominent

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role in many prognostic practices, to name but a few, in dream incubation, geomancy and electional astrology. Apart from these sublunar signs, to make diagnoses and prognoses, practitioners also consider supralunar signs, such as the rising and setting of stars or position of the planets. Similar to weather forecasting, they play a twofold role, although sometimes both might be merged, either functioning as a time base or within an astrological framework, sometimes called iatromathematics. The former is found, e.  g., in calendars and almanacs providing good and bad days for taking medicine or bloodletting. In both cases, the practitioner predicts, if one will, the positive outcome, when these practices are performed at the correct time. Depending on the season – and the four humors with which they are associated – doctors might predict diseases, fevers and other thing; the line with astrological concepts is crossed. The same holds for, e.  g., harvesting medical plants when several planets must be in specific houses or dignities, or bloodletting when the moon is in the zodiacal sign associated with the body part in question. Actual and notional concepts, such as the zodiacal signs or the astrological houses, are associated, e.  g., with the four humors, but also with food, drink, a person’s characteristics or body parts, that all help to provide medical diagnoses and prognoses. Besides this system of medicine described so far, there developed another one, called al-ṭibb al-nabawī (“prophetic medicine”), that is mainly based on what the Qurʼān and aḥādīth state concerning medical practices, but sometimes also drawing on certain medical sources, which became enormously popular. It appears, however, that medical diagnosis and prognosis are relatively neglected in texts of this genre, probably for theological and philosophical reasons. Concerning artefacts, there are instruments for medical investigation, examination and treatment preserved, e.  g., surgical instruments, but also medicinal-magic bowls or talismanic shirts, but no objects exclusively for medical diagnosis and medical prognosis proper.

Developments and Contexts Prognostic practices take place in specific religious, social and political settings. They vary widely across space and time, but also differ with regard to their specific manifestations. Nevertheless, they share certain commonalities, such as the interplay between practitioners and clients or the dependency of the sphere of activity and level of expertise and serve, besides making accessible hidden knowledge, a range of purposes. The practitioners who endure, present and perform prognostic practices require different levels of scholarly knowledge and expertise depending on the specific manifestation. Those that rest on divine inspiration and intuition, such as prophecies, visions or dreams, are, generally speaking, rather less in need of an expert than those



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who require being generated or calculated. The same holds for their interpretation. Apparently, these practitioners did not restrict themselves to a single mantic practice, and those studying lettrism were usually also interested in astrology and geomancy. The different levels of scholarly knowledge and expertise of the practitioner on the one side, and of his performance, entertainment and aesthetics on the other are mutually dependent. Highly-esteemed experts and scholars, working in a courtly context, become concrete in dedications found at the beginning of their treatises, while those of a lower standing canvass the market. Accordingly, their interactions with their clients differ. Besides presenting their expertise by writing books or putting on a show, they cover the further needs of their clients, who might learn, often exclusively, something new, albeit still mysterious, and are entertained. They receive support for decision-making and are provided with self-insurance. In general, following a prognostication, they expect to be wiser than before and to have enjoyed themselves. Their consultation of a practitioner might even assume the form of a ritual act. As far as known to date, all instructive texts dealing with prognostic practices were written by men. There is, nonetheless, evidence of women’s interest and involvment in them. An example, that rather highlights the practitioners’ side, is presented in al-Bīrūnī’s introduction into astrology, the Tafhīm, that he dedicates to an otherwise unknown woman called Rayḥāna bint al-Ḥasan, the daughter of al-Ḥasan, for whom one may assume, nevertheless, a scholarly interest and a courtly background. Also, the fact that it matters in the scapulimantic traditions whether a male or a female practitioner cooks the sheep contributes to this finding. There is also some evidence of female physicians, although rare, and of a competitive situation between uneducated women offering cures and care and educated doctors, as reflected in several anecdotes. One example that illuminates the clients’ side is found in the last paragraph of the third chapter in Ibn Khaldūn’s Muqaddima, where he describes how mainly women and children, but also unstable men, employ the service of those practitioners who earn their living in the cities by predicting the future by different means and practices. Another concerns high-ranking women patronizing hospitals. The loci where prophets, visionaries, astrologers, diviners, doctors and other persons, who make prognostications, work and earn their living, and where the clients meet them to seek prognostication, shed light on their social reputation and illustrate their relations and dependencies. To them belong the courts, observatories, hospitals, clients and practitioners’ homes, shops, streets, and markets. The first three loci raise the question of prognostication and sovereignty, whose link becomes most obvious among the court astrologers and personal doctors. Besides political advice and decision finding, the further interest of sovereigns in prognostic practices aimed to cope with the future, be it to learn more about personal affairs, such as marriage and offspring, or public issues, such as the duration of the dynasty or impending warfare. By applying prognostic practices to past events, as reflected,

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e.  g., in the utilization of dream narratives and historical astrology, they not only explain why things happened but also legitimize the rulership. One example that Māshā’allāh provides in his Astrological History is that of a horoscope cast regarding the rise of the ʻAbbāsids in 750, when the great conjunction took place in Scorpio, “the sign of religion,” that followed horoscopes regarding the Deluge, the birth of the Anointed, and Muḥammad.

Pre-modern Classification, Discussion, and Criticism To speak in a general way about pre-modern classification, discussion and criticism of all these prognostic practices faces mainly two difficulties. First, different text genres have different interest in them, e.  g., legal treatises might ask if they are licit or illicit, or texts on philosophy might discuss the commonalities and differences between prophecy and divination. Accordingly, some branches might be excluded. Second, in the sources some prognostic practices might be treated as not belonging together. Consequently, they are not discussed in the same place. In both cases, pre-modern classification, discussion, and criticism do not cover all these prognostic practices. Therefore, these aspects are discussed in this article when dealing with the relevant practices. Further, this approach is aggravated by the fact that the meaning of the terms used is often either ambiguous and/or varies in different places and times. By recalling the five hidden things that only God knows and Muḥammad’s distinction between good and bad omens, it becomes clear that, over the long period of time and the wide realm covered here, there existed a broad range of attitudes toward prognostic practices, from a general critique to individual issues and from endorsement to rejection, with multiple layers of motives behind. One recurring point of criticism, however, concerns practitioners who are incapable, deceitful, and/or greedy, so mockery appears to be a diction to express this finding.

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King, David A. A Survey of the Scientific Manuscripts in the Egyptian National Library. Winona Lake, Indiana, 1986. King, David A. “A Medieval Arabic Report on Algebra before al-Khwārizmī.” al-Masāq: Studia Arabo-Islamica Mediterranea 1 (1988): 25–32. King, David A. Astronomy in the Service of Islam. London, 1993. King, David A. “On the Role of the Muezzin and the Muwaqqit in Medieval Islamic Society.” Tradition, Transmission, Transformation: Proceedings of Two Conferences on Pre-Modern Science Held at the University of Oklahoma (Collection de travaux de l’Académie internationale d’histoire des sciences 37). Eds. F. Jamil Ragep and Sally P. Ragep. Leiden, 1996. 285–345 [repr. King, David A. In Synchrony with the Heavens. Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization. Volume One: The Call of the Muezzin (Studies I–IX). Leiden and Boston, 2004. Part V]. King, David A. In Synchrony with the Heavens: Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization, Volume Two: Instruments of Mass Calculation (Studies X–XVIII) (Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science 55). Leiden, 2005. King, David A., and Benno van Dalen. “An Index of Authors to A Survey of the Scientific Manuscripts in the Egyptian National Library.” Suhayl 7 (2007): 9–46. King, David A., and Julio Samsó. “Astronomical Handbooks and Tables from the Islamic World (750–1900): An Interim Report, with a Contribution by Bernard R. Goldstein.” Suhayl 2 (2001): 9–105. Der Koran: Die wichtigsten Texte ausgewählt und erklärt von Hartmut und Katharina Bobzin. Munich, 2015. The Koran Interpreted: A Translation by Arthur John Arberry (The World’s Classics 596). London et al., 1964. Krämer, Gudrun. Geschichte des Islam. Munich, 2005. Kunitzsch, Paul. “Zum ‚Liber Alfadhol’ eine Nachlese.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 118 (1968): 297–314. Kunitzsch, Paul. “Eine bilingue arabisch-lateinische Lostafel.” Revue d’histoire des textes (1976/1978): 267–304. Kunitzsch, Paul. “Bücherbesprechungen: Fuat Sezgin. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. Bd. 7. Astrologie – Meteorologie und Verwandtes, bis ca. 430 H. Leiden: Brill 1979. XV, 486 S.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 132.1 (1982): 174–179. Kunitzsch, Paul. “Eine neue Alfadhol-Handschrift.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 134 (1984): 280–285. Lamoreaux, John. The Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation. Albany, NY, 2002. Lane, Edward W. An Arabic-English Lexicon. 8 vols. London and Edinburgh, 1863–1893. Lange, Christian R. Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions. Cambridge, 2016. Lemay, Richard. “Origin and Success of the Kitab Thamara of Abū Jaʻfar Ahmad ibn Yusuf.” Proceedings of the First International Symposium for the History of Arabic Sciences, Volume Two: Papers in European Languages. Eds. Ahmad Y. al-Hassan, Ghada Karmi, and Nizar Namnum. Aleppo, 1978. 417–418. Lemay, Richard. “Un essai d’abjad latin avorté.” Sic itur ad astra: Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften, Festschrift für den Arabisten Paul Kunitzsch zum 70. Geburtstag. Eds. Richard P. Lorch and Menso Folkerts. Wiesbaden, 2000. 376–392. Liber Anoe (MS Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Latin 9335): http://gallica.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/btv1b107211500/f170.item. zoom up to http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/ btv1b107211500/f179.item.zoom (8 May 2020); description http://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/cc77377g#layerPdf (11 May 2020).



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Pingree, David. “The Diffusion of Arabic Magical Texts in Western Europe.” La diffusione delle scienze islamiche nel medio evo europeo, Roma, 2–4 ottobre 1984, convegno internazionale promosso dall’Accademia nazionale dei Lincei. Ed. Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti. Rome, 1987. 57–102. Plessner, Martin. “Der Inhalt der Nabatäischen Landwirtschaft: Ein Versuch, Ibn Waḥshiyya zu rehabilitieren.” Zeitschrift für Semitistik 6 (1928): 27–56. Plessner, Martin. “Hermes Trismegistus and Arab Science.” Studia islamica 2 (1954): 45–59. Pormann, Peter E., and Emilie Savage-Smith. Medieval Islamic Medicine (The New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys). Edinburgh, 2007. The Qurʼan: New Translation by Muhammad A.S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford World’s Classics). Oxford, 2005. Ragep, F. Jamil, and Sally P. Ragep. “The Islamic Scientific Manuscript Initiative (ISMI). Towards a Sociology of the Exact Sciences in Islam.” A Shared Legacy: Islamic Science East and West, Homage to Professor J. M. Millàs Vallicrosa. Eds. Mercè Comes et al. Barcelona, 2008. 15–21. Rebstock, Ulrich. “Islamische Zahlenunterwelten.” Zahlen- und Buchstabensysteme im Dienste religiöser Bildung (Studies in Education and Religion in Ancient and Pre-modern History in the Mediterranean and its Environs 5). Eds. Laura V. Schimmelpfennig and Reinhard G. Kratz. Tübingen, 2019. 225–245. Regourd, Anne. “Avant-Propos.” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 13 (Divination magie pouvoirs au Yémen) (1995): 3–6. Rescher, Oskar. “Studien über den Inhalt von 1001 Nacht.” Der Islam 9 (1919): 1–94. Rodgers, Roy H. “Hail, Frost, and Pests in the Vineyard: Anatolius of Berytus as a Source for the Nabataean Agriculture.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 100.1 (1980): 1–11. Rodríguez, Blas, and Julio Samsó. “Las ‘Pháseis’ de Ptolemeo y el ‘Kitāb al-Anwāʼ’ de Sinān b. Ṯābit.” al-Andalus 41.1 (1976): 15–48. Rosenthal, Franz. Gambling in Islam. Leiden, 1975. Rubin, Uri. “The Seal of the Prophets and the Finality of Prophecy: On the Interpretation of the Qurʼānic sūrat al-Aḥzāb (33).” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 164 (2014): 65–96. Rudolph, Ulrich. Islamische Philosophie. Munich, 2004. Ruska, Julius. “Ǧābir ibn Ḥajjān und seine Beziehungen zum Imām Ǧaʻfar al-Ṣādiq.” Der Islam 16 (1927): 264–266. Sachau, C. Eduard. The Chronology of Ancient Nations: An English Version of the Athār-ul-bākiya of Albīrūnī, or ‘Vestiges in the Past’. London, 1879 [repr. Frankfurt am Main, 1984 and in the series Islamic Mathematics and Astronomy 31: Frankfurt am Main, 1998]. Saif, Liana. “What is Islamic Esotericism?” Correspondences 7.1 (2019): 1–59. Saintyves, Pierre. L’éternuement et le baillement dans la magie, l’ethnographie et le folklore médical. Paris, 1921. Saliba, George A. “The Development of Astronomy in Medieval Islamic Society.” Arabic Studies Quarterly 4.3 (1982): 211–225 [repr. Saliba, George A. A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories during the Golden Age of Islam (New York University Studies in Near Eastern Civilization 19). New York and London, 1994. 51–65]. Saliba, George A. “The Role of the Astrologer in Medieval Islamic Society.” Bulletin d’etudes orientales 44 (1992): 45–67 [repr. Savage-Smith, Emilie (ed.). Magic and Divination in Early Islam (The Formation of the Classical Islamic World 42). Aldershot, 2004. 341–370]. Samsó, Julio. “The Early Development of Astrology in al-Andalus.” Journal for the History of Arabic Science 3 (1979): 228–243 [repr. Samsó, Julio. Islamic Astronomy and Medieval Spain. London, 1994. Art. iv].



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Ulrike Ludwig

Prognostication in Early Modern Times – Outlook Terminology and Definitions Both in early modern texts and in later examinations of premodern times, there is a highly divergent use of the terms related to the phenomena of fortune-telling and magic. This is linked to the lack of a generally accepted definition of divination and magic, as well as the absence of a clear distinction between these two phenomena and/or other variables (e.  g. religion and science). This meandering history of concepts and definitions is particularly apparent in regard to the broad concept of magic. On the one hand, “magic” was used as a generic term to denote the secret arts as a whole – from fortune-telling and witchcraft to alchemy and magia naturalis. Magic was understood here in the sense of a transcendently grounded conception of nature. On the other hand, the term was simultaneously used to designate a special aspect of “magic” in the sense of wizardry (Otto 2011; Otto and Stausberg 2014). In the following remarks, therefore, no conceptual or even discourse- or reception-historical delimitation of the phenomena is attemted: an analytical terminology is employed instead. In the following, divination is to be understood as the techniques and procedures through which individuals, with the help of a higher, transcendent power, believed themselves capable of obtaining information about future and otherwise hidden phenomena and developments (such as the fate of distant persons or the whereabouts of lost objects). The transcendent power was, as a rule, God, a system of signs founded by him (such as the starry sky) or – in the negative case – of a devilish nature. The techniques through which one hoped to obtain the desired information differed considerably. In addition to the widespread, long-established methods, such as astrology, there were also regional peculiarities or significant prognostic techniques that were practiced for only a short time. At the same time, it should be emphasized that, over the course of time, new forms of fortune-telling emerged (e.  g. tarot, reading coffee grounds). In contrast to divination, magic (in the sense of sorcery) refers to all of those practices and techniques in which the actors, through recourse to a transcendent quantity, believed that they could achieve a targeted change in the current conditions or future development. Sorcery (whether as an active everyday aid or as dreaded witchcraft) was omnipresent in early modern times. During the persecution of witches, centered in the German-speaking territories in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the contemporary confrontation with elements of “black” magic or sorcery becomes particularly apparent. In addition, there also existed a broad, albeit more inconceivable, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-009

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“white” everyday magic (above all, protective spells for humans, animals and inanimate possessions, love spells). At the same time, we can also find relatively learned confrontations with magic, ranging from hermetic concepts to aspects of alchemy to debates about magia naturalis. In this chapter, I will concentrate on the field of fortune-telling. Fortune-telling was indeed linked to magical practices in the sense of determining the right time at which to perform a spell, but a closer examination of these aspects lies beyond the scope of this article. In early modern Europe, and thus in the course of the three centuries between 1500 and 1800, fortune-telling underwent a fundamental devaluation but also a revaluation (cf. Chap. 2: Historical outline). The steadily increasing ability to write and read in European society since the early sixteenth century, the invention of printing press as well as the significantly lower cost of paper and ink also led to the fact that an expanding number of testimonies of fortune-telling expertise and practice were being created and handed down. It also becomes apparent that huge differences existed between the description and evaluation of fortune-telling, depending on the historical context of the tradition (e.  g. instructional texts, court records and prohibitions, personal records of users or contemporary prose). This also had an effect on the use of the terms found in the sources. Three observations can be offered here: on the one hand, alongside the long-established Latin terms, there was an increasing use of vernacular terminology, often consisting of translations from Latin. Only very occasionally do other terms feature, such as geomancy. The Latin term denoted, on the one hand, the interpretations of signs of the earth and, on the other hand, the geomancy originating from the Islamic area (from the Arab. ʻilm alram). In German, this doubling was dissolved by the introduction of the new term, the “art of stippling” (Punktierkunst), but such fundamental conceptual neologisms were relatively rare (↗ Melvin-Koushki, Geomancy Islamic World). On the other hand, it is clear with regard to the terminology that, beyond scholarly debates and instructional texts, the use of the terms quickly becomes inaccurate. The problem here is less the variation in the terms as the lack, of specificity regarding the terms used to describe the techniques in many sources. In addition, there are unspecific collective designations which, depending on the context, could even designate something quite particular (e.  g. prognostica regarding a popular astrological revolution in the form of a pamphlet). Thirdly, fortune-telling has often been practiced in the semi-public, secret or more personal contexts. Overall, it can be stated that a legitimizing reference to the use of fortune-telling is the exception. This led to the fact that, in the designation of actions and objects, frequently no references to fortune-telling were made; for example, objects in princely collections related to astrology often traded under the generic term of Mathematica. Although this term was not fundamentally incorrect, it (possibly deliberately) emphasized the mathematical aspect while concealing the



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prophetic purpose. Subsequently it can be assumed that, in the understanding of contemporaries, the classification of objects and practices was possibly more frequently not clearly understood as belonging to fortune-telling. This applies in particular to those practices and objects that were part of science (scientia) or the learned arts (ars). At the same time, however, it must be emphasized that, in view of the more diverse sources, it is possible to explore systematically the language of the users, both in the instructional literature and in the testimonies of prophetic practice. Here, however, the research remains in its infancy.

Historical Outline: General Developments of Prognostication across Early Modern Times Popularization and Rise The continuities in the field of European fortune-telling from the Middle Ages to c. 1800 are conspicuous and the debates regarding its advantages and disadvantages were initially very similar. In addition, almost all forms of divination that were already established and in use in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries remained significant. This applies in particular to astrology and the applications associated with it, from medical prognostics to calendaring, which boomed in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (Stuckrad 2007; Minois 1998; Thomas 1991). Only the religiously-inspired prophecies or, more precisely, the active prophets lost some of their importance, although they did remain extremely influential in the context of millenarian groups (such as the Anabaptists) or religious minorities (such as the Huguenots after 1685) (Bauer 1993; Laborie 2014). Nevertheless, prophecies remained popular, especially in the context of political propaganda (Kofler 2017; Green 2012). A particularly prominent example of the political instrumentalisation of prophetic texts is the interpretation of Gustav II Adolf in the Thirty Years’ War as the “Lion of Midnight”, an interpretation thought to correspond to a prophecy by Paracelsus (Gilly 2000). Such reinterpretations of prophetic texts from the late Middle Ages can be explained not least by the fact that the texts handed down in this way experienced numerous new editions in the course of the early modern period (Holdenried 2013). In the sixteenth century, however, a change occurred in the form of enormous popularization and dynamization: the combination of the “printing revolution” and the “reading revolution”, triggered by the Reformation and Confessionalization, led to new forms of dissemination and the use of fortune-telling as an instrument of everyday action, as well as of overarching world interpretations. The “learned” forms

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of fortune-telling, in particular, garnered enormous popularity, due to the rapidly increasing distribution of printed texts in the vernacular languages, as a technique for personal use and also as a source of information. Naturally, it must be emphasized that the important foundations for this “translation movement” into the vernacular languages were laid in the fourteenth and especially in the fifteenth centuries (Ruhe 2012; Stuckrad 2007, 237–238). In addition, we find not only quantitatively more users but, for the first time, also fortune-telling mass media, such as almanacs or broadsheets, which provide information about individual, mostly disastrous prognoses. The mass distribution of printed lotbooks also occurred, which helped the users to answer a number of standard questions themselves. Especially popular and widespread were almanacs or so called writing calendars, as they contained astrologically determined counsels to medical precaution, a daily weather forecast or advice for convenient days to travel, to sow or to cut the hair. These may have made a significant contribution to the fact that astrological expertise in everyday life first became a matter of course in the cities and then, since the late seventeenth century, increasingly also in the rural regions. In addition, particularly unusual celestial phenomena, such as rare planetary constellations or the emergence of long visible comets, developed into widely and intensely discussed media events. Prominent examples are the excited discussions about a second deluge in the 1520s (Talkenberger 1990; Zambelli 1986; Zambelli 1992; Barnes 2016, 82–130) and the debate about comet C/1618 W1, whose long tail was visible to the naked eye in both 1618 and 1619, and which was regarded by many as the negative harbinger of the Thirty Years’ War (Bähr 2017, 9–19). The everyday presence of divination is not to be confused with a fatalistic belief in fortune-telling. The assertion that people use fortune-telling to make the “right” decision by choosing what will happen in the future misses the point anyway. The initial studies on the practical application of fortune-telling show relatively clearly that it was not used for making immediate decisions but to generate and/or examine information. With regard to the practical relevance of fortune-telling, it must also be clearly emphasized that, as an information and consulting strategy, it never stood alone. The recourse to information obtained through fortune-telling ultimately constituted only a single strategy among others for dealing with the contingencies of present or future situations and developments. At the same time, it is important to note that by no means all were equally committed to fortune-telling. Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), for example, rarely mentioned fortune-telling in his extraordinarily detailed diary, comprising several printed volumes, in which he recorded everything from secret love affairs, current political developments and intrigues, plays attended to the food he consumed. Although moving in the same circles, he clearly did not seek the advice of William Lilly (1602–1681), the most famous astrologer in London at this time (Pepys 1970–1983) In contrast, the diary of Samuel Jeake of Rye (1652–1699) consists almost exclusively of fortune-telling and of accurate astrological predictions, through the help of which Jeake understood and



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described his whole life (Hunter and Jeake 1988), These extremes clearly show that fortune-telling as a strategy in the early modern period was a common, but by no means universally and constantly used practice. It should be emphasized however that, since the sixteenth century, the various forms of fortune-telling and the information obtained about them, have become an everyday and, above all, easily accessible common property that has been used in all groups of society (although not by every member of these groups). Individual fortune-tellers and their predictions could also become a political factor. This is particularly evident in the English case where, during the English Civil War and the subsequent Commonwealth, astrologers’ predictions became a central support for Oliver Cromwell and his political movement. This applies especially to William Lilly, who unexpectedly correctly predicted the violent overthrow of the monarchy and the execution of Charles I of England (1600–1649), and whose predictions therefore carried enormous weight thereafter (Curry 1989). Although there was an overall “democratization” of access to fortune-telling expertise, however, certain aspects of fortune-telling remained reserved for the elite circles, where the ongoing debates about the astronomical foundations of astrology (e.  g. by Copernicus, Galilei, Kepler) or the further development of astrological interpretation traditions (e.  g. in the case of the intermediary houses) were located. The explosion of (Latin) texts in this field illustrates the remarkable intensity with which various debates were conducted throughout Europe. A similar phenomenon can be observed in the Neo-Platonic debates and the knowledge traditions around Hermes Trismegistus. Christian Kabbala also formed a very special strand, reaching its first climax in the environment of rapturous movements (Schubert 2008), but later finding followers, above all, among scholars.

Enduring Delegitimization From the mid-seventeenth century, however, a process began that led to a lasting delegitimization of divination in parts of society. This rejection can not be attributed to a single aspect, but was linked to a wide variety of factors. According to the current state of research, three developments, which are in part interwoven, are considered particularly significant regarding the incipient delegitimization of divination. The first is the rise of the natural sciences since the mid-seventeenth century and the successive implementation of new cosmological models, which lead to the eventual abandonment of the 6,000 years for the existence of the world (from creation to the last day), which had long been considered binding. Due to this rethinking, the eschatological tendencies in prognostics in particular became far less effective. Moreover, the detachment from sympathetic models and the ever increasingly complex astronomical database affected astrology particularly drastically. The latter manifests itself, for example, in the constant discovery of new (and thus potentially influential) planets

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and stars, which increasingly called into question the long-established astrological models of calculation and interpretation. A second factor that contributed to the waning of fortune-telling was the enormous increase in the significance of other, at times new, forms of prognosis and risk modelling that emerged since the late seventeenth century. The most notable of these are mercantilistic approaches, which not only emphasized the planning and thus steering of developments, but also relied on statistical surveys as the basis for the model calculations. We can also see parallel developments in the field of private or business risk management: Since the eighteenth century, an enormous and above all widespread and diversified insurance industry can be observed here (Clark 2010). The fundamentals of these developments could already be grasped in antiquity, and corresponding phenomena also existed in the Middle Ages (e.  g. the insurance of goods involved in long-distance trade) but, in the fading early modern period, the theory of probability – often based on calculations of odds in gambling – was developed by scholars such as Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695), Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), Pierre de Fermat (1607–1665), Jakob Bernoulli (1655–1705), Abraham de Moivre (1667–1754), Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827) and Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) (Daston 1988). Third, regarding the lasting changes in the patterns of legitimation, the Enlightenment movement, with its emphasis on rationality as the measure of all things, should undoubtedly be mentioned as a particularly broadly effective factor. It was precisely the so-called “People’s Enlightenment” (Volksaufklärung) that aimed to take action against the superstitions of “ordinary” people. As relatively unsuccessful as this People’s Enlightenment initially was, in the long run, it led to the belief in the effectiveness of the methods of divination soon being regarded as stupid, unreasonable, and absurd in wide circles of society while, at the same time, a use of fortune-telling for personal affairs, now increasingly kept secret, can be observed. I.e., fortune-telling continued to be practiced in private, but this was rarely admitted publically. As a result of these developments, a changed idea of the future established itself in the public debates around 1800. This was negotiated in scholarly debates under the slogan “discovery of the future”, a future that was no longer divinely predestined, but conceived and understood as open in principle (Koselleck 2004; Hölscher 2016). However, it must be pointed out here that fortune-telling was by no means used only in a future-oriented way or dealt with the end of the world. Rather, it was also used by the actors as a strategy for dealing with the challenges posed by the present. At the same time, it has been repeatedly pointed out that open concepts of the future have been found in close connection with the concept of risk since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; for example, in the field of transatlantic trade (Scheller 2017; ↗  Franklin, Quantifying Risks Western Christian World). However, from 1800 on­ward – and this was the really new thing – public social debates were dominated by open models of the future.



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The increasing delegitimization of fortune-telling in public and the rise of new forecasting techniques should not, however, obscure the fact that fortune-telling as a phenomenon disappeared neither during the course of the eighteenth century nor afterwards. It should also be emphasized in this context that the Enlightenment was closely linked to the pedagogization of education, the de-latinization of educational material, the expansion of the publishing market, and the decreasing influence of the church authorities. Ironically, this led, in a sense, to a broader reception, application and popularization of fortune-telling, often in the form of amusing variants (Daxelmüller 2005, especially cap. 10 and 11) Numerous private collections of popular forms of fortune-telling came into being during the eighteenth century, for example (Bellingradt and Otto 2017). New editions of old texts as well as newly-produced instructions also made fortune-telling more accessible. Finally, numerous techniques found their way into modernity under the label of entertainment. Especially common were fortune-telling card games, among the most famous in the nineteenth century being The Game of Hope. The Primal Lenormand.

The Mutual Influences of the Different Religions and Confessional Cultures on Each Other during this Period Contact Between the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Traditions of Knowledge A discussion of the development of fortune-telling in the Islamic world and in the Jewish communities in Europe lies beyond the scope of this paper but it should be noted that the well-known further development of the various fortune-telling techniques and their practical application in the different Islamic societies has been (not least in view of the manifold strands within the different regions) only rudimentarily studied. One of the rare exceptions is Carmel Cassar’s study on Malta, in which he shows how closely interwoven the practices of fortune-telling (and magic) among Christians and Muslim slaves living in Malta were (Cassar 1996, 65–84). And studies on the continued flourishing of astrology/astronomy, however, which were already highly developed in the Middle Ages, or on the very popular geomancy, are already indicating that, similarly to Christian Europe, a relatively uninterrupted continuation and further development of the fortune-telling traditions can be observed (Maddison und Savage-Smith 1997; Şen 2017). This remains especially tangible today, for example, in the case of the traditional astrolabes from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, but also in the context of geomantic utensils from the Arab world (Maddison und Savage-Smith 1997, 156–159, 168–265).

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The same can be said for the Jewish communities – both in Islamic societies and in Europe (Goldberg 2011). Here, too, the various forms of divination remained present and virulent with great continuity. In Christian Europe, Jews were even accused of having a special proximity to all secrets which was, of course, primarily an expression of their specific attributions from the perspective of the Christian majority societies. In those social constellations in Europe where Jewish communities were present, a two-way exchange can certainly be observed in the broad field of divination and magic (Jütte 2014). With regard to the transfer of individual textual traditions between the various religious communities, it should nevertheless be noted that the long, comparatively open reception of writings on divination of Islamic and Jewish provenance in Latin Europe more or less ended during the early modern period. Although the Renaissance and Humanism, as cultural movements, led to an intense preoccupation with the ancient traditions of divination and their commentary as well as their further development in Islamic societies and Jewish communities, the fact remains that these two elements were not the only cultural movements to exert a strong influence on the development of the Islamic and Jewish communities, although this history of transfer was increasingly concealed. References to Islamic and Jewish scholars and their knowledge became increasingly rare in texts on divination, at least when such texts were printed. Even when dealing with the distinctively Islamic art of divination of geomancy, the origin of this technique was frequently omitted. While the reference to Islamic, and to a lesser extent Jewish, scholars in the late Middle Ages was still considered proof of one’s scholarship, to which one might proudly make public reference, Latin Europe and its ancient forerunners were now stylized as the central strand of scholarship. This becomes especially evident in those lines of ancestors and origin narratives that can be found in numerous divination texts, especially with regard to the instructional passages. In addition to ancient scholars, an increasing number of biblical figures appeared here, who traded as the founders or mediators of various prophetic techniques. This change can also, however, be clearly observed in the decorations of the numerous astronomical clocks located in public spaces, such as churches and town halls. The astronomical clock in St. Nicolai’s Church in Stralsund, for example, not only depicts Greek mathematician and astrologer Claudius Ptolemy (ca. 100–160) and Castilian king Alfonso X (1221–1284), who played an important role in the transfer of knowledge to Latin Europe, but also Persian mathematician and astrologer Abū Maʻshar (ca. 787–886) and Islamic physician and astrologer ʻAlī ibn Riḍwān, known as Haly (ca. 988–1061/62 or 1067/68). Such a public representation of Islamic scholarship would have been unimaginable since the sixteenth century. On later clocks, such as those in the cathedral of Münster, the figures depicted tend to be saints or persons with a clear Christian background. This general tendency to conceal any Islamic and Jewish roots did not preclude further recourse to Islamic and Jewish texts and their circulation in particular cases. This has been shown in many ways regarding the exchange between Christians and



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Jews in Italy. Robert Jütte has demonstrated in an exemplary manner that, especially regarding the field of secrecy, there was a place of encounter between Jews and Christians combined with a mutual interest in the texts as well as the fortune-telling services between the two groups (Jütte 2015, 85–93). The relevant manuscripts from early modern times, which have hitherto only been rudimentarily explored compared to printed texts, as well as the judicial files (such as those of the Roman Inquisition), which have only been evaluated sporadically, may therefore still hold some surprises in store. Finally, the fact that since the mid-seventeenth century there had been an increased scientific interest in the language and culture of the Islamic and Jewish worlds also contributed to the ongoing reception of Islamic (and to a lesser extent also Jewish) texts in the context of the learned traditions. This initially led to the creation of relevant collections and, from the late eighteenth century onward, the establishment of “Oriental Studies” as a subject at various European universities (Marchand 2009). Hebrew studies had already existed at these universities since the turn of the sixteenth century, but the main focus had been on theologically relevant texts rather than those related to fortune-telling. Whatever, this scholarly movement entailing the reception and collection of the Islamic and Jewish fortune-telling traditions remained selective.

Confessional Cultures and Practices of Prediction The question of the extent to which confessional differences in the use of fortune-telling can be ascertained in the wake of the Reformation has been discussed controversially in the research. It has been emphasized that the traditional reservations regarding fortune-telling on the part of the Church, especially Catholics, continued. Within the framework of the provisions of the Council of Trent (1545–1563), for example, a categorical prohibition of all of these fortune-telling practices which, like judiciary astrology, geomancy or comparable practices, claimed to provide decision-relevant prognoses was re-affirmed. Also banned were all techniques that were suspected of operating with diabolical support (such as necromancy, but also interrogating spirits or divination via a medium). The index of forbidden books must be regarded as an important instrument of persecution practice as well as an indicator of what was practiced. In the first edition of this index, a strict ban on divinatory texts was already imposed, in Rule XI (Index 1564). In contrast, for the Lutheran (but not the Calvinist) side, contemporary, but also for parts of the research, a greater familiarity with fortune-telling, especially astrology, has been emphasized. With particular reference to the group of Lutheran pastors it was pointed out that they developed into a very important circle of users and mediators of divination. In this way, for example, a surprising number of pastors can be identified among the authors of the widespread calendars with astrologically determined instructions for each day (Barnes 2016, 16–47). Philipp Melanchthon’s enthusi-

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asm for astrology is regarded as the essential starting point for this primarily astrological affinity among Lutheran theologians. Melanchthon not only compared the study of the stars with the reading of the Bible on the way to the revelations of God, but also ensured that astronomy (and through it astrology) continued to be a discipline in the quadrivium at the Lutheran universities (i.  e. alongside arithmetic, geometry and music, as the fourth mathematical subject of a total of seven artes liberales). Especially in Wittenberg, a whole generation of astrologically-inspired theologians grew up during the Reformation who, after graduating, went on to work in various Lutheran territories (Brosseder 2004). The reference to the anchoring of astronomy/astrology at universities shows, however, that it was not that simple. Astronomy/astrology had been part of the university curriculum long before the Reformation and continued to be taught at Catholic universities after the church fractured. Also, on the Catholic side, numerous members of the clergy can be identified among the theorists and practitioners of fortune-telling. On the other hand, especially among the early Lutherans, there were voices critical of fortune-telling. Above all, Martin Luther himself more than once ridiculed Melanchthon’s enthusiasm for astrology. In addition, not only on the Catholic but also on the Lutheran side, there exist relevant prohibitions regarding fortune-telling, such as, for instance, in England under Charles II or in Saxony under Elector August (1526–1586), who himself intensively pursued geomancy (Constitutiones, Pars IV, Art. II). Moreover, among the many Lutheran theological treatises, there are also those which lamented and denounced the supposed proximity of witchcraft and divination (e.  g. Scultetus 1609). The greater affinity to fortune-telling on the Lutheran side in comparison to the Catholic territories has so far been discussed primarily along the lines of publishing in the Holy Roman Empire. But, especially for the German-speaking countries, it is ­necessary to put into perspective the fact that the printing centers were almost in Lutheran cities, so an overhang of Lutheran publishing on fortune telling should therefore not be prematurely taken to indicate a fundamentally stronger affinity to fortune-telling among the Lutherans. In addition, the printed Practica and Calendars of Lutheran authors were by no means aimed exclusively at a Lutheran market. On the contrary, the texts themselves lack almost any clue that would allow a confessional classification. At the same time, it is to be emphasized that, especially among scholars after 1517, a Europe-wide and thus also cross-confessional exchange about the different aspects of fortune-telling can be observed. The degree of continuity of this exchange remains unclear, however, because a comparative pan-European examination of possible differences in confessional attitudes towards fortune-telling remains outstanding. At this point there is little evidence to suggest a fundamental dichotomy between a more fortune-telling Lutheranism and a Catholic side opposing it categorically. The existing research shows that despite the prohibitions of the church, divination was widespread also in Catholic Europe (Oestmann et al. 2005; Lucas 2003; Pizzamiglio 2004).



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Finally, the research approach guided by the the (irritating) concept of “esotericism” deals with those forms of knowledge which had their roots above all in the Gnosis and Neoplatonism of late antiquity, refers to a lack or at least missing unambiguity of denominational (as well as quite generally religious) classification in the field of divination. In the Middle Ages, this strand of knowledge could still be found primarily in the Islamic world. Since the Renaissance, however, the “esoteric stream of tradition” was increasingly established in Christian contexts and connected here with other cultural currents, above all natural philosophy and in part also with the emerging natural sciences. An epistemic integration into the theological contexts of interpretation and meaning was certainly fragile here. The key figures of this “esoteric” stream of tradition were, among others, the humanist Marsilio Ficino, Johannes Reuchlin (who above all represents the reception of Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah, in the Christian context), Pico della Mirandola, Agrippa of Nettesheim, and Giordano Bruno. The starting point for this “esoteric approach” is the thesis that, since antiquity, hermetic knowledge can be identified as something third (in the sense of an independent community of faith) that runs across religious denominations or can be found in all religions. This is also ultimately shown by the fact that, among Christians, Muslims and Jews, not only were highly similar forms of divination widespread but practitioners and scholars in all three cultures more or less relied on the same conceptual foundations (Faivre 2010; Stuckrad 2016). Nevertheless, religious/confessional colourations (from the introductory prayer to the knowledge system summoned, for instance picture and symbol programs with clear religious connotations) cannot be denied, especially within divinatory practice. In addition, it must be stressed that the approach of “esotericism” has, so far, essentially ignored the practice of divination beyond scholarly debates. In very general terms, it can therefore be concluded that much remains unknown with regard to the question of religious and confessional differences as well as the overlapping of cultural patterns and hermetic knowledge as a third factor. It is therefore extremely worthwhile to promote studies with a pan-European perspective that examine different forms of prophetic practices in a way that compares different religions and confessions.

Written Sources and Artifacts in Theory and Practice Problems of Sources In general, a large variety of printed and unprinted sources has been preserved for the Early Modern Period, which makes it possible to examine further questions, espe­ cially with regard to the practices of divination. It should also be noted, however,

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that only a fraction of the surviving sources has been recorded (or is possibly even known) so far. Only in the field of printed books has an enormous amount of development work been carried out as a result of the digitization initiatives of the last few years (with an emphasis on Western Europe, and gaps especially in regard to Eastern and South Eastern Europe). The manuscript tradition, which continued parallel to the printing press, remains almost completely untapped. Individual studies have shown that we are dealing with diverse traditions of written records that extend into the twentieth century (Bellingradt and Otto 2017; Bachter 2002). Somewhat more advanced is the recording of handwritten sources on fortune-telling in the field of criminal records, but this naturally narrows the focus onto those groups and partly techniques of ­fortune-telling practice that were liable to criminal prosecution. Especially, the forms of fortune-telling that are associated with witchcraft are comparatively well studied. At the same time, the quantity of existing sources poses fresh challenges for researchers: in view of the number of versions handed down (various editions, translations, printed and handwritten copies, anonymized editions and partial prints or writings), comparative access, e.  g. to record the text traditions of individual instructional texts, cannot be provided by a single researcher. The necessary electronic text input is not yet available for computer-aided processing, however. In general, there remains much basic research still to be done with regard to the recording of the surviving material. To date, only very few works have been published, that provide an initial overview of the surviving sources for certain areas of fortune-telling, such as oracle books, so-called Practica-texts or instructions on geomancy (Heiles 2017; Barnes 2016; Charmasson 1980). Finally, it must be stressed that, especially in the field of practical applications, wide differences may be discerned between the various forms of fortune-telling with regard to the extent and variety of the material handed down. The situation is particularly positive regarding the field of astrology, from nativities for the upper classes to annual Revolutions for single cities and astrologically underpinned annual calendars to astro-medical records and broadsheet but, beyond astrology, as the most popular form of divination in early modern times, very little research has been undertaken. In particular, the techniques that were not practiced (or documented) by professional fortune-tellers are difficult to grasp, while the importance of fortune-telling in the everyday life of the rural population or the broad urban underclass also remains elusive. In those cases, in which we are able to fall back on (albeit selective) traditions, it becomes apparent how widespread and frequent the practical application of fortune-telling was (Kassell 2007; Ludwig 2014).



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Textual Sources for Fortune-telling Prohibitions of divination by the Church and secular authorities were a constant in the Middle Ages and continued into the Early Modern Age. These continuously repeated prohibitions provide an important indication that fortune-telling was persistently perceived as a problem and, therefore, persistently being practiced, but exactly which forms of fortune-telling were in use cannot be determined in such a way. There already exist classical lists of forbidden techniques, which changed little over the centuries, but it is more likely that they were copied from each other for a long period. The enumerations adopted must not, therefore, be equated rashly with a divinatory practice; for example, there are no references to the use of aeromancy or liver omens, although both were regularly banned in the Early Modern period. In addition to these traditional lists, legal bans were imposed that related less to concrete techniques and more to the devil’s pact, which was subject to divination. In the corresponding paragraph of the Constitutions of Electoral Saxony of 1572, for example, all of those forms of fortune-telling that tried to discover future and hidden things with the help of the devil were generally forbidden. Fortune-telling by means of a crystal ball and conversations with the devil with the help of a medium were named specifically afterwards (Lünig 1724, col. 117). In principle, however, all forms of fortune-telling could potentially incure criminal prosecution because it could be argued that they all entailed deception by the devil. All in all, the prohibitions and normative texts offer us an initial overview of the spectrum of the (at least rudimentarily) known fortune-telling techniques and the fundamentally ambivalent legal position of fortune-telling, but fail to provide more detailed information about the breadth and differentiation of knowledge about divinatory techniques and their application. In this context, texts providing guidance and instruction are far more informative. A striking focus of the traditional sources here is naturally on all of those techniques that belong to scholarly or more generally speaking to text-based forms of divination, because for the learning or application of such techniques, handwritten and/or printed texts were required. For example, oracle books were at the same time instruments of fortune-telling and solution keys, and for calculations or interpretations in the context of astrological procedures, in chiromancy or geomancy, one required reference works, which also frequently survived. The majority of texts providing fortune-telling instructions and usage of the Early Modern period can be attributed to the field of astrology. In addition to textbooks (Lerch) and the learned astronomical-astrological tractate literature, there exist numerous tables as aids for astrological and astronomical calculations and observations, various new editions or translations of classical texts on astrology and, above all, a broadly diversified astrological interpretation literature with concrete prognoses or interpretation aids to suit one’s own specific needs. Quantitatively, the astrologically informed writing calendars stand out here, although the extent to which the corresponding handwritten entries of the users in these prints allow conclusions

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regarding concrete predictive use has not yet been clearly established. In addition, instructions on determining auspicious days, astro-medical instructions (mostly bloodletting rules), and planetary tracts were widespread. In addition, the few astrologers’ records that have survived show that astrological consultation was important for a broad clientele and apparently affordable; for example, the casebooks of the English astrologers Simon Forman (1552–1611) and Richard Napier (1559–1634), which contain many thousands of cases, impressively document how numerous their clientele was, but also that men and women from all social classes and of very different ages relied on his expertise in divination (Kassell et al.). It can be seen from these and comparable sources on astrological expertise that, in everyday life, people relied on astrology to assist them with a wide range of everyday problems. The questions essentially centered on the same issues: love, marriage and fidelity, illness and death, children and inheritances, the right times at which to perform certain actions (purchases and sales, beginning medical treatment, marriage or even embarking on a journey), the whereabouts of stolen or lost items or the question of whom to trust. That these questions preoccupied many people and that they hoped to be able to obtain more precise information through the help of fortune-telling is further demonstrated in the oracle books, which have been handed down in large numbers, especially those from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It can therefore be assumed that oracle books as a divination technique particularly blossomed at this time (Zollinger 1996; Heiles 2017; ↗ Heiles, Sortes). Lot or oracle books are a specifically organized textual instrument for fortune-telling. As a rule, these books offer a series of answers to a varying number of the standard questions already mentioned. The answers could be found by consulting a key at the back of the book. A “suitable” answer was obtained with the help of specifically generated random factors (e.  g. by using dice or creating name numbers) and simple but numerous, and therefore extremely confusing, mathematical operations. What is interesting about lot books is that they were both instructional literature and a central means of making concrete predictions. This becomes particularly evident in light of the questions and answers printed on the often inserted, usually paper instruments (such as simple astrolabes or turntables for generating a random selection of options). Oracle books were comparatively uncomplicated to handle, but were nevertheless produced for very different audiences: Thus, in addition to the extremely artful and thus expensive editions (Rosenstock 2010; Palmer 2016), there also existed very plain and therefore inexpensive prints for use by a broad clientele (Losbuch 1485). At the same time, the line between fun and seriousness in this field was particularly fine. Thus, in addition to satirically-colored prognostic parodies, such as the Weltlich Loszbuch by Jörg Wickram (ca. 1505 – around 1560) (Wickram 2017), popular until the eighteenth century, there are also others that were presented as serious divination instruments without any relativizing reference (Geomantia 1532). In view of the sources, it is also difficult to determine if particular oracle books served as



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instruments for fortune-tellers during their forecasting activities. Doubts arise from the fact that many lot books without a recognizable parodistic background used relatively simple systems for the generation of answers, which always produced identical answers to similar questions. Sometimes, onomastic procedures were included as appendices in such oracle books, through which one could determine from the numerical value of the names of two opponents the winner of a dispute. This simple variant of onomancy was widespread and can be found in various contexts, e.  g. in fencing books, as a forecasting technique for determining the winner. A prominent example is the fencing book from 1443 by Hans Talhoffer (ca. 1420–ca. 1490), who probably adopted the method from Johannes Hartlieb’s (ca. 1400–1468) Über die Erhaltung des Sieges from 1434, but precisely this context of the tradition indicates that caution is required here, since the explanation provided in the texts, that these procedures were eagerly employed to determine the victor in God’s judgments attests to their remoteness from actual contemporary practice, since corresponding court fights were no longer common at the time when these fencing books were written. Nevertheless, there were still onomastic texts in the sixteenth century and afterwards. In addition to the simple calculations of the winners, mentioned above, there were manuscripts, for example, in which, for the numbers one to ten or one to 16, hundreds of corresponding meanings were listed – from plants, rivers and gemstones to human complexions and age at death to diseases or weather phenomena (SLUB, Mscr. Dresden N 18 [without Pag.]). In the field of prophecy and visions, there exists also a colorful mixture of texts and movements. In principle, prophetic texts circulated in all three Christian confessional cultures (Green 2012, 155–203, offers an excellent overview of the phase between 1450 and 1550), but the critical or doubtful positions on prophecy have grown in importance. Especially in Lutheran and Reformed circles, there was intense debate about whether a message from God, communicated via a prophecy or vision, was possible beyond the revealed texts of the Bible. The contemporary relevance of the different visions and prophecies then also diverged considerably from case to case. In particular, printed prophecies – mainly in the form of broadsheets and pamphlets – could gain considerable popularity. In addition, however, numerous texts were handed down only in handwritten form. The contemporary relevance of these prophecies, which are often only preserved once, is difficult to assess; however, the frequency with which such solitary prophecies are handed down in the archives points to an active prophetic practice in all religious and confessional groups and a continuing interest among the various authorities. Therefore, it seems pertinent to ask further questions about the prophetic reception processes (in some cases, probably only local ones). In terms of language and content, the prophetic writings dated after 1500 in the Christian context were certainly oriented toward the existing, for instance Joachimite, text traditions and, especially in the context of the Reformation, apocalyptic patterns play a considerable role (Barnes 1988). There was, however, a new addition: many

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early modern prophecies legitimize themselves through astrological references (Green 2012, 109–116); sometimes quite generally, for instance through an unspecific reference to the indicating power of the stars, but sometimes concrete astrological constellations are also mentioned. In addition, many texts have a strong political impetus. The visions report forthcoming wars, political scenarios of change, the overcoming of schisms and, repeatedly, the massive threat posed by and final victory over the Ottoman Empire. On the other hand, the chiliastic elements clearly receded after 1600. In palmistry (chiromancy) and physiognomy, too, a continuous but relatively subordinate significance can be discerned from the late Middle Ages to Early Modern Times. Both forms of fortune-telling became extremely popular in the late seventeenth century, where the boundaries between the serious and fun forms became particularly blurred (Höping 1673). In the eighteenth century, the female palm reader became the epitome of the fortune-teller and iconographically replaced the figure of the learned astrologer. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, physiognomics finally advanced to become an important strand of the scientific foundation for racism and eugenics. Since its emergence in Latin Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, geomancy has repeatedly been called the little sister of astrology. Both systems were closely interconnected through systems of equivalence, with the 16 geomantic signs being assigned to certain signs of the zodiac and planets. Also, the operation of houses was adopted from astrology, with numerous interpretation systems of geomancy. In some systems, however, the usual 12 houses within astrology were increased to 15 or 16 to make it possible to assign all of the positions on a geomantic tableau to a separate house. Geomancy was undoubtedly also, in the early modern period, geomancy was undoubtedly also a widespread fortune-telling technique but for a long time a manuscript culture dominated here, which certainly resulted in specific local developments. As a result of the limited canonization and thus also consent standardization of geomancy, comparatively few printed instructions for this form of fortune-telling have been handed down since the late Middle Ages (Charmasson 1980), despite a broad manuscript tradition. Nevertheless, the broad handwritten tradition, as well as the long-lasting significance of geomancy up to the twentieth century, suggest that it remained consistently significant for fortune-telling practice.

Instruments and Artifacts The heyday of divination in early modern Europe is also reflected in a specific history of objects, the basis of which is essentially formed by the holdings in cabinets of curiosity and museums. Astrology should also be emphasized here. As a practice and representative science, astrology was closely interwoven with the making of scientific instruments (clocks, astrolabes, multifunctional apparatuses, globes, etc.). In addition to French and Dutch workshops, German companies in Augsburg and Nuremberg were par-



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Fig. 10: Astronomical Pocket Set from 1558 (Augsburg, Maximilianmuseum Inv. No. 3545). Photo credits: Richter & Fink, Augsburg.

ticularly prominent in the field of instrument-making. It should be noted, however, that the designation of the objects as divinatory remains ambivalent since, first and foremost, such devices were used for astronomical determinations and observations, which also always formed part of astrological prognostics. In some cases, astrological details have been removed exclusively, such as the planetary aspects (Conjunction and Opposition, Trine, Square and Sextile) which are so important with regard to astrological interpretations. In addition to measuring instruments and globes, another focus of the collection, and thus also of production was the elaborate apparatuses that served primarily representative and entertainment purposes. This subheading includes, for example, the artistic planetary clocks which were made in Kassel in Hesse and presented to the courts of Dresden and Vienna as gifts. Planetary clocks reproduced the celestial movements with impressive precision, demonstrating at the same time that the owner was in some sense in control of this heavenly world, or at least in a position to reproduce it and thus ultimately interpret it. The image programs of these clocks also link the precisely orbiting planets back to the systems of astrological symbols and knowledge, and thus refer to comprehensive astrological interpretations of the world (Korey and Gessner 2017). In addition to these representative objects, the museum collections sometimes also contain instruments intended for practical, everyday use, but such tools rarely

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found their way into such collections. The most likely to survive were the simplified astrolabes that were especially made for doctors, which could easily be used to determine diagnostically or therapeutically relevant times (↗ Rodríguez-Arribas, Medical Plates and Figs. 47 and 48). Finally, “paper instruments” feature repeatedly in printed books and manuscripts. With their help, readers could be able to make astronomically or astrologically relevant determinations themselves, for example at the time of the survey, without any further aid (Apian 1540). Especially the latter clearly indicate that a basic knowledge about the use of astrological instruments was probably quite widespread. In addition to measuring instruments and objects related to the representation of the cosmos, there also exist isolated artefacts that document the use of fortune-telling expertise. Prominent representations here are also astrological objects, such as horoscopes engraved on metal plates and buried during the foundation stone ceremony, which document the “fate” of the building or the most favorable time for beginning its construction (e.  g. Kassel: Astronomical-Physical Cabinet). Horoscopes, as a special decorative element, can also be found on pocket watches, the underside of tins (Wallenstein) or, for instance, in the form of a painted constellation of stars on the ceiling of a room (see the horoscope of Agostino Chigi in the Villa Farnesina in Rome). Beyond astrology, however, the object history of early modern divination quickly thins out. For many divination techniques, the question whether objects made for a specific practice were also used for this purpose, remains open. Thus, for example, in Christian Europe the geomantic cubes, common in the Islamic world, can only be found as part of (princely) collections of exotic objects. A fundamental source problem is, of course, that there is hardly any tradition of collecting apart from cabintes of curiosity. In particular, objects related to those fortune-telling techniques that cannot be classified as “scientific” forms (e.  g. crystal ball reading, card reading) or pieces of equipment from fortune-telling parlors are

Fig. 11: Geomantic Cubes from Iran (London, Victoria & Albert Museum, Inv. No. 505 B-1888; date: saec. XVII). Photo credits: Victoria & Albert Museum, London.



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extremely rarely handed down, but pictorial depiction fill this gap to some extent: especially since the late eighteenth century, for example, numerous illustrations can be found that depict women laying cards and who, interestingly, did not use a special deck of cards (such as the tarot), but operated with a simple 32-card piquet striped deck. To read coffee grounds or tea leaves  – a divination technique that became popular in Europe with the rise and spread of coffee and black tea – one simply used one’s own crockery. Taken together these pictorial representations can be assigned to three main groups of motifs: (1) the male, learned astronomer/astrologist, who tended to be equipped with an astrolabe, armillary sphere and celestial globe, (2) the wandering fortune-teller (palm reader, cartomancer, coffee grounds reader, etc.) with corresponding everyday utensils, and (3), finally, with an increasing tendency since the late eighteenth century, private persons, usually female, predicting for themselves or those close to them without the help of experts.

Conclusion and Outlook The last two pictorial genres refer to a new turning point at the end of the early modern age, which even the most pessimistic Enlightenment thinkers would not have anticipated. This is because, following the “reasonable” age and revolutionary shifts in Europe and North America, completely new forms of fortune-telling suddenly emerged in the nineteenth century. Magnetic somnambulism, in which a person was usually put into a trance by hypnosis to become a medium to predict the future or suddenly carry out certain actions, as if guided by magic, became particularly fashionable. In 1852, the French newspapers reported about 2,000 somnambulists in Paris who were offering their services as fortune-tellers. In 1919, the term “somnambulist” had become a synonym for (above all female) fortune-tellers, and the Paris-Midi newspaper spoke of 35,000 professional somnambulists. Although probably an exaggeration, this figure nevertheless indicates that this new form of fortune-telling was perceived as a massive, even omnipresent phenomenon. The somnambulists advertised their skills in prospectuses. A magnetizer (known as a hypnotist today) would put individuals to sleep, answered every question and, according to their self-promotion, gave crucial tips, so that one could retrieve lost objects or make a substantial profit via the lottery or stock exchange (Minois 1998, 602–603). Incidentally, a late but particularly well-known event of this nature can be found in the 1920’s silent film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (directed by Robert Viennae). In the movie, however, fortune-telling and madness, future vision and fraudulent staging are closely related. During the day, for example, the figure of the somnambulist, Cesare, predicts future deaths at a funfair while at night, as a sleepwalker under the influence of Dr. Caligari, he himself brings about the predicted deaths. Dr. Caligari

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and the storyteller, Francis, also blur, through the narrative, the division between madness, crime and the discovery of evil. At the same time, together with occultism, a genuinely scientific movement emerged during the nineteenth century, which set itself the goal of understanding and investigating supernatural phenomena. The hosts of public séances, mediums (in the sense of channels) and fortune-tellers of all kinds demonstrated their abilities under strict “scientific” observation and before a enthralled audience. Documentation and control were carried out, hoping to open up a world of spirits and supernatural phenomena. Here, too, the transition to sociable entertainment is clear but reports of such séances by the participants show how lastingly unsettled the visitors were by the inexplicable phenomena and experiences. However, the nineteenth century had far more to offer for, besides ghost beliefs, somnambulism and occultism, there was a revival of classical prophecy and again – as in the prophecies of the Middle Ages  – the main focus was on the end of the world. In some cases, entire new religious movements arose around the prophet, which still exist today. The most successful of these movements originated in North America where, in 1830, Joseph Smith (1805–1844) published the Book of Mormon to which the Mormon community refers. Less well-known but equally successful was the farmer, William Miller, who in the 1840s predicted the imminent arrival of Christ and around whom a community arose that later became known as the Seventh-day Adventists. Moreover, at the turn of the twentieth century, a religious movement emerged that was named Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1931 by its leader at that time, Ernest Rutherford. On the whole, it can be stated that fortune-telling in general and even prophecy in particular by no means disappeared in modernity, but rather remained significant, albeit in a changed form and only for parts of society.

Selected Bibliography Apian, Petrus. Astronomicum Caesareum. Unter Mitarbeit von Sebastian Linck, Simon Schaidenreisser, Christoph Mass und Marcus Tatius Alpinus. Ingolstadt, 1540. Bachter, Stephan. “Wie man Höllenfürsten handsam macht. Zauberbücher und die Tradierung magischen Wissens.” Geschichte(n) der Wirklichkeit. Beiträge zur Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte des Wissens (Documenta Augustana, 11). Ed. Achim Landwehr. Augsburg, 2002. 371–390. Bähr, Andreas. Der grausame Komet. Himmelszeichen und Weltgeschehen im Dreißigjährigen Krieg. 1st ed. Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2017. Barnes, Robin Bruce. Prophecy and Gnosis. Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation. Stanford, CA, 1988. Barnes, Robin Bruce. Astrology and Reformation. New York, NY, 2016. Bauer, Barbara. “Die Rezeption mittelalterlicher Prophezeiungen im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert.” Mittelalterliche Denk- und Schreibmodelle in der deutschen Literatur der frühen Neuzeit (Chloe, vol. 16). Ed. Wolfgang Harms. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA, 1993. 111–148.



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Bellingradt, Daniel, and Bernd-Christian Otto. Magical Manuscripts in Early Modern Europe. The Clandestine Trade In Illegal Book Collections (New Directions in Book History). Cham, 2017. Brosseder, Claudia. Im Bann der Sterne. Caspar Peucer, Philipp Melanchthon und andere Wittenberger Astrologen. Berlin, 2004. Cassar, Carmel. Witchcraft, Sorcery and the Inquisition. A Study of Cultural Values in Early Modern Malta. Tarxien, Malta, 1996. Charmasson, Thérèse. Recherches sur une technique divinatoire: la géomancie dans l’occident médiéval. Geneva, 1980. Churfürst Augusti Verordnungen und Constitutiones, Pars IV. Criminalia […] Von peinlichen Fällen in: Codex Augusteus Oder Neuvermehrtes Corpus Juris Saxonici: worinnen Die in dem Churfürstenthum Sachsen und darzu gehörigen Landen, Auch denen Marggrafenthümern Ober- und Nieder-Lausitz, publicirte und ergangene Constitutiones, Decisiones, Mandata und Verordnungen enthalten (…), in Druck gelassen von Johann Christian Lünig. Vol. 1. Leipzig, 1724. Col. 117–132. Clark, Geoffrey Wilson. The Appeal of Insurance. Toronto and London, 2010. Curry, Patrick. Prophecy and Power. Astrology in Early Modern England. Princeton, 1989. Daston, Lorraine. Classical Probability in the Enlightenment. Princeton, 1988. Daxelmüller, Christoph. Zauberpraktiken. Die Ideengeschichte der Magie. Düsseldorf, 2005. Faivre, Antoine. Western Esotericism. A Concise History. Albany, NY, 2010. Geomantia. Eyn kunst des warsagens, die bey den allten in geheym und grossen wirden gehalten ist worden. Meintz, 1532. Gilly, Carlos. “  ‘The Midnight Lion’, the ‘Eagle’ and the ‘Antichrist’: Political, Religious and Chiliastic Propaganda in the Pamphlets, Illustrated Broadsheets and Ballads of the Thirty Years War.” Nederlands archief voor kerkgeschiedenis 80 (2000): 46–77. Goldberg, Edward L. Jews and Magic in Medici Florence. The Secret World of Benedetto Blanis (University of Toronto Italian studies series). Toronto, 2011. Green, Jonathan. Printing and Prophecy. Prognostication and Media Change, 1450–1550 (Cultures of knowledge in the early modern world). 2012. Heiles, Marco. Das Losbuch. Manuskriptologie einer Textsorte des Spätmittelalters (Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, Heft 83). Cologne, 2017. Holdenried, Anke. “De oraculis gentilium (1673) and the Sibilla Erithea Babilonica. PseudoJoachimite Prophecy in a New Intellectual Context.” Joachim of Fiore and the Influence of Inspiration. Essays in Memory of Majorie E. Reeves (1905–2003). Ashgate, 2013. 253–281. Hölscher, Lucian. Die Entdeckung der Zukunft. 1st ed. Göttingen, 2016. Höping, Johann Abraham Jacob. Institutiones Chiromanticae, Oder Kurtze Unterweisung, wie man ein gründlich Judicium auß den Linien, Bergen, und Nägeln der Hände, und denn aus der Proportion des Gesichts mit den Händen kan suchen, und gar genau das Jahr, Monath, Wochen und Tage sehen, in welchen einen was Glück- oder Unglückliches bevorstehet; Sampt einer außführlichen Harmonia, oder Übereinstimmung aller Linien […]. Jena, 1673. Hunter, Michael, and Samuel Jeake (eds.). An Astrological Diary of the Seventeenth Century. Oxford, 1988. Index Librorum Prohibitorum, cum Regulis Confectis per patres a Tridentina Synoda Delectos Auctoritate Sanctis. Cologne 1564. Jütte, Daniel. “Der Markt für Magie und Geheimnisse. Eine Kontaktzone für Juden und Christen in der Frühen Neuzeit.” Kriminelle – Freidenker – Alchemisten. Räume des Untergrunds in der Frühen Neuzeit. Ed. Martin Mulsow. Cologne and Vienna, 2014. 281–293. Jütte, Daniel. The Age of Secrecy. Jews, Christians, and the Economy of Secrets, 1400–1800. New Haven, CT, 2015.

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Kassell, Lauren. Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London. Simon Forman: Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician (Oxford Historical Monographs). Oxford, 2007. Kassell, Lauren, Michael Hawkins, Robert Ralley, John Young, Joanne Edge, Janet Yvonne MartinPortugues, and Natalie Kaoukij. The Casebooks Project. A Digital Edition of Simon Forman’s & Richard Napier’s Medical Records 1596–1634. Kofler, Susanne. Prophetie als Partizipation am Heilsplan? Lutherische Prophetie im Konfessionellen Zeitalter (1550–1650) (Arbeiten zur Kirchen- und Theologiegeschichte (AKThG), v.47). Leipzig, 2017. Korey, Michael, and Samuel Gessner. Der Planeten wundersamer Lauf. Eine Himmelsmaschine für Kurfürst August von Sachsen. Einführung zu Eberhard Baldeweins Planetenuhr in Dresden. Unter Mitarbeit von Claudia Bergmann. Dresden, 2017. Koselleck, Reinhart. Futures Past. On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York, 2004. Laborie, Lionel. “Spreading the Seed: Toward a French Millenarian Network in Pietist Germany?” Kriminelle – Freidenker – Alchemisten. Räume des Untergrunds in der Frühen Neuzeit. Ed. Martin Mulsow. Cologne and Vienna, 2014. 99–117. Lerch, Andreas. Scientia astrologiae. Dissertation. AVA-Akademische Verlagsanstalt GmbH. Losbuch. Basel, 1485. Lucas, John Scott. Astrology and Numerology in Medieval and Early Modern Catalonia. The Tractat de prenostication de la vida natural dels hòmens (The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World, vol. 18). Leiden and Boston, 2003. Ludwig, Ulrike. Magical Choices. Geomancy as a Strategy in the Politics and Everyday Life of Augustus, Elector of Saxony (1526–1586). Erlangen, 2014. http://ikgf.fau.de/content/articles/ Ulrike_Ludwig-Magical_Choices.pdf (9 May 2020). Lünig, Johann Christian. Codex Augusteus, Oder Neuvermehrtes Corpus Juris Saxonici (…). Leipzig, 1724. Maddison, Francis R., and Emilie Savage-Smith (eds.). Science, Tools & Magic. Nour Foundation (The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, 12). London, 1997. Marchand, Suzanne L. German Orientalism in the Age of Empire. Religion, Race, and Scholarship (Publications of the German Historical Institute). Washington, D.C., 2009. Minois, Georges. Geschichte der Zukunft. Orakel, Prophezeiungen, Utopien, Prognosen. Düsseldorf and Zurich, 1998. Oestmann, Günther, H. Darrell Rutkin, and Kocku von Stuckrad (eds.) Horoscopes and Public Spheres. Essays on the History of Astrology (Religion and Society, vol. 42). Berlin and New York, 2005. Otto, Bernd-Christian. Magie. Rezeptions- und diskursgeschichtliche Analysen von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit (Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten). 2011. Otto, Bernd-Christian, and Michael Stausberg (eds.). Defining Magic. A Reader (Critical Categories in the Study of Religion). London and New York, 2014. Palmer, Allison Lee. “Lorenzo ‘Spirito’ Gualtieri’s ‘Libro delle Sorti’ in Renaissance Perugia.” The Sixteenth Century Journal: The Journal of Early Modern Studies 47 (3) (2016): 557–578. Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys. A New and Complete Transcription; [eleven-volumeedition]. Ed. Robert Latham. London, 1970–1983. Pizzamiglio, Pierluigi. L’astrologia in Italia all’epoca di Galileo Galilei (1550–1650); rassegna storico-critica dei documenti librari custoditi nella Biblioteca Carlo Viganò. Milan, 2004. Plaßmeyer, Peter, and Christoph Emmendörffer (eds.). Weltenglanz. Der Mathematisch-Physikalische Salon Dresden zu Gast im Maximilianmuseum Augsburg; [Ausstellung im Maximilianmuseum Augsburg, 20. November 2009 – 14. Februar 2010]. Maximilianmuseum; Kunstsammlungen und Museen Augsburg; Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon; Ausstellung. Berlin, 2009.



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Rosenstock, Alexander. Das Losbuch des Lorenzo Spirito von 1482. Eine Spurensuche ­(Veröffentlichungen der Stadtbibliothek Ulm, 23). Weißenhorn, 2010. Ruhe, Doris. Zukunftsschau und Alltagsbewältigung. Volkssprachliche Astrologie im französischen Spätmittelalter. Erlangen, 2012. http://www.ikgf.uni-erlangen.de/content/articles/Doris_ Ruhe_-_Zukunftsschau_und_Alltagsbewältigung.pdf (9 May 2020). Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB), Mscr. Dresden N 18 [o. Pag.]. Scultetus, Abraham. Warnung Für der Warsagerey der Zäuberer und Sterngücker. Amberg, 1609. Scheller, Benjamin. “Die Geburt des Risikos. Kontingenz und kaufmännische Praxis im mediterranen Seehandel des Hoch- und Spätmittelalters.” Historische Zeitschrift 304 (2017): 305–331. Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm, and Anja Hallacker (eds.). Apokalypse und Philologie. Wissens­ geschichten und Weltentwürfe der Frühen Neuzeit (Berliner Mittelalter- und Frühneuzeitforschung, 2). Göttingen, 2007. Schubert, Anselm. Täufertum und Kabbalah. Augustin Bader und die Grenzen der Radikalen Reformation (Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte, 81). Gütersloh, 2008. Şen, Ahmet Tunç. “Reading the Stars at the Ottoman Court: Bāyezīd ii (r. 886/1481–918/1512) and His Celestial Interests.” Arabica 64, 2017). von Stuckrad, Kocku. Geschichte der Astrologie. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. 2nd ed. Munich, 2007. von Stuckrad, Kocku. Western Esotericism. A Brief History of Secret Knowledge. 2nd ed. London 2016. Talkenberger, Heike. Sintflut. Prophetie und Zeitgeschehen in Texten und Holzschnitten astrologischer Flugschriften 1488–1528 (Studien und Texte zur Sozialgeschichte der Literatur, vol. 26). Tübingen, 1990. Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England. London, 1991. Wickram, Georg. Sämtliche Werke. Band 9: Losbuch (Ausgaben deutscher Literatur des 15. bis 18. Jahrhunderts, 161). Ed. Hans-Gert Roloff. Berlin and Boston, 2017 [reprint]. Zambelli, Paola. “Eine Gustav-Hellmann-Renaissance? Untersuchungen und Kompilationen zur Debatte über die Konjunktion von 1524 und das Ende der Welt auf deutschem Sprachgebiet.” Annali dell’Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico in Trento / Quaderni (1992): 413–455. Zambelli, Paola. ‘Astrologi hallucinati’. Stars and the End of the World in Luther’s time. Berlin and New York, 1986. Zollinger, Manfred. Bibliographie der Spielbücher des 15. bis 18. Jahrhunderts (Hiersemanns biblio­ gra­phi­sche Handbücher, 12). Stuttgart, 1996.

Part II: Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages

Eschatology and Millenarism Hannes Möhring

Traditions and Expectations in the Medieval Western Christian World Definitions and Terminology The question of humans regarding when the world will end  – pretty soon or only in a distant future – seems to be as old as the question about one’s own death. On the basis of the statements made in the sources, one can assume that, in the Latin part of Europe during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, in nearly every generation, there were people who thought that the end of the world was very closely connected with the expectation of Jesus’ return, whereas others, at the same time, believed that the end of the world was far distant in time. In general, the end of the world was seen as possible at any time. The prerequisite, however, was the decline of the Roman Empire, whose existence, following the general positions, secured the survival of the world (according to 2 Thess. 2,3) or stopped and postponed the appearance of the Antichrist – mainly conceived as a personified enemy of faith, but sometimes also as an abstractum – and the end of the world following his reign. Therefore, end of time expectations were silently almost always present: “At the end of times” was not necessarily to be understood as a hint or consolation for a distant future, although some people demanded precise, clear information, which was rarely attempted in the circulating prophecies of those days, to avoid risking making an error and endangering their own trustworthiness and relevance. Despite the ecclesiastic prohibition supported by the Bible (Matt. 24,36; Mark 13,32; Acts 1,7), conjectures were constantly formed with respect to the moment when the time would end. Attempts were made to calculate this in different ways or predict it based on supposed portents, and the deeper circumstances were imagined. Hoping for the return of Jesus at the end of time – that was in the face of one’s own sins – mixed with a fear not only of the Last Judgment to be given at that time and perhaps eternal punishment in hell instead of paradisiacal happiness, but also of heavy tests through terrible events which, according to the Bible, will precede the end of the world, as all the stars decay (Matt. 24,29; Mark 13,25; Luke 21,26). Undoubtedly, there have been years and decades associated with increased end of time expectations, in which more people than usual anticipated that the world would Acknowledgement: The author and the editors are very grateful to Eric Schlager for the English translation of this paper. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-010

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end in a near future. Consequently, there were probably also those whose view of this changed once their fears proved unfounded. Questions concerning the Last Days occupied not only the less educated, but also many men of high intellect. The Church, as an institution, or the clergy were generally willing to lower expectations of the Last Days. Less educated laymen were hardly able to carry out complicated calculations but, in ignorance of the scientific relations, supposed that omina, such as unusual celestial phenomena, not least special constellations of the stars, as well as natural disasters (earthquakes, heavy storms, etc.), could terrify those affected by them and let them make their own considerations – especially when such events were frequent or even occurred simultaneously, so that mere coincidence might appear to be ruled out. Significantly, it was often said in Europe that the Antichrist, who immediately precedes the end of the world, had already been born, so that his terrific dominion would start in a few years’ time, and several times kings, emperors and popes have been called the Antichrist or his forerunner. Whenever the old or constantly emerging prophecies concerning the end of the world proved incorrect and the world continued to exist, this did not necessarily mean abandoning all speculation in this regard. Frequently, the prophecies claimed divine authority, and could therefore not have been mistaken. On the other hand, Jesus warned against false prophets or men acting as a Messiah and their signs and wonders at the end of time (Matt. 24,11 and 23–24; Mark 13,21–22; Luke 21,8), so that plenty of the new prophecies could be regarded as signs announcing the dawn of the end of time.

Defining the Terminology Apocalypticism: Perceptions of future events full of destruction and bloodshed caused by forces of nature and foreign peoples. Allegedly revealing the divine will, these are based on a negative evaluation of the present world, the imminent sinking of which is to be wished. Chiliasm/Millenarianism: A belief that can sometimes be observed among the followers of Christianity that, prior to the end of the world, a period of complete peace, perfect justice and great happiness of a long or literally thousand years’ duration will begin and, with it, so to speak, a kingdom of heaven on earth that anticipates the rewards of the faithful in this world, although it is actually the reserve for the other side. Its foundation can be found in the Revelation of John (Rev. 20,1–6), according to which, following the return of Christ, triumphant against all enemies, an angel will bind the Devil for a thousand years and throws him into the abyss, whereupon the souls of the martyrs, who are devoted to their faith and have been beheaded for this reason, come “to life and reign with Jesus for a thousand years.” This is the “first resurrection.” Over those who participate in it, “the second death has no power.” The



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remaining dead will come to life only after the thousand years have passed, after the ensuing final victory over the Devil and the Last Judgment (Rev. 20,7–15). Eschatology: the study of the last things, whereby a distinction is drawn between, on one hand, the individual eschatology concerning the individual human being in terms of death, resurrection, the Last Judgment and bliss or perdition and, on the other hand, the universal eschatology including the downfall of the previous world and humankind, which is to be followed by a new world. At the point of transition to this, a cosmic catastrophe usually occurs, entailing the collapse of heaven and the falling of the stars, a world Judgment or even a battle of the gods.

Written Sources Divine Punishment and Scenarios Related to the End of Time: Biblical Sources The Holy Scripture refers at several points to an end of time (Dan. 11–12; Is 13–24, 27, 66; Ezek. 8–12, 26, 29–30, 36, 38–48; Matt. 24–25; Mark 13; Luke 21; 1 Tim. 4:1; 2 Tim. 3:1–4), but it is certainly the last book of the New Testament, which had the greatest impact. The Book of Revelation is the only book of the New Testament classified as apocalyptic literature, using visions, symbols, and allegory in connection with future events. Central passages for the question of the end of times are Rev. 7, 14, 18–20 and 22. However, it is doubtful whether the Book of Revelation awakened concrete, acute expectations of an end of time. If the great final battle with the birth of Jesus and his thousand-year reign in the sense of Augustine’s interpretation were already a matter of the past and the Devil had already been freed – perhaps at the turn of the millennium in 1000/1001 – however, then, according to Revelation, the final downfall of the Devil and the Last Judgment were imminent.

Scenarios of the End-time: Non-Biblical Sources Eschatological issues are treated in various forms. We find eschatological thinking reflected in theological works (including patristic writing, bible commentaries [↗ Lehner, Prognostication in Latin Commentaries on Revelation], and liturgy [[↗ Czock, Medieval Latin Liturgical Commentaries]) and tractates – such as the famous treatise by Adso of Montier-en-Der (d. 992) De ortu et tempore Antichristi, a tract on the life and career of the Antichrist. The end of times is mirrored very differently in historiographical works: This ranges from short notes on a soon to be expected end in Easter tables to highly elaborated chronicles with a rather universal approach (↗ Lehner,

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Prognostication in Latin Historiography). Visions of the Afterlife sometimes give a glimpse of the Last Days (↗ Bihrer, Journeys to the Other World Western Christian Traditions). Further sources are letters and diplomas. All those texts will be referred to in chapter 3. The most direct form of addressing the end of times occurred in prophecies. In these prophecies relating to the end of time, the question was not necessarily when exactly the world would end. Rather, the end-time scenario served as a prerequisite for making the previously impossible seem – at a good end – possible, and thus allowing hope for a complete change of religious, political or social reality. The most widespread non-Biblical Christian prophecy in the Latin Europe of the Middle Ages was the prophecy of the Last Roman Emperor at the End of Time. It gained special popularity as the final part of a World History, divided into seven millennia about the succession of generations and kingdoms, whose author wrote during the seventh century in northern Syria under the name of the bishop and martyr Methodius (d. around 311). The prophecy of Pseudo-Methodius (translation of the apocalyptic text: Reinink 1993 as well as Aerts and Kortekaas 1998; for a short version see Prinz 1985) regarding the end of time begins with the statement that the tyranny of the Ismaelites would last ten (years-) weeks, that is 70 years. At the end of the Ismaelite reign, the (last) Greek king, i.  e. the (last) Roman or Byzantine emperor, would appear like one awakening from intoxication, who had previously been considered dead, and destroy the power of the Ismaelites. Subsequently, Pseudo-Methodius predicts a historically unprecedented peace of indefinite duration, which will end abruptly with the emergence of the aforementioned 22 anthropophagous peoples, among them Gog and Magog, enclosed behind the gates of the North by Alexander the Great. They will spread fear and terror on Earth, but after one (year-) week of trouble, these nations will be annihilated by an archangel, and then the king of the Greeks will reign in Jerusalem – for one and a half (years-) weeks (i.  e. ten and a half years). If the son of perdition, i.  e. the Antichrist, shows himself, the king of the Greeks will head to Golgotha, place his crown on the Holy Cross erected there, which would soon be raised toward heaven, and stretch his hands out to heaven. After handing over his kingdom to God in this way and recommending his soul to Him, he would die, after which the son of perdition (the Antichrist) would move in Jerusalem, sit in the temple of God and pretend to be God. Because of his false miracles, even the saints would run after this deceiver but, at the moment when the Lord descends from heaven, he would be exposed to hellish fire, together with all who believed in him, while the upright Christians would find access to the heavenly kingdom. The Scripture of Pseudo-Methodius was soon translated from Syriac into Greek, and thence into Latin only a few decades later. The duration of the Ismaelite reign is shortened from ten (years-) weeks to seven (years-) weeks and thus from 70 to 49 years. The prophesied duration of the reign was thus not extended after the 70 years had expired or their expiration was impending and thus the veracity of the prophesy was at stake. The symbolic number 49 (7x7) should perhaps not be taken literally from



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the beginning and could, by those means, ensure the topicality of the prophecy over several centuries. As far as Western Europe is concerned, the World History and Prophecy of Pseudo-Methodius is preserved in a vast number of Latin manuscripts. Apparently, the threat of Islamic Power was not of decisive significance for the popularity of Pseudo-Methodius. In Italy, for example, few manuscripts from the fifteenth century have been preserved, although the Ottomans seemed to initiate a major attack in 1480, and on the Iberian Peninsula, despite centuries of Islamic rule and threat, the amount of manuscripts is low throughout the entire Middle Ages. The example of England, on the other hand, shows that Pseudo-Methodius was especially popular even in a country that did not face a direct Islamic threat. Most of the manuscripts are preserved there, with many from the thirteenth and even more from the fifteenth century, but none from the time preceding the eleventh century. The predominance of the Latin abbreviated version is overwhelming. As the use by other authors demonstrates, the work of Pseudo-Methodius has often served as a historical source, so the events of the Last Days or the question of the end of the world and the promise of the triumph of Christianity over Islam were not necessarily the main focus of interest. The prophecy about a last Roman emperor abdicating in Jerusalem after the conquest of the world was spread beyond Pseudo-Methodius also in other forms, above all in the Constans-Vaticinium at the end of the Latin Tiburtine Sibyl, which probably originated before Pseudo-Methodius, in the fourth century, and in the Antichrist-treatise of Adso de Montier-en-Der, written in the mid-tenth century. Both were also widespread in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. As a counterpart, so to speak, to the prophecy of the end emperor, in the thirteenth century the idea, fully established in the fourteenth century, of an angelic pope at the end of times for whose pontificate especially the Franciscan spirituals, shaped by the poverty movement of Francis and the thoughts of Joachim of Fiore, desired not only a profound reform of the Church, but also the recapture of Jerusalem and the conversion of all people to Christianity. The idea of this pastor angelicus was an expression of the growing discontent in the thirteenth and fourteenth century with the administration of the Popes, who did not take into consideration a reform of the universal Church beginning at the Curia. The idea of the Angel Pope stems from the doctrine of Joachim of Fiore. For the first time, in his teachings the papacy had fulfilled an end time function. Already in his 1184 Expositio de prophetia ignota he writes that immediately before the appearance of the Antichrist a pope would convert all pagans to Christianity, and in the Liber de concordia in the last generation of the second status a pope is to renew Christianity, which Joachim compares to an angel from the Revelation to John (Rev. 7,2).

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Developments, Historical Contexts, and Medieval Discussions Phases of Acute End-time Expectations The idea of the Roman End Empire, which prevailed in the Occident during the Middle Ages was decisively shaped by Jerome (d. 419 or 420). He regarded the Roman Empire as the last of four world empires which, according to 2 Thess. 2,6–8, as Katechon, would delay the Antichrist’s reign of fear to be expected at the end of the world until it should perish. However, similar views had already been widespread among the Jewish Christians and can also be found in Hippolytus and Tertullian. The expectations associated with this met with the criticism of Hippolytus (d. 235), because he saw the faith endangered by them. In his opinion, the collapse of Roman power, which could only be followed by the appearance of the Antichrist, was not yet imminent. Ambrose (d.  397) also believed that the end of the world was imminent. He regarded the Goths as those of the Last Days peoples of Gog and Magog. Sulpicius Severus (d. around 420) had similar expectations. When the Visigoths succeeded in conquering Rome in 410, Jerome saw the end of the world as having arrived, although he refused to equate the Goths with Gog and Magog. In the fifth century, the Vandal kings Geiserich (d. 477) and Hunerich (d. 484) were equated with the end-time beast from the Revelation to John 13:11–18, which bears the number 666. Various natural phenomena and their interpretation also bear witness to the increased expectation of the Last Days in the fourth and fifth centuries and, in part, to hysteria. Augustine (d.  430) did not share such expectations. He considered the end of times to be near, but not yet arrived, and saw no correlation between this question and the conquest of Rome by the Visigoths. Augustine stated that the course of history was divided into six ages, the duration of which was known only to God. He opposed all chiliastic expectations by interpreting the Revelation to John in a spiritual sense – as did his compatriot, Tyconius. Augustine stated that, with the birth of Christ, the last age of the world had dawned and that in the Church, that is, already in his present time, the millennial kingdom of Christ had been realized. He understood the number “1000” quite literally, not merely symbolically, although he refused to calculate the exact moment of the end of the world and the Last Judgement. Augustine’s opinion finally gained acceptance in the Latin Occident, where it probably considerably dampened the expectations regarding the end of the world. The world era of Eusebius received little attention initially but, when his Greek chronicle was translated into Latin by Jerome and supplemented by the meanwhile past decades, it prevailed in the Latin West in the course of the fifth century, without, however, completely ousting the era of Hippolytus and thus the consciousness of how close was the year 6000 (= 500 CE), which possibly indicated the end of the world.



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Moreover, one source states that some people announced the birth of the Antichrist in 493 and 498. Also, the introduction of the Eusebian-Hieronymian era was not able to banish end of time expectations. It was no coincidence that, at the end of the sixth century, several men appeared in the Merovingian Empire who claimed to be Jesus Christ and found many followers. When the year 6000 of the Eusebian-Hieronymian era, which, depending on the calculation, coincided with the time of 799–806, was less than 100 years away, in the Latin Occident this time was also replaced by another. Probably in order to remove the basis for speculation about the end of the world in the year 6000, one followed the model of Bede the Venerable in the Frankish Empire during the first half of the eighth century and passed to the time calculation of Dionysius Exiguus which was oriented toward years of incarnation. Several sources indicate, however, that from the late seventh century until the end of the next, i.  e. until the year 6000 of the Eusebian-Hieronymian era, one obviously often wondered how much time remained until the year 6000. The end of time expectations that were directed toward this year undoubtedly remained active. Thus, his coronation in 800 made Charlemagne appear to be the last emperor, who would be ruling at the end of the world. The answer to the question of whether Charlemagne considered himself the end emperor must remain open, although Charlemagne seems to have believed that he lived at the end of the world. In the decades preceding the thousandth year of Christ’s incarnation and passio, the expectation of the Last Days increased again in the Occident. It was derived from the Revelation to John. Although, in the West, its spiritualistic interpretation predominated (Augustine), it failed to replace the chiliastic interpretation completely, as can be seen from the expectations fostered around 1000, in which the Augustinian and the chiliastic view were confused by the circumstance that the kingdom of Christ was regarded as long in existence, but limited to literally a thousand years – after which Satan would become free again. Accordingly, Odo of Cluny (d. 942), the actual founder of the Reform Monastery, fueled the fear regarding the release of satanic power and it results, based on a letter by a monk from Saint-Germain, probably written around 960, that numerous contemporaries in the Burgundian-Lorraine region took the time limit of a thousand years stated in John’s Revelation verbatim, and so identified the Hungarians with Gog and Magog and believed that the end of the world was very close. Approximately three decades later, in 991, Bishop Arnulf of Orléans claimed that the Antichrist, in the person of Pope John XV, had long since seized power. Furthermore, Abbo of Fleury (d. 1004) reports that as a young man he had heard a sermon in Paris expressing that the Antichrist would appear immediately after the end of a thousand years and that, shortly afterward, the Last Judgment would take place. According to Abbo almost everywhere in the world, the rumor spread that, if Mary’s Annunciation (25 March) and Good Friday coincided on the same day, the world would end. This was the case during the second half of the tenth century, with

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the evident accumulation of three such dates at once, namely in the years 970, 981 and 992, and afterwards only again in 1065. Another famous example is the work of Rodulfus Glaber (d. probably 1042), who connected incidents of the time around 1000 with the unleashing of Satan after a thousand years, as prophesied in the Revelation to John, although he expected the end of the world just as little as did Abbo of Fleury for a certain moment in time. For times when our sources are generally scarce, the narrative sources are relatively unproductive with regard to the end of time-expectation at the turn of the millennium 1000/1001 (not to be – as was sometimes done – mistakenly read as 999/1000). However, with the unleashing of Satan – in other words, with the appearance of the Antichrist – the expectation of the end of the Roman Empire preceding this event was connected and in such an end-time context the renovatio imperii Romanorum propagated by Emperor Otto III in the last three years of the first millennium, namely 998, 999 and 1000, is to be seen as the slogan of his bulls. While, for example, the Saint Gall monk Notker the German (d. 1022) held the opinion that, with the transition of the empire to the Ottonians, the Roman Empire had fallen, Otto III declared its renewal and continued existence, thus at the same time denying the possibility that the Antichrist would appear soon and the end of the world ensue. In a diploma issued on May 15 1000, Otto III believes that the end of the world and the Day of the Last Judgement are still “far away” and speaks of (several) successors he would have. In harmony with the Church, Otto III was apparently concerned with dampening the expectations of his contemporaries regarding the Last Days and redirecting them to a distant future in order to avoid hysteria consuming the masses. Since he, at the same time, promoted the spread of Christianity in Eastern Europe, he strengthened the position of Christianity, thus, also practically ensured that the power of the Devil could not gain the upper hand yet. In the eleventh century, we find the first evidence of the assumption that Satan had been freed again, after thousands of years of imprisonment. Thus, Lampert of Hersfeld (d. after 1081), in the second half of the eleventh century, saw the Devil freed with the deposition of Pope Gregory VII by Emperor Henry IV, in 1076. Similarly, in the twelfth century, Gerhoch of Reichersberg (d. 1169) wrote about the Investiture Contest whereby “many pious and understanding” people had believed that the prediction of John’s revelation about the liberation of the Devil had been fulfilled when, a thousand years after Christ’s death – namely in 1080, i.  e. not literally a thousand years later – a counter-pope had been raised in the form of Clement III. With the turn of the millennium, it is impossible to overlook the fact that the number of pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Santiago de Compostela increased. Particularly worthy of mention are the 1026–1027 and 1033 larger pilgrimages to the Holy Land, where the return of Christ was expected. Also, in 1064–1065, many (German) pilgrims, accompanied by bishops, traveled to Jerusalem because, in 1065, again, Good Friday coincided with Mary’s Annunciation (March 25) and the pilgrims believed that the return of Christ had come.



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The time around 1000 was not the height of eschatological excitement in the Middle Ages. As far as can be seen, the end of time expectation in the Latin Occident during the approximately 500 years after the turn of the millennium was stronger than in the 500 years preceding it. Taking into account the popularity of the Revelation to John, the idea of the liberation of Satan after a thousand years had expired might have contributed significantly to this. Accordingly, the Christians in Europe believed repeatedly that the Antichrist had already been born and would soon initiate his reign of terror. If the plague that broke out in the mid-fourteenth century was already able to intensify the fear regarding the Last Days, then no less was the schism of 1378, as the supposed beginning of the reign of the Antichrist. In his treatise, De tempore adventus Antichristi, written shortly before 1300, Arnaldus of Villanova (d. 1311) predicted the appearance of the Antichrist more or less during the year of the schism. Those who believed the second series of the Vaticinia de summis pontificibus saw the dragon of the Apocalypse in the fourteenth successor of Pope Nicholas III, i.  e. under Pope Urban VI (d. 1389), elected in 1378. Probably not only Henry of Kirkestede, a Benedictine from Bury St. Edmunds, identified Urban VI himself with the Antichrist. As it results from the many records of contemporary historiographers in the Occident, Byzantium, and the Orient, in the second half of the twelfth century various prophecies based on the same astronomical calculations attracted the greatest attention, according to which between 1176 and 1186 the conjunction of all planets was to lead to severe concussions in nature and significant upheavals in the lives of the peoples. Probably not only the author of the Annals of Marbach (to the year 1185) referred this scenario to the end of the world and the arrival of the Antichrist. Many occidental Christians believed that these prophecies were then confirmed in 1187 by Saladin’s achievements culminating in the conquest of Jerusalem. One of the prophecies originally aiming at the year 1186 received new topicality during the crusade of Emperor Frederick II and in the ten years of the armistice concluded with Sultan al-Kamil in February 1229 and spread as an alleged letter of a master John of Toledo. Disregarding astronomical-astrological calculations, it was related to the years 1229–1239 and no longer promised the annihilation of the Muslims, but their voluntary conversion. This so-called Toledo letter had already been in circulation around 1200. Translated into German, French and Italian vernacular, later versions indicate, among others, 1329, 1371 and 1395 as the year of prophecy. As far as the Investiture Contest is concerned, there can be observed only in exceptional cases acute expectations of the Last Days on the part of the contemporaries, although a man like Gregory VII was strongly influenced by eschatological ideas and his opponents partly got him close to the Antichrist of the Last Days or even saw the Antichrist himself in him. Bishops belonging to the church province of Ravenna held the opinion that the Antichrist had not yet come, since the Roman Empire was still in existence, and even for Gregory VII the end-time had not yet dawned. Such restraint can no longer be observed in the clash between Frederick II and Gregory IX: Twice the

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emperor was excommunicated by this pope, namely on 29 September 1227 and on 20 March 1239. Under the date of 1 July 1239 Gregory accused Frederick of heresy in an Encyclical and compared him right at the beginning with the sea monster known from the Revelation to John 13 and Dan. 7. In contrast, between 1243 and 1250 a Dominican named Arnold wrote with great determination in his Epistola de correctione ecclesiae that Pope Innocent IV was the Antichrist whom Christ would kill through the breath of his mouth, so that the poor then would receive back all ecclesiastical goods. For the first time in the prophecy literature the demand for a radical reform of the church is here connected with the hope for Frederick II. The Franciscan Salimbene (d. 1288 or 1289) gave up his Joachitic ideas when the appearance of the Antichrist did not happen until the end of 1260 and reports that he at first did not believe the news about the death of Frederick II, because he had held the opinion that Frederick, as a forerunner of the Antichrist, had to commit further misdeeds before his death. The death of Frederick II already in 1250 could barely fit those Joachites who had identified the emperor with the Antichrist into their idea regarding the course of history, because in their opinion the Antichrist should not die until 1260 and thus decide on the second status. In order to preserve their idea, however, they did not flee into the expectation that Frederick would return to the year 1260 as the Antichrist and complete his evil work, but looked for a descendant of Frederick II as the Antichrist.

How Individual Authors Interpret the End of Time In the early Middle Ages, the Anglo-Saxon monk and scholar Bede the Venerable (d. 735) should be regarded as the outstanding specialist in questions concerning the Last Days. From his original point of view, the end of the world and the Last Judgment were still more than 1000 years away. Like many men in the Church, he rejected all the efforts to calculate the time of the end of the world because only God knew it. In his opinion, the Last Judgement should take place at an unexpected and sudden moment. At an advanced age, however, Bede believed that the dawn of the Last Days was very near. This change in opinion was caused by the current circumstances and events, especially in the year 716. Since he believed that with the Anglo-Saxons almost all pagans had been converted to Christianity, even on the periphery of the known world, in his opinion the dawn of the Last Days was imminent when the Jews would be converted. Centuries later, in the time of the Investiture Contest, one does not find any trace of acute end-time or parousia expectations within the Benedictine Abbot Rupert of Deutz (d. 1129 or 1130). However, pictures of the Apocalyptic served him to determine the present. A way to explain that is his intention to criticize undeniable defects in Christianity with the sharpest possible means. It was the zeal for reform that had Rupert of Deutz and others translate the grievances of the Church into the symbolism



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of the end-times. From Rupert’s point of view, the Roman Empire was the vanguard of the Antichrist, while the church was the last bastion that stopped him (the Antichrist). This attitude is typical for German symbolism. The situation is, in contrast, quite different with Otto of Freising (d. 1158): As his world chronicle Historia de duabus civitatibus from the years 1143–1146, which in its final part also describes the events of the end-times, shows, the bishop of Freising at first was made so pessimistic by the temporary circumstances that he expected the end of the world in a near future. In a situation of general decay, Otto of Freising believed that (only) the monks of the new founded orders with their merits and intercessions halted the end of the world. He did not rule out that a Roman emperor would become the Antichrist (Historia VIII, 3). However, Otto draw hope when his nephew Frederick I Barbarossa (d. 1189) succeded the misfortunate Conrad III (d. 1152) on the German throne. Shortly after Otto’s death, the papal schism of 1159, which repeated itself in 1164, had a considerably reinforcing effect on Provost Gerhoch of Reichersberg (d. 1169) regarding the expectation of the Last Days. Before 1159, Gerhoch had seen the supposed portents of the Antichrist increase, but one can originally not speak of an acute expectation of the end times in his writings. In Gerhoch’s case, the name or term of the Antichrist mostly did not mean an individual, but a collective of multi Antichristi, who were up to make trouble inside the Church. According to Gerhoch, the hiding place of the Antichrist was to be located in the souls or vices of men. This spiritual interpretation eliminated any apocalypticism from Gerhoch’s thinking. In his opinion, it was the Regular Canons who constituted a protective wall and stopped the Antichrist for some time. As a result of the Pope’s schism of 1159, however, Gerhoch saw the Antichrist appearing under the semblance of Christian devoutness already sitting in the temple. He regarded hypocrisy as his religion. Nevertheless, he looked optimistically into the future, by hoping for the return of Christ, now believed to be close. The end of time expectation of Western Christians received new features of far-reaching importance by the Calabrian abbot Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202), who was related to the German Symbolists. Joachim came close to the Old Christian Millenarianism by directing his thinking towards inducing a state of perfection still within earthly history. Building on the older concept that after the persecution by the Antichrist there would be a brief break before the Last Judgment, Joachim expected an age of religious renewal and new spirituality following the reign of the Antichrist. According to Joachim, world history is divided into three statuses, corresponding to Trinity: The age of the Father, which coincides with the period described in the Old Testament, is followed first by the age of the Son, which begins with Christ, and finally by the age of the Holy Spirit, which makes the clergy and the papacy superfluous through the knowledge of the inner sense of the Old and the New Testament overcoming the letter. While according to Joachim the first status lasted 42 generations of varying duration, he imagined that the second status should comprise 40 generations of 30 years each and two further generations of uncertain duration, which is why with

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regard to the entry into the third status it could only be said that it would take place after the 40th generation, i.  e. after the year 1200, but not necessarily only in 1261, as a few decades after Joachim’s death some followers of his doctrine believed. As far as the last two generations are concerned, Joachim emphasized their transitional character: they formed both the end of the second and the beginning of the third status, and therefore it was indifferent whether the latter was to begin with the 41 st, 42nd or 43rd generation after Christ. For the time of the 41st and 42nd generation Joachim expected two persecutions of Christianity. He identified Sultan Saladin and his successor as the first one. In accordance with the ten horns of one of the two apocalyptic beasts in Rev 13:1, he thought Saladin backed by ten pagan rulers. They subjugated the meanwhile already fragmented Roman Empire, but would then finally be repulsed by the milites Christi. In the short period of peace that followed, a universalis pontifex nove Hierusalem was to appear as a novus dux, renewing Christianity. Then the Antichrist would bring about a further, even more severe persecution, until in the end Christ would defeat the Antichrist and his confederate, the last Saracen ruler who once again had fallen upon the Christians with all his might. Joachim also expected the conversion of all peoples to Christianity and the unification of the Greek Church with the Roman Church as part of the forthcoming changes which he considered imminent. Moreover, at the end of the second status two orders were to appear as representatives of the new spirituality. The two newly founded mendicant orders considered themselves as these orders a few years after Joachim’s death. The beginning of the third status basically marked the dawn of the end of the world, because it was not to last for a time corresponding to the second status, but maybe only for a few years. It should furthermore be noted that with the defeat of the “actual” Antichrist, whom Joachim considered already to be born, the sufferings imposed on mankind would by no means end, for at the end of the third status – i.  e. contrary to tradition only after the Antichrist – Joachim expected Gog to appear as the “last” Antichrist. As the reproduction of his teachings by several authors shows, Joachim’s contemporaries initially did not perceive his originality. They often do not even talk about the third status, so that the impression is given that his teachings did not go any further beyond the long-known ideas of the end times. For their effect outside Calabria, it was of decisive importance that at the highpoint of the struggle between Frederick II and the Papacy the idea of overcoming the clerical church in the third status was enthusiastically received by the Franciscans. In the middle of the fourteenth century, John of Rupescissa (d. after 1365) delivered a very detailed and widely spread description of the Last Days including, particularly for him and his trustworthiness, dangerously exact numbers and years; he combined various prophetic motifs with each other. In his Liber secretorum eventuum, completed on 11 November 1349 in the papal dungeon of Avignon, he writes that, under the fourth of the successors of Pope Clement VI (1342–1352), who fruitlessly tried to reform the



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world, the wrath of God would befall the world. The conditions prevailing in Italy after his death caused people to fear the end of the world. Only after one and a half years a new Pope would be elected who, like Celestine V in former times, would not stem from the ranks of the Cardinals; he would soon be forced by them to abdicate and he would, supported by some of the Franciscans as the true Pope, hide in the desert. Shortly after this schism, so it continues, the great (fourth) Antichrist would appear, who was to be identified with Louis of Sicily (d. 1355). He would almost completely destroy the city of Rome, which was rebelling against him, deprive the clergy of all its possessions and exterminate the Dominicans. Since Louis gave the hardened Jews freedom for a certain time, they celebrated him as the Messiah. He, too, considered himself Messiah and God. John of Rupescissa expected Louis’s open appearance as the Antichrist for the year 1366. According to tradition, the rule of the Antichrist was to last three and a half years until the year 1370. Finally, the faithful went into combat as the new Maccabees against the superiority of the Antichrist. Then Christ would come down from heaven with a host of angels and annihilate the Antichrist and his followers. After that the Last Judgment was not to take place immediately, but John of Rupescissa ventured to claim that the world would – in accordance with Joachim’s third status (in the temporal sense fixed neither in terms of duration nor of beginning) – continue to exist for 1000 years. After several tyrants had tried to control the Roman Empire during the first 45 years, and despite many adversities all sects of the unfaithful had been destroyed, it seemed as if paradise had come down to Earth. Everyone would be enlightened by the Holy Spirit. The Jews accepted Christianity and thus also received from God the universal power of the Romans – particularly remarkable due to an increased number of pogroms from 1348 to 1350, which began in southern France and were faced by Clement VI. Under the reign of Pope and Emperor, who was supposed to come from the Abrahamic lineage, peace would prevail all over. The pope, who resembles to the angel descending from heaven (Rev. Joh. 10,1–3), resided in Jerusalem itself, while the emperor resided close to the city (but not in it), so that the lay people would not disturb the spirituals. 700 years after the death of the great Antichrist, people’s faith and ethics were decreasing again. At the lowest point, 1000 years after the death of the great Antichrist, Gog, the last Antichrist, would appear as the last punishment of mankind. But this one will be destroyed by God, and then Christ will give the dominion back to the Father. The early death in 1355 of Louis of Sicily forced John of Rupescissa to change his foretelling. Thus he considered in his Liber ostensor, completed on September 1, 1356, Louis’s brother Frederick III (IV), who ruled over Sicily until 1377, as the great Antichrist, and the last emperor should be a Frenchman and not any more a Jew converted to Christianity.

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Selected Bibliography Aerts, Willem J., and Kortekaas, G. A. A. (eds.). Die Apokalypse des Pseudo-Methodius. Die ältesten griechischen und lateinischen Übersetzungen (CSCO, Subsidia, 97 and 98). 2 vols. Louvain, 1998. Aertsen, Jan A., and Pickavé, Martin (eds.). Ende und Vollendung. Eschatologische Perspektiven im Mittelalter (Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 29). Berlin and New York, 2002. Brandes, Wolfram, and Felicitas Schmieder (eds.). Endzeiten. Eschatologie in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen (Millennium-Studien, 16). Berlin and New York, 2008. Brandes, Wolfram, and Felicitas Schmieder (eds.). Antichrist. Konstruktionen von Feindbildern. Berlin, 2010. Cohn, Norman. Das neue irdische Paradies. Revolutionärer Millenarismus und mystischer Anarchismus im mittelalterlichen Europa. Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1988 (appearing also several times before and afterwards under different titles, to use with some caution, cf. Möhring, Weltkaiser, 167, 219, 225, 227, 232, 236, 239, 317 and 362). Darby, Peter. Bede and the End of Time (Studies in Early Medieval Britain). Farnham, 2012. Emmerson, Richard K. Antichrist in the Middle Ages. A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature. Manchester, 1981. Fried, Johannes. “Endzeiterwartung um die Jahrtausendwende.” Deutsches Archiv 45 (1989): 381–473. Fried, Johannes. Aufstieg aus dem Untergang. Apokalyptisches Denken und die Entstehung der modernen Naturwissenschaft im Mittelalter. Munich, 2001. Greisiger, Lutz. Messias. Endkaiser. Antichrist. Politische Apokalyptik unter Juden und Christen des Nahen Ostens am Vorabend der arabischen Eroberung (Orientalia Biblica et Christiana, 21). Wiesbaden, 2014. Haeusler, Martin. Das Ende der Geschichte in der mittelalterlichen Weltchronistik (Beihefte zum AKG, 13). Cologne and Vienna, 1980. Holdenried, Anke. The Sibyl and Her Scribes. Manuscripts and Interpretation of the Latin Sibylla Tiburtina, c. 1050–1500. Aldershot, 2006. Jostmann, Christian. Sibilla Erithea Babilonica. Papsttum und Prophetie im 13. Jahrhundert (MGH Schriften, 54). Hanover, 2006. Landes, Richard. “Lest the Millennium Be Fulfilled. Apocalyptic Expectations and the Pattern of Western Chronography 100–800 CE.” The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages (Mediaevalia Lovanensia, Series 1, 15). Eds. Werner Verbeke, Daniel Verhelst, and Andries Welkenhuysen. Louvain, 1988. 137–211. Lee, Harold, Marjorie Reeves, and Giulio Silano (eds.). Western Mediterranean Prophecy. The School of Joachim of Fiore and the Fourteenth-Century Breviloquium (Studies and Texts, 88). Toronto, 1989. Leppin, Volker. “Der Antichrist bei Adso von Montier-en-Der.” Der Antichrist. Historische und systematische Zugänge. Eds. Mariano Delgado and Volker Leppin. Fribourg, 2011. 125–136. Lerner, Robert E. “Antichrists and Antichrist in Joachim of Fiore.” Speculum 60 (1985): 553–570. Lerner, Robert E., and Robert Moynihan. Weissagungen über die Päpste: Vat. Ross. 374. Zurich, 1985. Lerner, Robert E. “On the Origins of the Earliest Latin Pope Prophecies. A Reconsideration.” Fälschungen im Mittelalter. Internationaler Kongress der MGH 1986, Teil 5 (MGH Schriten, 33, 5). Hanover, 1988. 611–635. Lerner, Robert E., and Christine Morerot-Fattebert (eds. and trans.). Johannes de Rupescissa: Liber Secretorum eventuum (Spicilegium Friburgense 36). Fribourg, 1994.



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McGinn, Bernard. Visions of the End. Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (Records of Civilization: Sources and Studies, 96). New York, 1979. McGinn, Bernard. Apocalypticism in the Western Tradition. Aldershot et al., 1994. Möhring, Hannes. Der Weltkaiser der Endzeit. Entstehung, Wandel und Wirkung einer tausendjährigen Weissagung (Mittelalter-Forschungen, 3). Stuttgart, 2000. Möhring, Hannes. “Die renovatio imperii Kaiser Ottos III. und die Antichrist-Erwartung der Zeitgenossen an der Jahrtausendwende von 1000/1001.” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 93 (2011): 333–350. Möhring, Hannes. “Gewaltszenarien der Endzeit und der Erste Kreuzzug. Zu Thesen und Argumenten einer Neuerscheinung über die Geschichte der Gewalt im Christentum.” Deutsches Archiv 73 (2017): 527–551. Möhring, Hannes. “Das Constans-Vaticinium und die Entstehung der Endkaiser-Weissagung. Schlüsse und Fehlschlüsse.” Deutsches Archiv 74 (2018): 103–714 and 1044–1045. Niccoli, Ottavia. Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy. Princeton, NJ, 1990. Patschovsky, Alexander (ed.). Die Bildwelt der Diagramme Joachims von Fiore. Zur Medialität religiös-politischer Programme im Mittelalter. Ostfildern, 2003. Prinz, Otto. “Eine frühe abendländische Aktualisierung der lateinischen Übersetzung des PseudoMethodius.” Deutsches Archiv 41 (1985): 1–23 (containing an edition of the Latin short version of Pseudo-Methodius’ prophecy). Potestà, Gian Luca. L’ultimo messia. Profezia e sovranità nel Medioevo (Saggi, 803). Bologna, 2014 (partially problematic, see Möhring, Deutsches Archiv 71, 2015, 733–735). Rauh, Horst Dieter. Das Bild des Antichrist im Mittelalter: Von Tyconius zum Deutschen Symbolismus. Second Improved and Extended Edition (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, N. F., 9). Münster, 1979. Reeves, Marjorie. The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages. A Study in Joachimism. Oxford, 1969. Reeves, Marjorie. Prophetic Rome in the High Renaissance Period. Oxford, 1992. Reinink, Gerrit J. (ed. and trans.). Die syrische Apokalypse des Pseudo-Methodius. 2 vols. (CSCO, Scriptores syri, 220 and 221). Louvain, 1993. Sackur, Ernst (ed.). Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen. Pseudomethodius, Adso und die Tiburtinische Sibylle. Halle an der Saale, 1898. Töpfer, Bernhard. Das kommende Reich des Friedens. Zur Entwicklung chiliastischer Zukunftshoffnungen im Hochmittelalter (Forschungen zur mittelalterlichen Geschichte, 11). Berlin, 1964. Verhelst, Daniel (ed.). Adso von Montier-en-Der: De ortu et tempore Antichristi (CC, Cont. med. 45). Turnhout, 1976.

Wolfram Brandes

Traditions and Expectations in the Medieval Eastern Christian World Definitions and Terminology The concept of prophecy, in a narrower sense, was, in the eyes of the Byzantines, restricted to the real prophets of the Old Testament. In reality, prophecies as predictions of future events exist, with the meaning of an inspired proclamation of the will of God by a prophetes. What in other regions of Christianity was called prophecy was, in the relevant Byzantine texts, called optasía, apokálypsis, chrésmos or (simply) lógos or órasis (also basileiographeia). The functions of the prophecy of the Old Testament have been adopted by apocalyptical texts, such as the Sibylline oracles or so-called testaments (e.  g. of Jesus or holy persons). These various texts presented people with the possibility of interpreting both history and the present. The fact that normally apocalyptical and “prophetic” were pseudepigrapha texts, i.  e., as the author appears as an Old Testament prophet, like Daniel or Ezekiel, a holy person (one of the apostles, e.  g. John because of the Book of Revelation, etc.), or a famous church father (i.  e., John Chrysostom, Methodius). Usually, an angel is involved and delivers the prophecies to the author. This kind of text plays a role in the self-conception of the Christian Byzantines. The knowledge about their position in time, before the real end of time and the world, was important and had an influence regarding social behavior and sometimes politics, too. However, the eschatological beliefs tend to be hidden beneath the surface in the majority of Byzantine literature. Nevertheless, the Byzantines avoided using the term prophetia, as mentioned. After the second or third centuries, the term prophetia fell out of favor, possibly due to the warnings of the pseudo-prophets or false prophets from the New Testament, who are creatures of the Antichrist and whose appearance heralds the advent of the end of the world (Matt. 7:15, Mark 13:22, Rev. 16:13). Frequently, heretics have been identified as pseudo-prophets. Predictions in an eschatological context played, at all times, a special role in Byzantium, and could sometimes influence the actions of rulers or groups of people.

Written Sources Amongst the written sources, the so-called apocryphal apocalypses are of great importance. They constitute a continuation of the apocalypses of both the Old (especially https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-011



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Dan. 2 and 7 or Ezek.) and New Testaments (synoptic apocalypse; of restricted importance was the Revelation to John) and of the many apocryphal texts of this genre. According to Paul Alexander (Brandes 1990; Magdalino 1993), the majority are “historical apocalypses” (but not all!). Normally, they are pseudepigraphies because they are transmitted together with the name of an Old Testament prophet (usually David or Ezekiel) a disciple of Christ (e.  g. John – following the canonical Revelation of the New Testament), and also important figures from the patristic age (like John Chrysostom or Methodius) or, on occasion, important rulers (like Constantine the Great, Heraclius, or Leo the Wise). Frequently, Byzantine apocalypses are like a patchwork of older texts or elements of texts of varying ages. Therefore, an apocalypse from the end of the thirteenth century contains snippets of text about events that occurred in the seventh century or later. These prophetic apocalypses explain the future ex eventu, ending in the second Parousia of Christ, the resurrection of the deaths, the Last Judgement, and, finally, the end of the world. When, in 541, the (Justinianic) plague afflicted Constantinople and the Mediterranean, a woman in the capital began to prophesy the imminent end of the city, claiming that “that in three days’ time the sea would rise and take everybody”, according to historian John Malalas (Thurn 2000, 406). The crowds flew into a panic and the emperor was informed. The prediction that the sea would submerge Constantinople became a standard motif in the apocalyptical literature (Brandes 1999). Earthquakes frequently struck Constantinople, and these catastrophic events provided sources for predictions regarding the end of the world, such as in 557, when a “prophetic” woman sparked a great rumor in the city (Brandes 1999, 126), and the massive earthquake of 989 (when parts of Hagia Sophia collapsed), which led astrologers, such as Demophilus, to produce a horoscope of Constantinople, identifying 1026 as the year when time would end (Pingree 1977; Brandes 2000, 461–462). Predictions  – mostly with a special political background  – originated in every period, reflecting special events; for example, during the Second Crusade, when the army of the Westerners under the leadership of the (Western) emperor, Conrad III, drew near to Constantinople (in 1147), a prediction of doom circulated among the population. The famous, learned scholar, John Tzetzes, provides an account of this: “The Bous will cry and the Tauros will lament; woe to you, you seven hills, because you will not exist a thousand years” (Brandes 2007a, 245–246). John’s reaction to the xantha ethne, the fair-haired people (a common topos in the apocalyptical literature – see Pertusi 1988, 62–109), as the Crusaders were seen by the Byzantines, was evidently to assume that the prophecy was confirming Constantinople’s imminent destruction at the hands of this blond army, the Crusaders (Magdalino 2008, 131–132). By around 1200, the famous historian, Nicetas Choniates, was already employing the Oracles of Leo the Wise (↗ Spataro, Papal Prophecies, 903–904) in various places throughout his History, albeit without naming his source. In addition, he reports another incident, which could only be understood against the background of apocalyptical literature and thought. Several years prior to the terrifying events of

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1203 and 1204, when the Fourth Crusade sacked and despoiled the Byzantine capital – an event that also provoked apocalyptical feelings and texts (Brandes 2007a) – the Third Crusade (under the leadership of Frederick  I Barbarossa) drew near to Constantinople. The patriarch, Dositheus, “predicted”, “like from a tripod” (so Nicetas), that the Frankish Crusaders would enter the city through the Xylokerkos-Gate and cause great damage. However, “after perpetrating abominable crimes, he (Frederic Barbarossa and his men) would then suffer the counter-balancing vengeance of God’s scale of justice.” The emperor’s reaction was logical (according to the thinking of his time): He commanded that the gate be closed with masonry. Therefore, he meant that the prophecy of Dositheus (whom he trusted, because Isaac predicted his emperorship some time before he ascended the throne) would be nullified. The real background to this astonishing story is some centuries older. In the (first) Greek version of the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, the translator (from Syriac into Greek) in the eighth century interpolated a short (apocalyptical) text that contained a description (in the apocalyptical manner) of the last great siege of Constantinople by the Islamic Arabs in 717/718. The unknown author wrote during the siege and was highly pessimistic, believing in Constantinople’s imminent fall (for details see Brandes 2007b). Here, we have an early version of the prophecy cited by John Tzetzes: Woe to you, Byzas (= Byzantium, resp. Constantinople), because Ishmael overtakes you. For every horse of Ishmael will pass through and the first among them will pitch his tent before you, Byzas, and he will begin to make war and will break down the gate of Xylokerkos and will proceed as far as the Bous (the Forum Bovis). The Bous will low loudly and Xerolaphos will bay, since they were thrashed by the Ishmaelites. (Aerts and Kortekaas 1998, 172)

Then God changed the situation (“And the Lord God will then snatch the cowardice of the Romans and thrust it into the hearts of the Ishmaelites and take the manliness of the Ishmaelites and cast it into the hearts of the Romans; they will turn and drive them from their homes and crush them without mercy”). The “king of the Greeks, which is of the Romans” (the Last Roman Emperor) will force the Arabs back onto the Arabian Peninsula, so we have here one of the rare examples where an apocalyptical text provoked a specific action by an emperor (Brandes 2007a, 247–252; Brandes 2007b, 89–90; Brandes 2008, 192–196). The impact of apocalyptical texts on the actual behavior of the Byzantines appears to play a noteworthy role in 1453 (May 29) also, the day of the halosis. According to the historians Laonikos Chalkokondyles and Dukas, on this dreadful day, the people of Constantinople sought shelter at Hagia Sophia because the Ottomans has begun to invade the city. The reason was because “false prophets” had been predicting, for many years, that the Ottomans would indeed enter the Byzantine capital, but would only reach the column of Constantine – at which point, an angel would appear, holding a sword, which he would hand to an unknown, poor man, saying, “Take the sword and take revenge on behalf of the people of God.” The Ottomans would be put to



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flight and the Rhomaioi (the Byzantines) would attack them. They would be expelled to the borders of Persia. Hagia Sophia lies behind the column of Constantine if seen from the West, from which direction the Ottomans would have to arrive. Thus goes the story of Dukas. Chalkokondyles told a similar story, with very slight differences, according to which the Ottomans would only reach as far as the Forum Tauri (with the column of Theodosius) (Brandes 2005, 456–458). The real background to these strange actions by the inhabitants of Constantinople lies in a Byzantine apocalypse: The Last Vision of the Prophet Daniel, in which one may read that Gog and Magog, the apocalyptical peoples (Brandes 2012), would enter the “city of seven hills” (i.  e. Constantinople) and slaughter its inhabitants. Then, the bous (i.  e., the Forum Bovis, with a sculptured ox head) would cry and the Xerolophos (one of the hills) would repine, until a voice from heaven would shout: “Stop it; peace shall be with you […]. You will found a man, take him and crown him as emperor. Four angels will crown him in the church of Hagia Sophia. They will give him a sword saying, ‘Be strong and defeat your enemies’  ” (scil. the Ismaelites [Muslims], Ethiopians, Franks, Tatars, etc.) (Schmoldt 1972, 130–132; Brandes 2005, 457–458; Kraft 2018). We see here, therefore, one of the rare examples where apoism had a visible impact on the “real world” – of course, in a highly extreme situation. In certain apocalyptical texts, especially in the Vision of Daniel on the Last times and the End of the World (Kraft 2018; Schmoldt 1972, 202), in the Vision of (the Monk) Daniel on the Heptalophos (= Constantinople) (Schmoldt 1972, 190), in an Armenian Daniel-apocalypse (Kalemkiar 1892, 237; cf. DiTommaso 2014) and in the apocalypse of the Life of Andrew the Fool (Rydén 1995, 268) from the tenth century, appears a special figure, the meirakion (“youngling”, young man), who plays a highly negative role in the events of the last days (Brandes 2007a, 254; Brandes 2008, 190–192). The Last Vision of the Prophet Daniel, written after 1261 (Brandes 2007b, 84; cf. Kraft 2018), identified the meirakion probably with Alexios IV, who played such a negative role in the events of the Fourth Crusade, and was indeed very young in 1203/1204 (Schmoldt 1972, 126). This apocalyptical figure (the meirakion) was even used as a mean of propaganda against Emperor Manuel I during a coup d’état (Brandes 2008, 190).

Techniques and Manifestations The calculation of the end of the world and time has a long history in Byzantium (Alexander 1985; Pertusi 1988; Brandes 1990; Magdalino 1993; Brandes and Schmieder 2008). The interpretation of the present as the end of time, as the last period of human history by groups of people or individuals, one finds throughout Byzantine history. Frequently, the real nature of the event found in our sources is unclear – an isolated phenomenon (speculations of individuals) or one that involved a huge number of people.

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Daniel’s interpretation of the dream of the Babylonian ruler, Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 2:32–35), as a symbol for the four world kingdoms resulted in the identification (beginning in the second or third century with Hippolytus of Rome and Tertullian) of the last kingdom with the Roman (= Byzantine) Empire. This is the kernel of the so-called “Reichseschatologie” (eschatology of empires), one of the main elements of the self-conceptions of the Byzantines (Podskalsky 1972, 1983). Also of importance was the prediction by the prophet Ezekiel (Ezek. 38:2–3 of the invasion of the apocalyptical peoples, the Gog and Magog, coming from the North (from the Caucasus) (Brandes et al. 2016). Of central importance were the verses of the so-called synoptic apocalypse of the New Testament (Matt. 24 – Mark 13 – Luke 21). Here, the signs of the coming end are noted. These circumstances were widely known in Byzantium and their usage – e.  g., in historiographical works (Nicetas Choniates, for example [Brandes 2007a])  – implies eschatological thinking. The role of the katechon, the “withholding power”, identified after Hippolytus and Tertullianus (post the second/ third centuries) with the Roman (= Byzantine) Empire, has already been mentioned. This is one of the main kernels of apocalyptical thought. All of these elements of an apocalyptical interpretation of the present age and contemporaneous events function in combination. Magdalino (Magdalino 2003, 239–240) discerned three aspects or methods for calculating the end: 1. “blind dating”, where natural phenomena and human events (moral, politics, etc.) play the most important role. Simplified, one can distinguish a reaction to certain catastrophic events (earthquakes, plague, war, etc.) – all seen as signa/semeia of the imminent end of the world. In addition, the decay of ethical standards – a permanent topic among the preachers and critics of their day – could give individuals or whole groups of people the impression that they are living at the end of time, shortly before the Last Judgement. 2 Tim. 3:2–7 provides a catalogue of the symptoms of a decaying society. The apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius cited this passage in full, seeing within it a “sign” of the Last Days (Aerts and Kortekaas 1998, 160–161). In the Latin bible, the so-called Vulgata, this section begins with the phrase tempora periculosa sunt, a formula with some importance in Carolingian times (Brandes 1997a). Catastrophic events, such as the capture and looting of Constantinople in 1204 as a result of the Fourth Crusade (Laiou 2005; Brandes 2007a), or notably the halosis, the fall of Christian Constantinople to the Muslim Ottomans in 1453, provoked a strong sense of an imminent end (Brandes 2005). 2. As a result of the computation of time, people could be awaiting the end. In addition, gematria (the numerical value of the letters within sacred names) could play a role (see, e.  g., Theophanes and his computation of the name “Jesus”) or the major astronomical cycles like the 532-year Easter cycle were used to calculate the end. As noted above, everyone knows that the world (and humankind) has a beginning. God created it in six days. In addition, history (and Christian historiography) also had beginning. History, under the Christian interpretation, was



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the history of salvation, ending with the second Parousia of Christ. Many scholars and less learned individuals attempted to calculate the year (and even the day) when history began, the date of creation. One fact seems certain: the world will exist for (only) 6,000 years, because Psalm 90:4 states with clarity: “For to you (= God) a thousand years are no more than yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night.” In the New Testament, the second letter of Peter (2 Pet. 3:8) agrees that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh (Gen. 2:2). This should mean that the world will exist for six days and, because a day, in the sight of God, equates to 1,000 years, the world should last for 6,000 years. The question of the interpretation of the seventh day (when God rested – the Sabbath) remains. Will there be a seventh millennium? In combination with Rev. 20:2, the so-called Chiliasm originated. It plays an important role in Latin Christianity but, in Byzantium, this was unproblematic, probably because of the restricted recognition of the book of Revelation in Eastern Christianity (Brandes 1997b, 25–26). It seems that the Letter of (Pseudo-)Barnabas (Clavis patrum Graecorum 1050), written around 130/132, is the first known text that refers to the 6,000 years of the world’s existence (ch. XV.3–5). 3. “Dating on the side” is how Magdalino (Magdalino 2003, 240) describes an eschatological chronology that is projected by apocalyptical texts, often in conjunction with sibylline-style oracles and/or biblical-style prophecies. Using the future tense, these apocalypses describe coming events (emperors of the future, the Last Roman Emperor, the destruction of the Roman Empire, the advent of the Antichrist, the coming of Gog and Magog, the Last Judgement), using vaticinia ex eventu.

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts Christ himself has forbidden the counting of the years and the calculation of the end (Matt. 24:36 = Mark 13:32). Paul, too, in his first letter to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 5:1–2), emphasized this. Nevertheless, in every Christian century, attempts have been made to identify the date when the world was created (i.  e. the number of years before the time of the calculator) or the date when it will end, after 6,000 years (i.  e. the number of years for which the world will remain). Of special importance was the date of the birth of Christ, the incarnation, in the framework of the 6,000 years for which the world would last. Nevertheless, frequently, catastrophic events (earthquakes, wars, inundations, plagues, etc.) or astronomical phenomena (eclipses of sun or moon, comets) inspired authors to “produce” prophesies – mainly regarding the imminent end of the world. However, the Byzantines were obsessed with calculating the time. There are some “dangerous” years in the long Byzantine history when the calculations produced a situation in which the sense of awaiting the end of time was heightened.

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Of special significance – also for our understanding of general history – is the one world era, according to which the terrifying 6,000 years for which the world would last would end ca. 500 (Meier 2003). Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235), who wrote the highly influential book, De Antichristo (Clavis patrum Graecorum 1872), in his commentary on the book of Daniel in the Old Testament, dated the birth of Christ to the year when the world had existed for 5,500 years (cap. IV., 22–24; Brandes 1997b, 28–29). He prefers a “symbolic” reckoning of time. According to Rev. 17:10 and Ex. 25:10, the ark of the covenant is 2½ cubits long, 1½ wide and 1½ high, making a combined total of 5½, which he equated with the middle of the last millennium, ca. 500, according to our time reckoning. Writing in ca. 200, this meant that the world would end in ca. 300 years – an extension to the usual more imminent ending from the individuals’ perspective. (Sextus) Julius Africanus is another important historian of late antiquity (d. after 240) who dated the incarnation of Jesus Christ to the 5,500th year since the beginning of the world (Wallraff 2007, XXIII–XXIX). His influence on the later historiographical tradition was enormous. He has been called the “forefather of Byzantine historiography” and his system of dating was well known. In addition, the historian Annianus from Alexandria, who wrote a (now lost) world history (from Adam to 407), dated the birth of Christ to 5,500/5,001 years since the world began. His history was used ca. 800 in the chronographia of Georgius Syncellus – so we know of this work (Brandes 1997b, 29). At the same time (around 400) Panodorus, a monk from Egypt, also wrote a world chronicle (beginning with the creation). He dated the nativity of Christ to 5493 anno mundi. Georgius Syncellus cites several fragments of his history, so we learned of his chronological system (Brandes 1997b, 30). In the fourth and fifth centuries, the knowledge that the dangerous year of 6000 was at hand and can find widespread evidence of this in all kinds of sources from this time (all examples after Brandes 2007a). Thus, already Lactantius (d. ca. 330) wrote in his Divinae institutiones (before 313) that there were only 200 years remaining before the end of the world. Sulpicius Severus believed, around 400, that the appearance of the Antichrist was imminent, or, according to the holy Martin of Tours, that he was already born. One can find countless examples from the fourth- and fifth-century literature. Therefore, as another example, in a commentary on the Hexaemeron (Pseudo-Eustathius of Antioch), the resurrection of Christ is dated to 5531 years since the world began, placing his birth in 5500 or 5501. Similar was the computation of Quintus Julius Hilarianus, an African bishop (ca. 397), who dated the resurrection to 5530. In addition, the Syrian literature of the time knew the end in ca. 500. Therefore, the famous Cave of Treasures dated the incarnation to ca. 5.500 (Brandes 1997b, 31 – here in footnote 47 more examples from the Syrian literature). This is of special interest because it was one of the main sources of the prominent apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius which adopted the chronological system (seven millennia) of this text (Reinink 1993, XXX– XXXI). In addition, the Latin literature knows this dating. Therefore, for example, in one version of the Latin Evangelium Nicodemi is also the “calculation” of Hippolytus of Rome regarding the duration of the world according to the measurement of the ark



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of the covenant noted. In addition, the church father Methodius of Olympus knows this (Brandes 1997b, 31–32). Prominent as proof of the awaiting of the end of the world is one text, only published in 1967 (Alexander 1967), the so-called Oracle of Baalbek. Using an older sibylline prophecy from the end of the fourth century (ca. 378–390; the Tiburtine Sibyll, later [ninth or tenth century] translated into Latin and very important for the eschatological thinking in the West), an unknown author in ca. 502–506 wrote an apocalyptical text, which described present events (wars with the Persians, natural phenomena). These were, for him, clear signs of the end of time (Meier 2003, 67–72). Another apocalyptical text, the Seventh Vision of Daniel (Kalemkiar 1892; Brandes 1990, 310; DiTommaso 2014), only preserved in Armenian (the original Greek version is lost), seems to share strong similarities with the Oracle of Baalbek. In addition, a Very Short Chronicle, preserved in the so-called Theosophie of Tübingen from the end of the fifth century, mentioned explicitly the imminent end of the sixth millennium (Brandes 1997b, 55–56). In some historiographical works, the year 6000 of the world plays a central role (Brandes 1997b, 55–57). The Oracle of Baalbek described the ruling emperor Anastasius I (a fellow traveler of miaphysite theology that stimulated considerable trouble and civil uprising) in a manner that recalls the existing descriptions of the Antichrist! Especially the eyes of the emperor – one green and the other blue (hence he is called díkoros [“having a double pupil”]) – recalls the Antichrist (Brandes 1997b, 57–61). Here, we can see how the use of apocalyptical topoi and symbols results in heavy criticism of the ruling emperor. In the sixth century, when the year ca. 500 (as the year 6000 of the world, foretold by Hippolytus) came and went without incident, various people attempted to offer a recalculation. Some decided that Christ was born in the year 6000 of the world (Podskalsky 1972, 92). The (regrettably only surviving as fragments) world history of Hesychius of Milet is the first text where this computation appears (Dindorf 1832). With the name of Hippolytus, a (probably eighth century) text was found in some manuscripts. Here, the 1000 years of Rev 20 have been added to the year of the journey of Christ to hell (in the year 5533 of the world) which equated to 6534, or 1034 according to our calculation of time. Then Satan would be free. A certain monk named Theophanes wrote, in the eighth century, a text entitled Chronological Composition on the Consummation of the Age or of the World (von Dobschütz 1893; Podskalsky 1972, 97; Magdalino 1993, 23 and 25; Brandes 2000, 460; Brandes 1990, 308 and footnote 2). He added the numerical value of the name Jesus (Ἰησοῦς/Iēsoûs), 888, to Jesus’ date of birth and so arrived at the year AM 6388 (= 880 according to the Byzantine era) as the date of the end of the world. Therefore, the world of his time (710) had only ca. 170 years remaining (von Dobschütz 1893, 550–551). Theophanes believed that Christ was born in the year 5500 of the world, but this year, which led to his recalculation. Later (in the tenth century), his chronology was expanded to include the calculated year of 1000. In chronicles of the tenth century and in the famous De administrando imperio of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, we find two older horoscopes – on the future of

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Islam, separately existent in some manuscripts under the name of (Pseudo-) Stephen of Athens (or Alexandria; beginning of the seventh century), written ca. 775. One version of the horoscope foresees the end of Islam in 987/988, while a later one posited 992 (also 958 is mentioned). One should understand that the end of Islam – the antichristian enemy par excellence – will mark the beginning of the scenario of the last time (the Last Roman Emperor, second Parousia, etc.) (Usener 1914, 266–287; Bekker 1842, 142–143; Bekker 1838, 717; Moravcsik 1967, 80 [XVI,1–12]; see Brandes 1990, 320; Brandes 2009, 335–339; Magdalino 2003, 242–243). This “horoscope” was recorded in several historiographical works too – proof of its relevance and distribution (Brandes 2000, 461). It is significant that all of these calculations were placed in the second half of the tenth century, a time when the year 1000 was approaching, and fear spread throughout many Byzantine circles. Far more important are sources around 1000 when also in Byzantium – not only in the Western Christianity (↗ Möhring, Eschatology Western Christian World, 275–277) – a fear emerged that the world could come to an end. The long-lasting discussion of western mediaevalists on the significance of the terreur de l’an mille is not the subject of these lines. However, it is remarkable that the quantity of evidence from Byzantine sources played no role in these discussions, although many of the relevant sources had been known for more than a century. After the sixth century, when the terrifying year 500 (as the year 6,000 of the world according to Hippolytus, Julius Africanus and others) had passed and the end did not happen, people (learned people, of course) embarked on fresh calculations and began to seek a chronological system. They found ways to add 500 years to the 6,000 years of the world and so the time around 1000 CE became “dangerous”. “Some Byzantines must have continued experiencing eschatological fears and new justifications for these fears were produced” (so Ševčenko 2002, 569). A text called Historia mystica ecclesiastica was attributed, with a high degree of probability, to patriarch Germanos of Constantinople (715–730; d. 733). It has been edited several times (Clavis patrum Graecorum 8023; see Brandes 2000, 458; Ševčenko 2002, 569; Magdalino 2003, 268; Magdalino 2008, 128). This text was well-known in Byzantium (there are many manuscripts; in the ninth century, Anastasius Bibliothecarius translated it into Latin). It includes the statement that “When the bishop blesses the people, it indicates that the future coming of Christ will be in the year 6.500, as shown by the figure ϛφʹ.” The bishop made the sign of the cross over his flock, forming his fingers to indicate the number 6,500, and thus to show that Christ’s Coming would happen in the year 6,500 of the creation. Theophanes (and Nicetas Paphlagon too – see below) added that God, in his philanthropia, has been granted two extra sixtieths to humankind, as one reads in the apocalypse of James, the brother of Christ (von Dobschütz 1903, 550 ll. 25–26). Therefore, he identified the year 6,500 of the world as the date of the second coming of Christ. Nota bene: Today an apocalypse of James where Christ gives the world 2 × 60 years is unknown – but this is no argument against its authenticity (see Brandes 2000, 460–461).



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Another text dating the end of Constantinople to around 1000 (in fact, 1026) is the “horoscope” of the Byzantine capital, the so-called themation. The chronicler George Cedrenus (early twelfth century) reported that the horoscope of the founding of Constantinople was cast by the famous astronomer Vettius Valens at the command of Emperor Constantine the Great (Bekker 1838, 497). He predicted that the city would last for 696 years, until 1026. The historical Vettius Valens lived in the second century! John Zonaras reported the same story in his chronicle (Büttner-Wobst 1907, 14–15). Nevertheless, it seems that a certain Demophilos wrote this horoscope of the city of Constantinople. Certainly, the great earthquake in October 989, when parts of the Hagia Sophia collapsed and apocalyptical fears assaulted the Byzantines, inspired this “horoscope”. Pseudo-Vettius Valens dated the end of the city (what meant the end of the empire) to 1026 (Pingree 1977, 305–315; Brandes 2000, 461–462; Brandes 2011, 316; Magdalino 2003, 242–244; Magdalino 2008, 131). Another text, a Computation of the Years of the End, was published some years ago. Here, the Second Coming of Christ is dated to 1,000 years after his incarnation (Ševčenko 2002, 564–566). A later version of this text (Ševčenko 2002) also names the year 6,500 of the world (ca. 1000) as the time of the end. Podskalsky (Podskalsky 1972, 94; Magdalino 2003, 268–269) found, in a still unpublished Commentary on the Prophets by Basil, metropolitan of Neopatras, written in the ninth or tenth centuries, the opinion that “in the middle of the seventh age the fulfilment” of time will come. The chartophylax of the Hagia Sophia Anthimos wrote several verses on the end of the world in 6533 AM = 1025 CE. If Magdalino’s suggestion that he wrote in 959 (Magdalino 2003, 270) is correct, he belonged to the group who viewed the near future with trepidation (see also Brandes 2000, 462; Podskalsky 1972, 94 and 97). In a manuscript, which is based on a lost original from 995 with a kind of chronicle (connected with different eschatological texts: inter alia excerpts from Pseudo-Methodius, a list of “signs of the Antichrist”, we can notice that “the Antichrist was born, as St. John says (Rev. 20,2–3), 1000 years after the birth of Christ” (Brandes 2000, 462; Magdalino 2003, 269). At the end of the first half of the tenth century (probably in 950), Nicetas (David) Paphlagon wrote two letters (of which fragments survived). As a student of the famous Archbishop Arethas of Caesarea (one of the Byzantine commentators of the Revelation of John), he was known as an important scholar. In two manuscripts, one can find two (closely related) texts. It is the answer to a letter of the “bishops of the West”. Here, Nicetas answered the questions of these western bishops. He shows the different ways in which the end will come 1000 years after Christ (so only 50 years hence), or in 1041. The end of the world is near and the corrupt situation of the church and the empire show this. In a second text, On the End (Perì synteleías), he presented several calculations of the time of the end (Magdalino 2003, 269; Brandes 2000, 456– 457). It is striking that Nicetas wrote at exactly the same time when Adso of Montier-en-Der in France compiled his famous book on the Antichrist for Queen Gerberga (in 954).

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After the year 1000 passed without incident, several Byzantines began to recalculate the date. Of course, Byzantine history after the eleventh century knows also “apocalyptical” events – especially the fall of Constantinople in 1204, when the Christian (!) knights of the Fourth Crusade’s terrifying conquering and pillaging of Constantinople shocked the Byzantines (Brandes 2007a). In the second half of the thirteenth century (1261), Emperor Michael VIII was able to expel the hated Latins from Constantinople and restore the Byzantine Empire – but the state never regained its former importance. The strength of the Ottomans increased and many contemporaries anticipated the end of Byzantium. Nothing happened in the year 6,000 of the world, so the approaching year of 7,000 (= 1492 according to the so-called Byzantine era) was viewed with trepidation. People were forced to acknowledge that they were now living in the seventh millennium. Already the influential Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius knows of seven millennia before the end (because of his Syrian sources, especially the Cave of treasures). In addition, Photius, the learned patriarch of the ninth century, wrote on the coming Last Judgement in the year 7,000 of the world, and some others too (Podskalsky 1972, 94–95; Rigo 1992; Congourdeau 1999; Brandes 2005). After the catastrophe of 1453, the hálosis, the fall of the Christian capital into the hands of the Islamic Ottomans, the Greek people tried to understand what had happened. How could this terrible event be part of God’s plans? Already ca. 1400 CE, when the Ottoman sultan Bajezid had a good chance to capture Constantinople, the ultimate end of the Christian capital of the Byzantine Empire was anticipated. However, the Mongols of Timur Lenk overcame the Ottomans in the battle of Ankara (1402) and saved the Byzantine capital for half a century. However, shortly before this event, someone has written the so-called fourth redaction of the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius. Someone shortened the text, so that, alone, the seventh millennium plays a role (Lolos 1978, 23; Brandes 2005, 455). This text (the older redactions too) became very popular; and we have evidence that, after 1453, Pseudo-Methodius was read by many people. A huge number of manuscripts shows this, together with several published letters from the weeks after the fall of Constantinople (Darrouzès 1964). The “Last Roman Emperor”, the leading figure in the scenario of the last events, who will defeat the anti-christian powers (the Ottomans, of course), gives hope. In this time of great distress for the Christian population, now under the Islamic yoke, this could produce hope and optimism. Therefore, a preoccupation with this kind of eschatological text existed during the long centuries of the Turkokratia. In 1346, there occurred one of the worst earthquakes in Constantinople, and parts of Hagia Sophia crashed to the ground. Alexios Macrembolites, a well-known scholar, wrote a special text on these events and other terrifying signs too (Kourouses 1969/1970; Congourdeau 1999, 57). There followed the Black Death and the corruption of church and society, so Macrembolites found in his time all the signs from the Bible and thought that the end and the Antichrist were near. In addition, around 1453, the interest in understanding the catastrophes inspired the increasing study of the most



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important apocalyptical texts of the Byzantine past – namely, the Pseudo-Methodius-Apocalypse and the many Daniel apocalypses. Indeed, more than 90 % of all manuscripts which contain this kind of texts came from this time – around 1453 and later. In addition, some writings with an oracular character – like the famous Oracles of Leo the Wise – were very popular (Brandes 2012). In short, all kinds of prophecies, oracles and predictions regarding the end of Constantinople existed in the fourteenth and first half of the fifteenth centuries, and little wonder – the Ottomans were standing a few kilometers outside the walls of Constantinople and it was miraculous that the city survived until 1453. Archbishop Symeon of Thessalonica died in 1429 in the Byzantine capital during the siege by the Turks. His main work was a collection of 372 tracts in the form of a dialogue between a bishop and clergyman, but for us are of interest the Eratopokriseis (questions and answers) to Bishop Gabriel of Pentapolius, where he demonstrated that the world would last only 7,000 years (Rigo 1992, 161–162). On the one side, he stressed the words in the New Testament that indicated that only the father knows the time of the end but, on the other side, he sees the corruption within the social relations and in the church and he believes that the end is near. At the same time, Joseph Bryennios (an important family; d. ca. 1431), preacher at the imperial court and enemy of the Latin Church (and its Byzantine friends), officially speaks of the imminent end (two homilies Peri synteleias survived and were edited in 1784 [Rigo 1992, 154–161]). In the time of the emperor, in the Church of the Holy Apostles, he predicted the imminent end. He regards, of course, the year 7,000, as the last year of the world, as far distant, but everybody must take care of his own soul – here we have, mutatis mutandis, the same phenomenon as in the tenth century – the interaction of universal and individual eschatology. In the other homily, read in the palace in the presence of many bishops and courtiers, he explains that the year 7000 will be the end – but this is no catastrophe and one should not be afraid. The second Parousia of Christ will bring about a common change and a new, improved world. Shortly after the year 1271 (or 1274), a certain Kosmas Andritzopoulos (a monk or priest) wrote a letter to the high official Michael Zorianos of the despotes of Epirus (Congourdeau 1999, 68–69). He also saw the end as imminent but, for him, the gates are open for the Antichrist because of the Union of Lyon with the Latin Church in 1274. One should not forget that an eschatological feeling also resulted from the political (or social or economic) conditions. They could, of course, interact with the calculation or explain this kind of computation. There are more sources of this kind from the fourteenth century, e.  g. Gregory Palamas or Theodore Melitenos (Rigo 1992, 171). Scholars directed special attention to the learned patriarch Gennadius Scholarius who was an eyewitness of the halosis of 1453 and later (1456/1457, 1463, and 1464/1465) of Constantinople under Ottoman rule (Blanchet 2008). It is little surprise that he believed that his time would end soon, in 1492. Already before 1453 and after the halosis he expressed this opinion in several texts (Congourdeau 1999, 69–97; Kraft 2018). Especially in his Chronographia from 1462 – to mention only one example – he calculated exactly all dates of relevance (the

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birth of Christ, the 6000th or 6500th year of the world) and his result was clear: the world would end in the year 7,000 of the world = 1492 (Congourdeau 1999; Blanchet 2008, 132). Also, in his Letter on the Capture of Constantinople (Blanchet 2008, 131–133) or in the Refutation of the Errors of the Jews, he emphasized that the end was near, in 1492. However, in 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered a new world, America{, and the old world exists until now. In Byzantium – like all Christian societies – eschatological belief formed part of the general interpretation of the world and its history. Based on the Bible and apocryphal texts especially, the many apocalypses (Kraft 2018) exerted a considerable influence. Nevertheless, one should observe the general phenomenon that eschatological interpretations, etc., did not appear openly in the “high” literature. These texts may have been seen by the ecclesiastical and political authorities as criticism of the existing society (Brandes 1991)? Only with great labor can one find in the texts of the great theologians and historians and in the many letters or poems, traces of this thinking. In addition, the manuscript tradition shows some peculiarities, unlike the manuscript traditions of the “normal” literature: the majority of the manuscripts are very late (often after 1453). It seems that the “official” texts are following the interests of the church and state – they have seen eschatological thinking as a threat to social order. Eschatology (and apocalyptical texts) had – in the eyes of church and state – the potential to criticize the social structure and power of the existing institutions. It is surprising that, in some critical situations, the historical texts show no sign of an eschatological interpretation. The texts presented here are exceptions – but the simple fact that they exist is proof that eschatological thinking was present in Byzantium during every period.

Selected Bibliography Aerts, Willem J., and Georgius A.A. Kortekaas (eds.). Die Apokalypse des Pseudo-Methodius. Die ältesten griechischen und lateinischen Übersetzungen, I. Einleitung, Texte, Indices Locorum et Nominum (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 569; Subsidia 97). Louvain, 1998. Alexander, Paul J. The Oracle of Baalbek: The Tiburtine Sibyl in Greek Dress (Dumbarton Oaks Studies 10). Washington, D.C., 1967. Alexander, Paul J. The Byzantine Apocalyptical Tradition (ed. with an Introduction by Dorothy de F. Abrahamse). Berkeley et al., 1985. Blanchet, Marie-Hélène. Georges-Gennadios Scholarios (vers 1400 – vers 1472). Un intellectuel orthodoxe face à la disparition de l’Empire byzantine (Archives de l’Orient chrétien 20). Paris, 2008. Brandes, Wolfram. “Die apokalyptische Literatur.” Quellen zur Geschichte des frühen Byzanz (4.–9. Jahrhundert). Bestand und Probleme (Berliner Byzantinistische Arbeiten 56). Eds. Friedhelm Winkelmann and Wolfram Brandes. Berlin, 1990. 305–322, 367–370. Brandes, Wolfram. “Endzeitvorstellungen und Lebenstrost in mittelbyzantinischer Zeit (7.–9. Jahrhundert).” Varia III (Πoικίλα Bυζαvτιvά, 11). Bonn, 1991. 9–62.



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Brandes 1997a Brandes, Wolfram. “Tempora periculosa sunt. Eschatologisches im Vorfeld der Kaiserkrönung Karls des Großen.” Das Frankfurter Konzil von 794. Kristallisationspunkt karolingischer Kultur, I: Politik und Kirche. Ed. Rainer Berndt. Mainz, 1997. 49–79. Brandes 1997b Brandes, Wolfram. “Anastasios ὁ δίκoρoς. Endzeiterwartung und Kaiserkritik in Byzanz um 500 n. Chr.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 90 (1997): 24–63. Brandes, Wolfram. “Liudprand von Cremona (Legatio cap. 39–41) und eine bisher unbeachtete west-östliche Korrespondenz über die Bedeutung des Jahres 1000 a.  D.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 93 (2000): 435–463. Brandes, Wolfram. “Der Fall Konstantinopels als apokalyptisches Ereignis.” Geschehenes und Geschriebenes. Studien zu Ehren von Günther S. Henrich und Klaus-Peter Matschke. Eds. Sebastian Kolditz and Ralf C. Müller. Leipzig, 2005. 453–470. Brandes 2007a Brandes, Wolfram. “Konstantinopels Fall im Jahre 1204 und ‘apokalyptische’ Prophetien.” Syriac Polemics. Studies in Honour of Gerrit Jan Reinink (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 170). Eds. Wout Jacques van Bekkum, Jan Willem Drijvers, and Alex C. Klugkist. Louvain et al., 2007. 239–259. Brandes 2007b Brandes, Wolfram. “Die Belagerung Konstantinopels 717/718 als apokalyptisches Ereignis. Zu einer Interpolation im griechischen Text der Pseudo-Methodios-Apokalypse.” Byzantina Mediterranea. Festschrift für Johannes Koder zum 65. Geburtstag. Eds. Klaus Belke et al. Vienna, 2007. 65–91. Brandes, Wolfram. “Kaiserprophetien und Hochverrat. Apokalyptische Schriften und Kaiser­ vaticinien als Medium antikaiserlicher Propaganda.” Endzeiten. Eschatologie in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen (Millennium-Studien 16). Eds. Wolfram Brandes and Felicitas Schmieder. Berlin and New York, 2008. 157–200. Brandes, Wolfram. “Der frühe Islam in der byzantinischen Historiographie. Anmerkungen zur Quellenproblematik der Chronographia des Theophanes.” Jenseits der Grenzen (Millennium-Studien 25). Eds. Andreas Goltz, Hartmut Leppin, and Heinrich Schlange-Schöningen. Berlin and New York, 2009. 313–343. Brandes, Wolfram. “Endzeiterwartung im Jahre 1009 a.  D.?” Konflikt und Bewältigung. Die Zerstörung der Grabeskirche in Jerusalem im Jahre 1009 (Millennium-Studien 32). Ed. Thomas Pratsch. Berlin and New York, 2011. 301–320. Brandes, Wolfram. “Oracula Leonis.” Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History, IV (1200–1350). Eds. David Thomas and Alex Mallett. Leiden and Boston, 2012. 124–127. Brandes, Wolfram, and Felicitas Schmieder (eds.). Endzeiten. Eschatologie in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen (Millennium-Studien 16). Berlin and New York, 2008. Brandes, Wolfram, Felicitas Schmieder, and Rebekka Voß (eds.). Peoples of the Apocalypse. Eschatological Beliefs and Political Scenarios (Millennium-Studies 63). Berlin and Boston, 2016. Clavis patrum Graecorum I–V. Turnhout, 1983–1987; Supplementum (Corpus Chistianorum. Series Graeca), eds. Maurice Geerard and Jean Noret. Turnhout, 1998. Congourdeau, Marie-Hélène. “Byzance et la fin du monde. Courants de pensée apocalyptique sous les Paléologues.” Les traditions apocalyptiques au tournant de la chute de Constantinople (Varia Turcica 33). Eds. Benjamin Lellouch and Stéphane Yérasimos. Paris, 1999. 55–97. Constantine Porphyrogenitus. De administrando imperio. Ed. Gyula Moravcsik. English trans. Romilly J.H. Jenkins (Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 1). Washington, D.C., 1967. Dindorf, Ludwig (rec.). “Ex Hesychii homilia in Natalem Christi.” Chronicon Paschale, II. Bonn, 1832. 116.

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DiTommaso, Lorenzo. “The Armenian Seventh Vision of Daniel and the Historical Apocalypticala of Late Antiquity.” The Armenian Apocalyptical Tradition: A Comperative Perspective. Essays Presented in Honor of Professor Robert W. Thomson on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday (Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha 25). Eds. Kevork B. Bardakjian and Sergio La Porta. Leiden and Boston, 2014. 126–148. von Dobschütz, Ernst. “Coislianus 296.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 12 (1893): 534–567. Eusebius. Chronicon – Die Chronik des Hieronymus (Werke, vol. VII). Ed. Rudolf Helm. 3rd ed. Berlin, 1984. Georgios Kedrenos. Compendium historiarum, 2 vols. Ed. Immanuel Bekker. Bonn, 1838 and 1839. Ioannis Malalas. Chronographia. Ed. Johannes Thurn (Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 35). Berlin and New York, 2000. Ioannis Zonaras. epitomae historiarum libri XIII–XVIII. Ed. Theodor Büttner-Wobst. Bonn, 1907. Iulius Africanus. Chronographiae. The Extant Fragments. Eds. Martin Wallraff with Umberto Roberto and, for the Oriental Sources, Karl Pinggéra. Trans. William Adler (Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte; Neue Folge 15). Berlin and New York, 2007. Kalemkiar, Gregoris. “Die siebente Vision Daniels.” Viennaer Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 6 (1892): 227–240. Kourouses, Stavros I. “Αἱ ἀωτιλήψεις περὶ τῶν ἐσχάτων τοῦ κόσμου καὶ ἡ κατὰ τὸ ἔτος 1346 πτώσις τοῦ τρούλλου τῆς Ἁγίας Σοφίας.” Ἐπετηρὶς Ἡταιρείας Bυζαvτιvῶv Σπoυδῶv 37 (1969/1970): 211–250. Kraft, András. “An Inventory of Medieval Greek Apocalyptical Sources (c. 500 – 1500 AD): Naming and Dating, Editions and Manuscripts.” Millennium 15 (2018): 69–118. Lellouch, Benjamin, and Stéphane Yérasimov (eds.). Les traditions apocalyptiques au tournant de la chute de Constantinople (Varia Turcica 33). Paris, 1999. Leon Grammatikos. Chronographia. Ed. Immanuel Bekker. Bonn, 1842. 1–228. Magdalino, Paul. “The History of the Future and its Uses: Prophecy, Policy and Propaganda.” The Making of Byzantine History. Studies Dedicated to Donald M. Nicol. Eds. Roderick Beaton and Charlotte Roueché. Aldershot, 1993. 3–34. Magdalino, Paul. “Une prophétie inédite des environs de l’an 965 attribué à Léon le Philosophe (Ms Karakallou 14, f. 253r-254r).” Travaux et Mémoires 14 (2002): 391–402. Magdalino, Paul. “The Year 1000 in Byzantium.” Byzantium in the Year 1000 (The Medieval Mediterranean 45). Ed. Paul Magdalino. Leiden and Boston, 2003. 233–270. Meier, Mischa. Das andere Zeitalter Justinians. Kontingenzerfahrung und Kontingenzbewältigung im 6. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Hypomnemata 147). Göttingen, 2003. Pertusi, Agostino. Fine de Bisanzio e fine del mondo. Roma, 1988. Pingree, David. “The Horoscope of Constantinople.” ΠPIΣMATA. Naturwissenschaftsgeschichtliche Studien. Festschrift für Willy Hartner. Eds. Yasukatsu Maeyama and Willy G. Saltzer. Wiesbaden, 1977. 305–315. Podskalsky, Gerhard. Byzantinische Reichseschatologie. Die Periodisierung der ­Weltgeschichte in den vier Großreichen (Daniel 2 und 7) und dem tausendjährigen Friedensreiche (Apok. 20). Eine motivgeschichliche Untersuchung (Münchener Universitätsschriften 9). Munich, 1972. Reinink, Gerrit J (trans.). Die syrische Apokalypse des Pseudo-Methodius (Corpus Scriptorium Christianorum Orientalium 541; Scriptores Syri 221). Louvain, 1993. Rigo, Antonio. “L’anno 7000, la fine del mondo e l’Imperio cristiano. Nota su alcuni passi di Giuseppe Briennio, Simeone di Tessalonica e Gennadio Scolario.” La cattura della fine. Variazioni dell’escatologia in regime di cristianità. Ed. Giuseppe Ruggieri. Genoa, 1992. 151–185.



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Ševčenko, Ihor. “Unpublished Byzantine Texts on the End of the World about the Year 1000 AD.” Travaux et Mémoires 14 (2002): 561–578. Usener, Hermann. “De Stephano Alexandrino.” Kleine Schriften, III. Leipzig and Berlin, 1914. 247–322. Wallraff, Martin (ed.). Julius Africanus und die christliche Weltchronik (Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 157). Berlin and New York, 2006.

Natalie E. Latteri

Jewish Traditions and Expectations in the Medieval World Definitions and Terminology Eschatology, based on the Greek word ἔσχατον, eschaton, or last, is typically defined as the doctrine, or collections of doctrines, regarding “last” or “final” things. As the ordinal nomenclature suggests, scholars of eschatology tend to conceive of last things as future agents, events, and phenomena which collectively punctuate a linear span of human history. Adding nuance to this definition, Moshe Idel has succinctly articulated that there are at least three types of eschaton conceived of within the Judaic tradition: a personal eschaton, as in death, that is followed by either post-mortem reward or punishment; a communal or collective eschaton, as in the decline of a religio-ethnic group or civilization, or the passing of one era to the next; and a cosmic eschaton, manifest in the natural phenomena of earthquakes, blood moons, the death of stars, and more. Idel, Henning Graf Reventlow, Bill T. Arnold, and many other scholars have illustrated that, though gruesome accounts of death and an unpleasant afterlife, and/ or foreboding signs signaling a devastated, blighted environment contribute broadly to Jewish eschatology, these elements are typically subsumed within a fundamentally communal eschatology. More than any other type, communal eschatology reflects the tribalism found in the series of divine covenants in the Hebrew Bible that pertain specifically to God’s Chosen People, alternately known as the Nation of Israel, or simply Israel. In the Hebrew Bible and post-biblical Jewish literature, this unique relationship is often represented as that of a parent-child, sibling, or spouse, in which God is father, brother, and husband – protector and provider – to an infantilized and/or feminized Israel who He loves jealously and above all others. Within the covenant model, God rewards the Chosen People with territory (i.  e., “The Promised Land,” also known as eretz, or the land of, Israel), sovereignty, and prosperity in exchange for fidelity; but He punishes Israel if and when the collective fails to adequately adhere to, or fulfill, the covenant obligations. Communal eschatology is best understood as an extension of this form of covenant theology, or theodicy, in which devastation and decline is perceived as the result of divine retribution for the group’s moral or religious laxity. The gravest transgressions, and those warranting the most severe punishment, include the sins of idolatry and apostasy. For it is these transgressions more than any other that effectually serve as Israel’s rejection of its unique relationship with God, often cast as byproducts of assimilation to foreign culture and religion. In addition to the overlapping of types of eschaton, there also exists a conflation of Israel’s many eras of communal decline within the Judaic tradition that is related https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-012



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in biblical and post-biblical literature, art, artifacts, liturgical commemoration, and ritual practice. Eras of national decline affecting all of Israel include the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the eighth century BCE, the Babylonian conquest of Judah and the destruction of the First Temple in the sixth century BCE, the Seleucid conquest of the descendants of the Judaean exiles who had returned to Israel from Babylon in the second century BCE, Rome’s devastation of Jewish communities and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70, etc. Within the various regional liturgies for the Ninth of Av, a holy day of mourning, each of these eras of national decline is mentioned in conjunction with more localized destruction – such the Rhineland pogroms of 1096 among Ashkenazic Jews and the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 among Sephardic Jews – as if each unique historical juncture were interchangeable in the overarching, ongoing cycle of Israel’s collective retribution for breach of covenant. Further reflecting a fundamentally cyclical conception of history and a conflation of junctures, within the Jewish prophetic and eschatological traditions there is a clear indication that God’s wrath ebbed and flowed in expected ways. When repentant, God would forgive, redeem, and forge a new covenant with Israel to usher in a new “millenarian” era in a wholly repaired world – that is, until the next series of transgressions served to usher in another era of eschatological decline. Millenarism complements eschatology as a doctrine of beginnings. Based on the Latin word millennium, or thousand year span, the concept of millenarism has been understood somewhat differently among varied religious traditions as well as within the Jewish tradition over the years. Medieval and early modern Christian exegetes, for example, might recognize millenarism as the belief in a thousand-year era adjudicated by the Messiah and the saints and characterized by peace and prosperity following the violent end of the previous era. Yet in contemporary scholarship, the conceptualization of millenarism has been altered and expanded. The notion of a clearly delineated, literal, thousand-year rule of the saints has been revised; and scholars such as Robert E. Lerner, Stephen Sharot, and others, now recognize millenarism as the expectation of an imminent, transformative era that would follow the end of the previous wicked era. In this new millenarian age, heaven and earth would cooperate to miraculously redeem the individual, the chosen religious collective, and nature in a form of renovatio mundi or tikkun olam, repair of the world. As encompassing as this new understanding of millenarism is, it should be noted that, in contrast to other religious traditions, and especially Christianity, Jewish millenarism often incorporates, but is not necessarily predicated on, a solitary messianic figure. The Hebrew Bible and post-biblical literature contain a variety of messianic types who contribute to the cyclical quality of Jewish eschatology and millenarism. Biblical messianic types include Moses, who redeemed the Chosen People from bondage in Egypt; King David, the Lord’s anointed ruler over Israel whose ardor for God was unparalleled; David’s relative, Zerubbabel, who governed those once in exiled in Babylon who had returned to Israel and was instrumental in the rebuilding of the Temple; and the so-called “suffering servant” of Isaiah 53 who, it was proph-

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esied, would appear as one who was lowly, despised, and rejected, who would be “wounded for our transgressions; crushed for our iniquities” (Isa. 53:5) as a sin offering and as an intercessor who urged God to redeem Israel. The eschatological and millenarian writings composed by a sect of ascetic Jews around the turn of the Common Era, in and around the caves at Qumran and, as such, known to posterity as the Qumran Scrolls, expand upon biblical messianic ideas and sometimes assign the characteristics of the many messianic types to distinct Messiahs hailing from either royal or priestly lineage, respectively. Tractates codified in the sixth-century Bavli, or Babylonian Talmud, also contain a variety of messianic types as well as debate regarding the identity of the Messiah(s) who would ultimately redeem Israel and usher in the Millenarian era. Sukkah 52a, for example, makes mention of two Messiahs – the Messiah ben Joseph (Messiah of the lineage of Joseph) who would die in the prophesied eschatological battle of Gog and Magog and the Messiah ben David (Messiah of the lineage of David) who would live eternally and redeem Israel. As discussed further below, each of these messianic models contributed to Jewish eschatology and millenarism throughout the Middle Ages.

Written Sources and Artifacts Physical evidence of Jewish eschatological and millenarian beliefs and practices during the Middle Ages is found in a number of extant texts and artifacts. Many of these are based on a combination of older Jewish traditions and a borrowing of the religious traditions of peoples Jews came in contact with or lived among. And most, if not all, reflect some level of awareness of the repetition, or cyclicality, of the rise, efflorescence, decline, and fall of cultures or civilizations of which the eschatological ends and millenarian beginnings are part of. The Hebrew Bible, biblical commentary, rabbinic lore, and apocrypha provided the foundation for all eschatological and millenarian texts composed in or circulated during the Middle Ages. As noted above, the Hebrew Bible conveys the concept of theodicy which contributes to the notion of communal eschatology as punitive. In addition, the prophetic texts contain a common, though evolving, manner of description which led to the development of eschatological and millenarian archetypes and tropes. These include representations of temptation to assimilate as a personified and feminized city; assimilation, and especially idolatry as feminized and sexualized depravity; divine retribution through foreign conquest and domination as an act of, or allusion to, rape; the foreign rulers who had succeeded in these feats as God’s scourge; divine judgment and retribution as a catch-all Day of the Lord or End of Days, precipitated by some combination of natural disaster, plague, and/or pests; and redemption, sometimes led by a suffering servant or a royal, juridical, or priestly Messiah who would resurrect the tzadikim, or righteous ones, who had perished and



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reunite them with the community of Israel. Redemption might also be actualized by, or in collaboration with, a cadre of exceedingly pious individuals urging repentance and a return to piety, known alternately as hasidim, “pious ones,” kedushim, “holy ones,” or bnei ha-or, “the sons of light,” who had successfully fought against and/or resisted the assimilationist bnei beli’al, “sons of worthlessness” and the evil empire they were a part of. Medieval Jewish authors and editors of explicitly eschatological and millenarian texts, as well as authors and editors of texts merely containing eschatological and millenarian ideas, manipulated these prophetic archetypes and applied them to any number of past or future locales, events, and personae. In the process, they flattened time, condensing it to a single point by conflating a variety of eras of decline in Jewish history to illustrate the similarity among these and to urge a tried course of action as a means of advancing yet another millenarian era of redemptive vitality. The most obvious examples of such conflation are found in the texts that would come to be known as apocalypses. Based on the Greek term ἀποκάλυψις, uncovering or unveiling, apocalypses are texts that might reveal any type of esoteric knowledge. The most common sub-genre of apocalyptic literature, however, is that of historical apocalypses. In this class of apocalypse, authors employ pseudonyms and assume the characters of biblical personae of stature while the majority of the “revelations” he or she composes are examples of the literary technique known as vaticinium ex eventu, or “prophecy after the event,” coupled with vague prognostications of what would occur in the near future. Indeed, many historical apocalypses allude to specific scenarios which, and personae who, were instrumental in bringing about a violent end of an era that readers would recognize from their own lifetime. But they also incorporate typical personae (i.  e., an evil ruler and assimilationists contra a Messiah and hasidim, etc.) found in each representation of shifting paradigms while providing suggestions for how to return to, or reestablish, lost eras of vitality through religious reform. In short, the personae, locales, and tropes found in historical apocalypses were based on the authors’ contemporary context, cast in the order of prophetic archetypes from the Hebrew Bible, and influenced by the religious traditions of the broader societies Jews lived within. Because they contain an account of events that had already transpired and impacted their authors’ contemporary reality, historical apocalypses convey a sense of imminence to readers that they were living during the eschatological end and perched on the eve of the millenarian beginning, as foretold by Jewish luminaries of yore. The best known Jewish apocalypse from any era is found in the Hebrew Bible. This originally untitled compilation text known as the book of Daniel borrowed much from its contemporary Hellenistic culture as well as Akkadian and Hebrew prophetic texts composed and compiled centuries earlier. While traditionally considered end-time prophecy, modern biblicists believe Daniel was compiled in the second century BCE by an editor or group of editors in resistance to foreign domination by the Seleucid Empire ruled by Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 BCE), as well as in response to pol-

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icies of appeasement and assimilation implemented by the Jewish elite which made it impossible to adhere to the strictures of the Israelite Temple cult and Jewish religious observance. In it, the editor(s) helped to establish Jewish apocalyptic precedent that included the idea that willingness to die proved the strongest testament to religious fidelity; that the pious of Israel who had been dispersed and thus tested (including the righteous dead) would be gathered to reclaim God’s Promised Land; that the empires that had overtaken Israel, though acting as God’s scourge, were evil for persecuting God’s Chosen People; and that the most evil empire to arise before the eschaton would be headed by an antichrist personae with ‘az panim (Dan. 8:23). This rare descriptor literally means “face of a goat” but is typically translated as meaning “bold” or “fierce of countenance,” or “grim-faced.” The only other place in the Hebrew Bible that ‘az panim is found is in Moses’ Deuteronomic prophecy of the type of nation that would arise to besiege Jerusalem and conquer Israel in the days leading up to the Babylonian Captivity: “a grim-faced (‘az panim) nation showing no respect to the old or favor to the young” (Deut. 28:50). In Daniel, this descriptor is applied to the persona biblicists believe to be Antiochus IV. Through the application of this term, as well as a variety of other literary techniques, Daniel’s editor(s) conflated eschatological periods: the sixth-century BCE era of exile in Babylon; the second-century BCE persecutions under Antiochus; and, if intended to either appear or function as prophecy, another eschaton in the future. As will be discussed further in the Techniques and Manifestations section, some readers of Daniel interpreted the text as a guide to what they believed were the endtime events they were living through. Other readers who might not consider Daniel as prophecy, per se, or those who composed and compiled apocalypses or related genres of literature throughout the Hellenistic and later medieval eras and appear to have recognized and implemented the technique of typological conflation found in Daniel, borrowed and added to the prophetic-apocalyptic archetypes to critique their own contemporary society and call for reform so that they might usher in another millenarian age. Historical apocalypses such as the late-antique Sefer Elijah, “Book of Elijah,” the ca. seventh-century Sefer Zerubbabel, “Book of Zerubbabel,” the ca. ninth-century Pirqe, or “chapters,” of R. Eliezer, as well as the less easily dated eschatological literature depicting the ’Aggadat ha-Masiah, “Legends of the Messiah,” the ’Otot ha-Qets, “Signs of the End,” or the various incarnations of literature depicting the ingathering of the so-called Lost Tribes of Israel and their reclaiming of the Holy Land that circulated widely throughout the duration of the Middle Ages. Typological correlation similar to the eschatological and millenarian conflation found in apocalypses is also prolific in medieval Jewish literature. Examples of this feature in liturgical poetry emerge in the dirges of Ephraim of Bonn (1132–1196), Eliezer bar Joel HaLevi (ca. 1160–1235), and those of many others who aligned both the devastation of their communities during Crusade-era pogroms to that of the patriarch Isaac, who was commonly believed to have actually been sacrificed on Mount Moriah. In the process, the poets promoted the idea that the suffering of their contemporaries



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should bring redemption in the same way that Isaac’s was believed to have ushered in a new era, complete with a new covenant with God. The biblical commentary of the rabbis Solomon ben Isaac (1040–1105) (“Rashi”), Tobiah ben Eliezer (1050–1108), and Samuel ben Meir (ca. 1085–1158) (“Rashbam”) also reflect the extent of eschatological and millenarian conflation. In their respective commentaries on the Song of Songs, Rashi, Tobiah, and Rashbam each interchanged the contemporary transgressive idolatry, apostasy, and assimilation of their coreligionists in the Middle Ages with ancient Israel’s idolatrous erection and worship of the Golden Calf when Moses led God’s Chosen People out of Egypt and each promoted the idea that any form of redemption their contemporaries might enjoy was predicated on Israel’s repentance, much as it had been in Moses’ day. Within texts bearing eschatological and millenarian themes, specific accoutrements often appear as harbingers that the end of one era and the beginning of another was nigh while reflecting the typological conflation characteristic of apocalyptic literature. The most significant of accoutrements within medieval Jewish eschatology and millenarism are the staff of Moses (also known as the Staff of the Patriarchs), the shofar, or “ram’s horn,” and the lost cultic objects associated with the Temple – the Ark of Covenant, the vessel of manna, and the vessel of sacred oil. The compendium of apocalyptic and messianic literature common in the Levant, Spain, and Northern Europe, known as the Sefer ha-Zikhronot, The Book of Memory, carefully compiled by Eleazar ben Asher HaLevi (ca. 1325), suggests that many medieval Jews of an eschatological and millenarian bent believed that the Messiah would wield a staff that had been miraculously preserved since the time of the patriarchs and belonging to other messianic figures in Jewish history who had redeemed Israel in some manner, including Moses, Joshua, and King David. Sometimes this staff was also associated with the flowering rod of Aaron that announced God’s election and redemption and was, according to the biblical account in Num. 17, kept in the Ark of the Covenant for safekeeping. The other artifacts similarly signaled past and future redemption. Within the versions of the Ten Signs, also known as the Signs of the End, as well as various other apocalyptic literature, folklore reconfiguring Christian polemic of the “wandering Jew,” exegesis, midrash, liturgy, and ritual medieval Jews conveyed the belief that the ninth-century BCE prophet Elijah, who (2 Kings 2:11–12) held had ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire, would reappear on earth as the forerunner of the Messiah. The prophet of yore would blow the shofar – the horn associated in antique and medieval exegesis and popular lore with the patriarch Isaac’s individual redemption when his father Abraham bound him as a sacrifice at Mount Moriah, and Israel’s collective redemption through God’s covenants with the patriarchs  – to herald the ingathering of Israel. Elijah would also resurrect the righteous dead and would miraculously reveal the Ark of the Covenant and other Temple vessels that had been lost during previous eras of eschatological decline in Israel’s history and thus implement a path of return to an ideal millenarian era.

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The shofar alone of the above-noted artifacts was actually tangible and used in religious ritual, as will be discussed further below. Other physical artifacts relating to medieval Jewish eschatology and millenarism include the many artistic representations in synagogue paintings throughout the Levant, Spain, and Northern Europe which sometimes depict through horoscopes or astrological symbols the cyclicality of rising and falling eras in conjunction with conflated representations of redemptive and punitive personae, locales, and scenarios found in the Hebrew Bible, such as those found in the sixth-century Levantine Beth Alpha synagogue, the eleventh- and twelfth-century synagogues of Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and their surrounding suburbs, as well as in the thirteenth-century synagogues of Regensburg and Prague. In addition, illuminated manuscripts, especially Passover Haggadah, such as the Golden Haggadah (ca. 1320) of Spain and numerous fifteenth-century Ashkenazi Haggadot (pl. form of Haggadah), relate the story of the Exodus while also reinforcing cyclicality and conflation of periods of devastation and renewal by representing the ancient prophet Elijah blowing the shofar at the time of future redemption.

Techniques and Manifestations The clearest and most ubiquitous techniques employed in Jewish eschatology and millenarism are reflected in specific types of biblical interpretation: gematria and pesher. When employing gematria, an exegete assigns numerical value to letters, words, or verses in the Bible (and sometimes in the Talmud and rabbinic corpus at large) and determines other points within this literature where the numerical value corresponds in efforts to find an esoteric, often eschatological or millenarian, meaning of the original passage in question. In Hebrew, numerals are formed out of alphabet characters. The first character in the alphabet, aleph (‫)א‬, is one, the second character, bet (‫)ב‬, is two, and so on. As such, interpretation of numerical value is wholly connected to interpretation of the text at large. Yet this practice is hardly straightforward as assignment of the numerical value itself is subjectively based on the preferred method of computistics employed by the exegete, and because there are several terms, verses, etc., that might have the same numerical value but which the exegete might choose to interpret far differently for a variety of reasons. Debate regarding interpretation is common in this mode of exegesis, as in every other. An overarching feature, however, is that exegetes practicing gematria tended to claim an epiphany that either they were living during the paradigm shift of eras, or that this turning point would take place in the very near future, within the next generation or so. It should also be noted that the use of gematria during the Middle Ages was often informed by the complimentary eschatological and millenarian techniques of astrology and astral magic, which were especially prevalent among kabbalists in twelfth-century Spain and Provence. Indeed, it was through a fusion of gematria



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and astrology that exegetes in the Rhineland during the second half of the eleventh century (unsuccessfully) prophesied that the Messiah’s advent would transpire sometime between the years 1085 and 1104, and that the Sephardic exegete Abraham Abulafia (again, unsuccessfully) prophesied that he himself was the Messiah who would usher in the new millenarian era beginning in 1290. Distinct from, but sometimes used in conjunction with gematria, when employing pesher, interpreters simultaneously apply any number of allusive references regarding eschatological and millenarian moments from the biblical text and rabbinic corpus to contemporary events. Pesher has been a common form of exegesis since the Hellenistic era at least. The Qumran Scrolls in general, and particularly the text known as the War Scroll, show that members of the ascetic community at Qumran who challenged the governing Jewish elite’s ties to Rome and who had witnessed the Roman destruction of the Second Temple and the siege of Masada (73–74) employed pesher to convey to readers and hearers that they were living through the eschatological battle between the forces of good and evil that had been foretold of by Israel’s prophets. Centuries later, medieval exegetes dispersed throughout the Levantine, Mediterranean, and Northern European regions continued to implement pesher in response to unusual weather, warfare, or any number of foreboding signs they might associate with ancient prophecy. For instance, when depicting inter-communal conflict between Christians, Muslims, and, later, Mongols, or intra-communal conflict between competing groups of Christians and Muslims, rabbis as prominent as the Iraqi Saadia Gaon (882–942) in the sixth chapter of his treatise Sefer ha-Emunot ve-De’ot, Book of Beliefs and Opinions, Rashi in his commentary on Isaiah 25, and many others promoted the idea that contemporary battles were types of the warfare of Gog and Magog prophesied in Scripture, apocalyptic literature, and a variety of rabbinic texts. Some exegetes also employed pesher to assign historical agents the characteristics and functions of specific biblical personae through the application of passages. Such associations were necessarily fluid and based on the exegete’s context. For example, the anonymous mid twelfth-century Northern European exegete who wrote the so-called Chronicle of Solomon bar Samson – an account of the Rhineland pogroms during the First Crusade – associated crusaders with the eschatological antagonists included in Moses’ Deuteronomy prophecy of the Babylonian Exile and Daniel’s depiction of Antichrist by use of the same rare descriptor ‘az panim, face of a goat. In the Sefer Zerubbabel, a seventh-century apocalypse originating in the Eastern half of the Roman Empire, this same descriptor was applied to the emperor Heraclius (610–641), who Jewish communities came to regard as a type of Antichrist. Other exegetes believed they could become types of biblical personae active during the eschatological or millenarian through a combination of pesher, astral and word magic, resurrection incantations, prayer rituals, dances, severe asceticism, and/ or consumption of hallucinogens. Indeed, medieval commentaries on the ancient treatise Sefer Yetsirah, The Book of Creation, attributed to the above-noted tenth-century Iraqi rabbi Saadia Gaon, the twelfth-century Ashkenazi hasidic rabbi Eleazar

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of Worms, the thirteenth-century Pseudo-Saadia, and the early fourteenth-century Sephardic kabbalist Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi, among others, include detailed recipes for how faithful Jews who had attained the heights of esoteric knowledge might become like the prophet Elijah, who Scripture holds had the power to resurrect the dead and who popular lore held would resurrect all of the righteous dead of Israel at the time of redemption, by conjuring a clay homunculi – a golem. Essentially becoming types of Elijah, these adherents of pesher believed that they too could summon the Messiah and thus usher in the millenarian era. In a far humbler and more commonplace practice, medieval Jews would set out a chair for the prophet Elijah at bris ceremonies or a glass of wine at Passover as acts welcoming this forerunner of the Messiah, and thus beckoning the Messiah as well. Manifestation of eschatology and millenarism in general, and employment of the exegetical techniques of gematria and pesher in particular, exist within a broad spectrum of messianic and reform movements, magic, and mysticism developed throughout the course of the Middle Ages. The most pronounced manifestation is found in millenarian (oftentimes deemed “messianic”) movements in which a prophetic figure pronounced a companion to be the Messiah or, less often, that an individual named themselves as the Messiah and led a group to revolt against the leaders of the dominant society or the leaders of the Jewish community who were aligned with the dominant society. Examples of specific messianic movements are discussed further in the Developments section below. Other millenarian movements took the form of eschatological immigration, undertaken in the hopes of amassing a large enough following to revolt, reclaim eretz Israel, hasten messianic redemption, and usher in the millenarian era. The Sephardic philosopher Judah Halevi (1075–1141) was an early advocate of aliya, or Jewish immigration to Israel. He championed the move as one that would usher in messianic redemption in his poetry and philosophical writings, claiming that the messianic city par excellence – Jerusalem – “can only be rebuilt when Israel yearns for it to such an extent that they embrace her stones and dust,” (Halevi, Sefer ha-Kuzari, 5:27). Other prominent Jews scattered throughout the Diaspora shared Halevi’s view and intermittently descended en masse upon the Holy City. In 1211, for instance, approximately 300 rabbis from England, France, Egypt, and North Africa began to migrate in the hopes that their proactive measures might hasten redemption. And at the turn of the fifteenth century through its first four decades, an even larger migration consisting of over a thousand Jews from France, Germany, Spain, Egypt, and North Africa fled widespread diasporic persecution in the hopes of hastening the Messiah, as did their coreligionists in the wake of the Spanish exile of the Sephardic community in 1492. Such claims to messianic authority (identification as the Messiah and/or assertions of the ability to hasten the Messiah’s advent through aliya) were typically made by members of society who bristled at what they perceived to be the assimilationist policies of the leading rabbinate and blamed these leaders’ lenient interpretations and implementations of the legal code that governed daily life and religious ritual,



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Halakhah, as the cause for Jews’ subservient position in diasporic lands occupied by Muslims or Christians. To counter the rabbinate’s authority, the prophet and/ or Messiah figure often shared their esoteric interpretation of Scripture that was informed by gematria or pesher and indicated that the eschatological and millenarian era was nigh, such as was the case in Lyon, France in the 1060s, when a messianic figure arose and leapt from tree to tree as a type of the flying Messiah in the book of Daniel (Dan. 7:13). Other messianic figures or their prophets claimed that an angelic messenger had revealed, or that they had miraculously discovered, an allegedly ancient prophecy – an apocalyptic text – that had been hidden until the appointed time of the end, such as was the case in a movement that developed in Ávila in 1295. The success of these types of millenarian movements varied greatly (i.  e., number of followers, ability to immigrate to Israel or being killed by hostile parties, etc.), but each failed in reaching their ultimate objective of actualizing a paradigm shift to a new era. Another significant manifestation of eschatology and millenarism is found in the mass martyrdoms occurring in several Rhinelandish Jewries during the First Crusade in 1096 and the Second Crusade in 1146, Jerusalem in 1099, Blois in 1171, Troyes in 1288, during the Rintfleisch massacres of 1298, etc., in which a significant number of Jews killed themselves and their loved ones in a practice known as kiddush ha-Shem, Sanctifying the Name [of God]. The numerous contemporary liturgical poems and the three extant ca. early-to-mid twelfth-century Jewish narratives about these acts – the so-called Mainz Anonymous, The Chronicle of Eliezer bar Nathan, and The Chronicle of Solomon bar Samson – employ pesher to align the martyrs to hasidim from other eschatons in Jewish history, including the priests of the First and Second Temple who leapt to their deaths inside the burning structure or impaled themselves; parents who either sacrificed their children like the patriarch Abraham had been called to at the time of the Akedah, or Binding of Isaac; and the youths who slaughtered themselves rather than be sexually and morally defiled by Gentiles, much like the 400 youths in the talmudic tractate Gittin 57b who had proven their religious devotion in the same way. Some accounts of these events suggest that the martyrs performed the acts of murder-suicide because they had been informed by gematria-based prophecy that the Messiah was to come in their lifetimes. Their acts were meant to serve as repentance and restitution for assimilation and proof of their ardor for the divine that they hoped would merit messianic redemption. Messianic movements, immigration to eretz Israel, and mass martyrdoms are the most significant manifestations of Jewish eschatology and millenarism found among medieval Jews. Yet each proved unsuccessful in terms of the tikkun olam perceived as essential in ushering in a new era. Whether as a result of cognizance of such ineffectiveness, a less urgent sense of the imminence of the eschatological-millenarian paradigm shift, less interest or faith in collective rather than personal redemption, or for some other reason, many medieval Jews manifested their eschatological and/ or millenarian beliefs in a variety of other ways as well. These include various mys-

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tical and/or reform movements which, though lacking the same sense of imminence as in millenarian movements and mass martyrdom, shared their goal of curbing the assimilationist tendencies that they believed had resulted in Jewish subservience and in inclining, if not hastening, messianic redemption.

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts Jewish eschatology and millenarism developed and manifested differently depending on the social context. The vast majority of apocalyptic literature that reflected and affected medieval Jewish eschatology and millenarism developed in the Levantine region in the Early Middle Ages (ca. 500–1000) against the backdrop of a declining Roman Empire and an ascending Dar-al Islam. The personae, tropes, and scenarios reflect a heritage of Jewish apocalyptic as well as a variety of inter-confessional cultural contact. These texts did not find their way to Northern Europe until approximately the eleventh century as a result of heightened trade and pilgrimage routes. Once there, apocalypses began to take on some of the cultural mores of the surrounding Jewish-Christian culture as well, including religious polemic reflecting debates from the High Middle Ages (1000–1300) regarding the virginal status of Jesus’ mother, Mary, or what the Lost Tribes might look like, etc. This literature permeated culture and impacted millenarian movements in early eighth-century Syria headed by Abū ‘Isa and his disciples, Yudghan and Mushka. Collectively, these called for specific inter- and intra-communal religious reforms, which included a strict adherence to the Law of Moses and a rejection of post-biblical rabbinic exegesis, abstaining from meat and wine, and mystical rather than literal interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. They also called for new and more vigorous prayer rituals. And, perhaps most significantly, anti-assimilation in the form of violent attempts to overthrow the current foreign powers and the Jews who sympathized with them. Indeed, Abū ‘Isa, was so influenced by the apocalyptic lore that he is believed to have gone searching for the Lost Tribes to ask for their aid in battling foreign powers to retake the Holy Land. As with the migration of apocalyptic texts, messianic movements also began to emerge in Europe beginning in the eleventh century. In his Letter to Yemen, Maimonides described the failed early messianic movements in Lyon during the 1060s and in Córdoba ca. 1100. The vast majority of the other medieval messianic movements were concentrated in the Mediterranean. Before the expulsion from Spain in 1492, there were no fewer than five movements that were headed by a messianic figure active in Spain or by a Jew of Sephardic descent. There were two in the region of Castile in 1295, one in Ávila and another in Ayllon; one in Burgos and another in Palencia in 1391; and another emerging in Barcelona in 1271, related to a foment in Sicily in 1290, both of which were headed by the Sephardic messianic mystic Abraham Abulafia.



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In the aftermath of the Spanish expulsion, a number of millenarian movements arose among exiles living in Italy out of disparate hopes and rumors that the Lost Tribes were on the move to gather the exiles and reclaim eretz Israel. Don Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508) claimed that messianic redemption would begin in 1503 and be completed in 1531, in which the millenarian era would commence. An Ashkenazic Jew, Ascher Lamlein, lived near Venice and inspired another Italian messianic and reform movement in 1502 in which he assured his followers redemption would occur in six months if they but adequately repented their sins, reformed, and prepared themselves for the Messiah’s advent. When these dates signaling the beginning of redemption had passed, Eliezar ha-Levi (1460–1529) pushed the eschatological-millenarian era forward just a few more years, claiming it would begin in 1522 and that redemption in the new era would come to fruition in 1530. Finally, David Reubeni (1490–1535) and Solomon Molcho (1500–1552) headed especially interesting messianic movements in the late 1520s through early 1530s that involved convincing Christian rulers they were a prince of one of the Lost Tribes and Messiah, respectively, and that Christian princes should arm Jews to help fight off impending threat from foreign. A few other millenarian movements would round out the Italian century of messianism in the 1560s/ 1570s. The reasons for the emergence of messianic movements vary but, as Yonina Talmon, Stephen Sharot, and other scholars have noted, there were usually a combination of factors including oppression, disruption, beliefs, and charismatic leadership. So, for instance, a messianic movement was likely to arise when Jews felt especially oppressed by the dominant culture or assimilationist Jews who attempted to appease them, when there was some type of battle between members of the dominant culture and another group or blight which left them vulnerable so that Jews might resist and revolt, when Jews were primed to think of the natural world in eschatological-millenarian tropes, or when charismatic leader or leaders arose to spur reform as a means of redemption. Why these messianic movements occurred in the Levant and Mediterranean far more often than in Northern Europe remains both debated and unclear, as does the proliferation of mass martyrdom as a manifestation of eschatological-millenarian thought in the North, and the more evenly dispersed messianic immigration mentioned above.

Medieval Classifications and Discussions The majority of terms and certainly the concepts mentioned in the above pages were discussed at length by medieval Jews. The Jewish Community would have been wellversed in the importance of eretz Israel as a testament of God’s covenant with His people and the underlying tenet that their shortcomings incurred God’s wrath and ushered in periods of decline while their fidelity inclined God’s benevolence and

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resulted in prosperity and peace. Medieval Jews would also have been familiar with the idea of a Messiah, and likely at least two of the most common messianic figures – the Messiah ben David and the Messiah ben Joseph – who appeared in esoteric texts as well as popular lore. To this point, there is no denying a distinction between the eschatological and millenarian practices and beliefs among the educated elite and those less trained. The common people, for instance, may not have been aware of gematria and pesher, or, if they were, likely did not know how to employ these techniques, but the rabbinic class certainly was. However, even among this elite subset of the population, there was a deep chasm in both practice and understanding of eschatology and millenarianism. A notable example, and an exception to shared medieval terminology or conceptualization, is that there was not a clear understanding of “apocalypse” or the “apocalyptic genre” and how it worked as something distinct from “prophecy” – at least not among the majority of rabbis. For instance many medieval rabbis, including Rashi, considered the Sefer Zerubbabel as prophecy. It was only the authors and/ or editors of this text and others like it who appear to have been fully cognizant of their use of pseudonym and vaticinium ex eventu, which they adopted in efforts to bring about a reformed society and a repaired world – tikkun olam. The same may be said for the slew of Messiahs and messianic movements and, to some extent, the architects of mass martyrdom. For the function, if not the technique and manifestations of eschatology and millenarianism, appears to have been synonymous across space, time, and implementation, even if only grasped by a few.

Selected Bibliography Aescoly, Aaron Ze’ev. Jewish Messianic Movements. Jerusalem, 1988 [Hebrew]. Alexander, Philip S. “The Evil Empire: The Qumran Eschatological War Cycle and the Origins of Jewish Opposition to Rome.” Emanuel: Studies in the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls, in Honor of Emanuel Tov. Eds. Shalom M. Paul et al. Leiden, 2003. 17–31. Benmelech, Moti. “The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel in Early Modern Jewish Eyes.” Zion 77 (2012): 491–527 [Hebrew]. Berger, David. “Three Typological Themes in Early Jewish Messianism: Messiah Son of Joseph, Rabbinic Calculations, and the Figure of Armilus.” Association for Jewish Studies Review 10.2 (1985): 141–164. Boyarin, Daniel. Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism. Stanford, 1999. Collins, John J. (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature. Oxford, 2014. de Lange, Nicholas Robert Michael. “Jewish Attitudes to the Roman Empire.” Imperialism in the Ancient World. Eds. Peter D. A. Garnsey and C. R. Whittaker. Cambridge, 1978. 255–281. Friedländer, Saul, Gerald Holton, Leo Marx, and Eugene Skolnikoff (eds.). Visions of Apocalypse: End or Rebirth? New York, 1985. Grossman, Avraham. “Jerusalem in Jewish Apocalyptic Literature.” The History of Jerusalem in the Early Muslim Period, 638–1099. Eds. Joshua Prawer and Haggai Ben-Shammai. 295–310. Jerusalem, 1996.



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Hanson, Paul D. The Dawn of the Apocalyptic: The Historical and Sociological Roots of Jewish Apocalyptic Eschatology. Second Edition. Philadelphia, 1979. Himmelfarb, Martha. The Apocalypse: A Brief History. Chichester, 2010. Himmelfarb, Martha. Jewish Messiahs in a Christian Empire: A History of the Book of Zerubbabel. Cambridge, MA, 2017. Idel, Moshe. “Jewish Apocalypticism 670–1670.” The Continuum History of Apocalypticism. Eds. Bernard McGinn, John J. Collins, and Stephen J. Stein. New York, 2003. 344–379. Lenowitz, Harris. The Jewish Messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights. Oxford, 1998. Marcus, Joel. “Modern and Ancient Jewish Apocalypticism.” The Journal of Religion 76, 1 (1996): 1–27. Morgenstern, Arie. Hastening Redemption: Messianism and the Resettlement of the Land of Israel. Oxford, 2006. Paul, Shalom M., Robert A. Kraft, Eva Ben-David, Lawrence A. Schiffman, and Weston W. Fields (eds.). Emanuel: Studies in the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls, in Honor of Emanuel Tov. Leiden, 2003. Reeves, John C. Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic: A Postrabbinic Jewish Apocalyptic Reader. Atlanta (Society of Biblical Literature), 2005. Saperstein, Marc (ed.). Essential Papers on Messianic Movements and Personalities in Jewish History. New York, 1992. Scholem, Gershom. The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality. New York, 1971. Schwartz, Dov. Studies on Astral Magic in Medieval Jewish Thought. Trans. David Louvish and Batya Stein. Leiden, 2004. Segol, Marla. Word and Image in Medieval Kabbalah: Interpreting Diagrams from the Sefer Yetsirah and its Commentaries. New York, 2012. Silver, Abba Hillel. A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel. New York, 1927. Walls, Jerry L. (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology. Oxford, 2007.

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Traditions and Expectations in the Medieval Islamic World Definitions and Terminology Al-salām ‘alaykum (Peace be upon you) is a widely recognisable greeting formula shared by all Muslims. In paradise believers will be greeted with “Peace” (Q. 14:23), therefore to salute with peace is the ultimate expression of wishing a person success in fulfilling their God-prescribed duties in this world (dunyā) in order to be rewarded with eternal peace in the hereafter (ākhira). The Quran’s insistence on human accountability in the afterlife makes the belief in the reality of the hereafter a constituent of the Islamic faith (īmān) with faith in God, his angels, his messenger Muḥammad and his books. Dunyā covers a range of meanings with spatial connotations referring to life in this world, to the earth and to the lifespan of individuals in it. In this world human action is tested in view of the afterlife. The Islamic conception of history, where time begins with Adam’s fall from the primordial garden, shows that dunyā and ākhira are interdependent realms. Ākhira encompasses both spatial and temporal connotations, implying a cosmological otherness and an ending that inaugurates a realm of eternal existence beyond our time and space. However, since dunyā and ākhira have been created by God at the same time, glimpses of the ākhira can be gained while in the dunyā. In the ākhira God’s power of creation is in full display with the re-creation of human beings as total living bodies after the Hour (al-sā‘a), a cosmic event that marks the destruction of the earth. The resurrection (qiyāma) performed by God after the apocalypse is not intended to generate a new natural and social order but rather as the return (ma‘ād) to the original state of God’s creation (mabdā’) of pre-Adamic fall that completes God’s plan for all creation. With neither the Quran nor other texts in Islamic literature presenting a systematic “from-death-to-resurrection” explanation, the following represents a somewhat artificially reconstructed sequence of eschatological events based on the collation of the most widely accepted views. The cosmic death of the Hour is preceded by the death of each individual according to a God-predetermined fixed term (ajal musammā). Death determines the end of an individual’s involvement in the dunyā and the entrance in the ākhira. The intermediate time and place where the deceased awaits for resurrection came to be known as barzakh, a liminal place that came to be identified as the grave where the deceased is thought to experience some kind of life. According to the Quran at death the soul comes up the dying’s throat in a flooding-in-like process. What happens immediately before and after this point, the Quran does not explicitly say and it was left to medieval Muslim scholars to fill the epistemological gaps. After death, the deceased in the grave is challenged by the angel of death, ‘Izrā’īl who, forty https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-013



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days before a person’s death, receives a sign indicating the individual designated to die. At departure the soul (nafs) or the spirit (rūḥ) will be relinquished. Upon leaving the faithful’s body, the soul is collected by angels who will ascend seven heavens until reaching nearness to God. By contrast, the unworthy soul, guided by the angel Daqyā’īl unsuccessfully attempts to make the same climb. The description of the soul’s foretaste of heaven echoes aspects of Muḥammad’s ascension (mi‘rāj) story, following his night journey (isrā’). In the story one night the angel Gabriel woke up Muḥammad, made him mount a winged horse called Burāq and flew together in the space of a night form Mecca to the furthest mosque (al-masjid al-aqsā), typically identified by exegetes with Jerusalem. From there Muḥammad climbed a ladder, saw hell, fainted and then ascended seven heavens. Finally Muḥammad had an audience with God, who confirmed him as his prophet. The Quran insists on the dead enduring punishment in the grave. In time the belief developed that two angels appear to the buried deceased to question them about the content of their faith. Munkar and Nakīr are not mentioned by name in the Quran and only rarely in canonical prophetic traditions (ḥadīths). Their questioning determines the deceased’s intermediate state while awaiting resurrection. Both the faithful and faithless suffer some form of pressure (ḍaghṭ) in the grave, with the unbelievers undergoing more severe pain. To the majority of Muslims the punishment of the grave is a reality. According to ḥadīths those who die in the cause of Islam, prophets but also those who die as a result of diseases like dysentery and the plague or specific accidents like being crushed by a falling wall are martyrs assured to go straight to paradise. Islam espouses therefore the belief in a judgement in the grave and a second one on day of resurrection which will sanction the final abode for every person. This cosmic event will be preceded by the appearance of signs (ishārāt al-sā‘a). There is no hint in the Quran about when the eschaton will take place, a secret only known to God. One can evince from the sacred scripture though that the resurrection will be preceded by cataclysmic events and great massacres (al-malḥama al-kubrā) that will upset both natural and social orders. Figures will appear such as the Antichrist al-Dajjāl and the monsters Gog and Magog. The Mahdī – a messianic figure – will play a determinant part in sealing the ultimate triumph for the Muslim community. It is around the Mahdī and speculations about the time of his appearance that Islamic chiliasm developed, particularly among Shi‘is. In Shi‘i Islam the belief in the appearance of this figure is linked to the doctrine of occultation (ghayba) their imam, a religio-political leader from the progeny of ‘Alī, Muḥammad’s cousin and son-in-law and first of a line Shi‘i imams. One Shi‘i group fixed the start of this major occultation with the disappearance of the twelfth Imam (hence Twelvers), whose return as the Mahdī they await to this day. Another Shi‘i faction fixed the start of this occultation with the son of the seventh Imam Ismā‘īl (hence Seveners or Isma‘ilis). An alternative term for the Mahdī is Qā’im, “he who will rise” but “the Resurrector” when used in broad Shi‘i context. Al-Dajjāl and the Mahdī are not mentioned in the Quran where the only messianic echo is in

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masīḥ, Messiah, referring to Jesus. While conventionally used, it should be noted that terms such as millenianism and messianism in a Judeo-Christian sense do not always match the Islamic understanding of the awaiting for a saviour at the end of the world. In the case of messianism, for example, the salvific role of the Islamic Mahdī bears little relation to that ascribed to the Messiah in Judeo-Christianity. Nevertheless, the idea of expecting a saviour at the end of time shows common ground with the Judeo-Christian tradition as well as Zoroastrian beliefs in the advent of the salvific Saoshyant. Other signs of the imminent eschaton include: the sun rising from west; the triple eclipse of the moon; smoke and the manifestation of Jesus in either Damascus or Jerusalem. It is unclear whether Jesus and the Mahdī are to be considered as same figure. Regardless, the role of Jesus is to kill al-Dajjāl, to break the cross and decimate all the Christians, thus inaugurating a period of peace before the Hour when Islam will prevail. After these signs, the angel Isrāfīl will blow his trumpet (ṣūr) upon God’s command. At the first blow the order of nature will be disrupted. A second blast will trigger the final extinction of everything except God. Then God initiates the process of resurrection by opening water streams from which new life will originate. God will reassemble the bodies, re-join them with their souls and will bring them forth for the final reckoning (ḥiṣāb). The process of bodily resurrection culminates in the terrifying gathering (al-maḥshar), standing before God. At this point the actual judgement will start, with God revealing to the individuals their final fate. The Quran refers many times to the balance (mīzān), an important ākhira reality whose purpose is to weigh human responsibilities. The weight of deeds will affect the resurrected individual’s ability to cross the bridge (ṣirāt) unscathed on their way to their final consignment. The faithful will go swiftly across led by Muḥammad whose intercession (shafā‘a) has taken place at a pond (ḥawḍ) of milk and honey mentioned in the ḥadīths. From the ninth century, for Shi‘is, ‘Alī acquired the role of the great intercessor. All good and repenting believers will have the possibility of being saved except the mushrikūn and kāfirūn, that is those who refuse to testify to God’s absolute oneness (tawḥīd) and its deniers. The unforgivable nature of this sin is the only point on which all Muslim thinkers agree. After the test of the bridge, the resurrected bodies will be consigned to either the Garden (al-janna) or the Fire (al-nār). Hell was understood to be in layers, with Jahannam at the top of sequence of conically descending circles ending with the terrible Zaqqūm tree. Beside the angel Mālik, al-zabāniyya angels guard the Fire’s gates and their purpose is to torture its residents. The Garden instead was conceived as an upward cone of seven (or eight) heavens (samāwāt). Terms for paradise include, among many others, firdaws or eden (‘adn, ‘illiyīn) which typically indicate the most exclusive part of the Garden. The Quran describes the Garden as featuring four rivers of water, wine, milk, and honey (kawthar, kāfūr, tasnīm and salsabīl); a temperate climate thanks to a giant lote tree (sidrat al-muntahā) at its top. Dwellers live in permanent joyous state surrounded by lavish furnishing and robes, superb food served by young servants and, for men,



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ever-virgin, female sexual companions (ḥūr) or their wives, all while entertained by Arabic-singing angels. Garden’s dwellers will enjoy also spiritual pleasure although it is debatable if they will actually see God. In some traditions, upon entering the Garden, the blessed will to eat from a huge fish and an enormous roast bull prepared for them since the beginning of creation. Each Friday God will invite men and women to visit him to receive his blessings. The above descriptive survey covers three eschatological categories. The first focuses on a person’s death, the pre-final judgement stage of ākhira and the destiny of the individual soul. The second category relates to the end of the world. The third deals with the topography of the hereafter. It is however by delving into a fourth category, historical eschatology, that Islamic practices and manifestations of prognostication can be found. Predictions of eschatological events; apocalyptic interpretations of historical occurrences; observations of phenomena coinciding with millenarian-like socio-political changes; actualisation, visualisation and pre-enactment in the dunyā of the ākhira will form the focus of this chapter.

Written Sources and Artifacts In every chapter of the Quran there is a passage with some eschatological content. A tenth of Quran deals with the ākhira, making it the text that provides the skeleton for the whole Islamic eschatological literature. Canonical and non-canonical ḥadīth collections represent the earliest extant works featuring sections specifically dedicated to ākhira. Among the oldest stand-alone works devoted to traditions on the hereafter noteworthy is Ṣifat al-janna (“Description of Paradise”) by ‘Alī al-Rayḥānī (d. ca. 834). Before him other authors such as the Yemeni Hammām ibn Munabbih (d. ca. 720) and the Egyptian traditionist Ibn Lahī‘a (d. 790) had engaged with eschatological material but adding biblical and other near eastern stories. Ibn Lahī‘a in particular blended history, asceticism, piety and eschatology, basing himself on pre-Islamic South Arabian sources, among others. The trend of resorting to South Arabian material was championed by the Egyptian traditionist Ibn Wahb (d. 813) whose work reflects the interest in the end of time shared among South Arabian tribes. Also Egypt-based was Nu‘aym ibn Ḥammād (d.  843), an important early collector of apocalyptic ḥadīths whose compilation features a datable notice of the Halley’s comet appearance in 760. The Spanish Ibn Ḥabīb (d. 853) wrote Kitāb Waṣf al-firdaws (“The Description of Paradise”) arguably the oldest extant work of ḥadīths dedicated to Islamic paradise. In the Islamic east, Ibn al-Mubarak’s (d. 797) work on paradise and hell mirrors historical realities of conflict and instability in regions at the periphery of Islamic empire. In the mid-ninth century, with the Baghdadi Ibn Abi 'l-Dunyā (d. 894) the expansion of the Sunni corpus of eschatological ḥadīths reached its peak. At least 12 of his works collate almost three centuries-worth of eschatological imagery. The afterlife received less

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attention in canonical ḥadīth collections although due space was given to paradise and hell in the works of al-Bukhārī (d. 870), Muslim (d. 875) and al-Tirmidhī (d. 892). Instead, non-canonical collections produced in the tenth century were far richer in eschatological ḥadīths. Al-Ṭabarānī (d.  971) amassed rare traditions irrespective of soundness. His student Abū Nu‘aym al-Iṣfahānī (d. 1038) wrote a remarkable compilation arguing that a ḥadīth exhorting paradise or threatening hell does not require scrutiny. Opposed to this trend was the Baghdadi polymath Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 1201) who deemed such transmitters forgers. His call for rigour was later echoed by al-Dhahabī (d. 1348) and the Syrian historian Ibn Kathīr (d. 1373). His al-Bidāya wa’l nihāya (“The Beginning and the End”) is rich in apocalyptic material and his Nihāyat al-bidāya wa’l-nihāya (“The End of the Beginning and the End”) consists of apocalyptic ḥadīths covering from the signs of the hour to the day of judgement. In Spain, al-Qurṭubī’s (d. 1273) al-Tadhkira fī aḥwāl al-mawt wa-umūr al-ākhira (“Memoire on the Conditions of the Dead and the Afterlife”) set new standards in the dissemination of eschatological knowledge. It was concise, divided into chapters, with explanatory sections and interpretative commentary. These standards were surpassed by the Egyptian al-Suyūṭī (d. 1505) particularly with his al-Budūr al-sāfira fī ‘ulūm al-ākhira (“The Shining Full Moons on the Sciences of the Afterlife”). Al-Suyūṭī referred to virtually all the authorities of the earlier times thus compiling “a practical guide to paradise and hell” (Lange, 2016, 89). Alongside ḥadīth-based works, an Islamic parenetic eschatological literature developed that had its roots in early Islamic storytellers’ (quṣṣāṣ) tradition. These storytellers preached about morals but also the pleasure of paradise to entice those fighting the early civil wars. Ibn al-Jawzī in his K. al-Quṣṣāṣ wa’l-mudhakkirīn (“On the Storytellers and the Preachers”) advised preachers to use afterlife-related themes as a device to capture their audiences’ interest while influencing their behaviour. The ninth century Baghdadi mystic theologian al-Muḥāsibī (d. 857) in his K. al-Tawahhum (“Book of Envisioning”) described his passage into the hereafter culminating with the vision of God. By contrast Abu’l-Layth al-Samarqandī (d. 983) in Tanbīh al-ghāfilīn (“Admonition to the Regretful”) – a book that became a best seller – mixed conventional descriptions of hell and paradise with digressions echoing Persian wisdom literature. In this genre the most eminent works are al-Ghazālī’s (d. 1111) Dhikr al-mawt wa-mā ba‘dahu (“Remembrance of Death and what Comes Aftrewards”), which is part of his Ihyā’ ‘ulūm al-dīn (“The Revival of Religious Sciences”) as well as the Sevillen Ibn al-Kharrāṭ’s (d. 1185) K. al-‘Āqiba (“The Book of the End”). Both al-Ghazālī and Ibn al-Kharrāṭ blended traditions with commentaries of their own. Ibn al-Kharrāṭ’s work is the first stand-alone example of its kind in Islam: a purpose-written book that offered a comprehensive vision of individual and cosmic eschatology. Ibn al-Jawzī, a critic of al-Ghazālī’s use of untrustworthy ḥadīths, wrote al-Muqliq (“The Cause of Unrest”) aimed at preaching to inspire fear. His follower, the Damascene Ibn Rajab (d. 1393) wrote al-Takhwīf min al-nār (“Causing the Fear of Hell”) a book that, entirely dedicated to hell, became very popular.



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The eschatological manuals represent the genre that enjoyed the most practical use as tools “to enjoin what is right and prohibit what is wrong”, a core duty for all Muslims. In order to fascinate audiences their authors embellished their works with fantastic descriptions, making these manuals didactic and moralising in character. The authorship of these manuals was mostly posteriorly attributed to prominent figures. For example al-Durra al-fākhira (“The Precious Pearl”) is commonly credited – though probably correctly – to al-Ghazālī. Qurrat al-‘uyūn wa-murīḥ al-qalb al-maḥzūn (“Refreshing the Eyes and Gladdening the Sad Heart”) is commonly attributed to al-Samarqandī. The work deals with sin and punishments in hell, a theme that became particularly popular in twelfth century Central Asia. A third major manual is Daqā’iq al-akhbār fī dhikr al-janna wa’l-nār (“Subtle Traditions about the Garden and the Fire”) also known as Aḥwāl al-qiyāma of which some 200 manuscripts are in circulation. The work is divided into 3 major corpuses. In North Africa and Spain the text is known as Shajarat al-yaqīn (“The Tree of Certainty”) attributed to Abu ’l-Ḥasan al-‘Ash‘arī (twelfth century). In India and further east the same work was known as al-Ḥaqā’iq wa’l-daqā’iq (“Realities and Subtleties”) attributed mostly to al-Samarqandī. Finally, in the Middle East was identified as work by ‘Abd al-Raḥīm Aḥmad (pre-seventeenth century). Of all the manuals, the fourteenth century Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s K. al-Rūḥ (“On the Spirit”) is generally considered one of the most authoritative. Also to this category belongs al-Ṣuyūṭī’s Bushrā al-ka’īb bi-liqā’ al-ḥabīb (“Consoling the Bereaved through Reunion of the Deceased”). Not a manual, but still a practical tool is an anthology of apocalyptics by ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Bisṭāmī (d. 1454) that includes a work by Ibn Ṭalḥa (d. 1254) being a practical exposition of the author’s techniques in predicting what he saw as the imminent end of the world. Also to the technical type of eschatological writing belongs the malḥama, an epic-like medium of foretelling apocalyptic events that blended occult elements. The oldest, Malḥamat Dāniyāl, lists natural and astrological portents matched with an explanation of their divinatory meanings. Alongside manuals, popular eschatological texts included works in various genres on Muḥammad’s ascent. The earliest account of Muḥammad’s mi‘rāj occurs in the Sīra, Ibn Isḥāq’s (d. 760s) biography of the Prophet. One of the most elaborate ascension narratives is the anonymous Liber scalae Machometi. In 1264 the now lost Arabic original text was translated into Castilian and then in French and Latin. This and other mi‘rāj narratives might have influenced Dante’s Divine Comedy. Shi‘i ḥadīths collections feature some three hundred mi‘rāj stories as found in the works of the Iraqi Ibn Ṭāwūs (d. 1266) and his later Persian counterpart al-Majlisī (d. 1699). Other narratives of miraculous journeys to the afterlife include one on the Prophet Idrīs in al-Kisā’ī’s (d. 805) Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā’ (“Tales of the Prophets”). The Iranian Sufi “saint” al-Bisṭāmī (d. ca. 848–874) claimed to have ascended the seven heaves in a dream. Another fantastical look into the otherworld comes from a character in al-Tha‘labī’s (d. 1035) tales of the prophets also echoed in the Arabian Nights: Buluqiyā, a prince of the Israelites in Cairo, meets fantastical creatures who describe hell to him. Al-Ma‘ar-

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rī’s (d. 1057) Risālat al-Ghufrān (“Epistle of Forgiveness”) features his vision of heaven and hell to mock popular beliefs on the hereafter. Also popular was the story of Jesus and the scull found in Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār’s (d. ca. 1221) epic poem Jumjumannāma (“Book of the Scull”) where a scull describes to Jesus the scull’s owner experience of hell and a vision of paradise. Beside al-Suyūṭī’s al-Budūr al-sāfira, encyclopaedic works include the chapters on the otherworld in al-Majlisī’s Biḥār al-anwār (“Seas of Lights”). This work contains, among others, the apocalyptic narrative of al-Mufaḍḍal (eighth century), a close disciple of the Shi‘i imam Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq (d. 765). This is the longest tradition recorded in Imami Shi‘i ḥadīth literature and the most important among the apocalyptic ones. Many works of the ṣifa genre were written by Shi‘is in the ninth century such as the work by the Kufan Sa‘īd ibn Janāḥ. In the tenth century, Ibn Bābūyah’s (d. 991) Risālat al-I‘tiqādāt (“Tenets of Faith”) became noted for its eloquence on paradise and hell. From the eleventh century onwards Shi‘i eschatological literature took a rationalist turn, questioning the ocular vision of God or the factuality of corporeal resurrection. Notable contributors to this trend were Shaykh al-Mufīd (d. 1022), al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā (d. 1044) and al-‘Allāma al-Ḥillī (d. 1325). Most Shi‘i theological literature focused on the doctrine of imamate and the dogmatic belief in the apocalyptic reappearance of the hidden Imam as the Mahdī or Qā’im. As a result, Shi‘i works on millenianism and messianism constitute by far the most extensive contribution to this theme in Islamic eschatology. Although Shi‘is and Sunnis articulated their messianic beliefs differently, the intellectual boundaries between the two groups were occasionally blurred on this subject. Contributors to Sunni messianism include the fourteenth-century Tunisian polymath Ibn Khaldūn whose Muqaddima (“Prolegomena”) features a comprehensive discussion of theories and traditions regarding the Mahdī. Before him, dealing with mahdism were the traditionist Abū Daʼūd’s (d.  889) K. al-Mahdī and the historian al-Ṭabarī’s (d. 923) Tahdhīb al-athār (“Classification of Transmitted Reports”), containing exegetical accounts on the Antichrist. Finally, late medieval-early modern Persian and Turkic illuminated manuscripts count as outstanding artifacts for eschatological divination. The most important are two Timurid Mi‘rājnāmas (ca. 1430–1460), a Safavid book of omens (Fālnāma) and seven Ottoman Conditions of the Resurrection (Aḥwāl al-qiyāma) (ca. 1600). The Mi‘rājnāmas contain, along with text, the most elaborate series of paintings depicting hell in the history of Islamic art.

Techniques and Manifestations The belief that the time of the end of the world is only known to God did not deter Muslim medieval scholars from speculating about the arrival time of judgement day. Manuals provided an arsenal of images of the circumstances of the ākhira, an after-



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world with material conditions informed by earthly experiences and expectations. Observations based on eschatological imagery would help formulate predictions on the appearance of the signs anticipating the Hour. In practical terms, religious rituals and public social protocols served as arenas where believers could pre-enact or foretaste the dramas of the afterlife; the hereafter could be foreseen in this world by physically recreating the imagery of otherworldly realms. A foretaste of paradise and hell could be experienced on earth in locations believed to be earth-based portions of the hereafter. A prognostication of what the afterlife would be like could be attained by experiencing it by proxy via the tales of those who, like Muḥammad, had a preview of it. Islam affirmed itself in seventh century Arabia as a monotheistic religion with news of an afterlife that were innovative in the socio-religious milieu in which it appeared. In pre-Islamic Arabia, jinn-inspired kuhhān or soothsayers spoke only of an unseen world within this realm of time and space and of dahr, inevitable fatality. However, early Muslim authors believed that already in pre-Islamic time prognostications of the imminent advent of Islam and its promise of the afterlife were in circulation. Ibn Isḥāq talks of a divination, projected back to pre-Islamic time, forecasting the kind of afterlife that Islam would bring. It is also in his Sīra that we find the earliest full record of Muḥammad’s ascension. In time the story of the Prophet’s journey came to be recognised as the most authoritative record of a living individual having previewed life after death. The mi‘rāj story also became a template for those who claimed to have undergone spiritual journeys and provided the blueprint for subsequent Islamic topographical descriptions of the Garden and the Fire. In the Shi‘i versions of the mi‘rāj Muḥammad’s explicit designation of ‘Alī as his successor takes centre stage. Foreseeing the affairs of the ākhira served here to legitimise political posturing in the dunyā as the narrative served the Shi‘i claim of a divinely pre-determined spiritual and political authority bestowed to ‘Alī and his progeny. Ḥadīth literature provides additional accounts of Muḥammad’s insight into the hereafter. There are references to Muḥammad lecturing about the hereafter which he claimed to have seen in dreams. Other traditions report on Muḥammad praying, upon witnessing a solar eclipse, when he saw the fruits of paradise and hell. In another instance Muḥammad is reported to have seen that women were the people of hell. According to Shi‘i traditions ‘Alī not only partook in the mi‘rāj but clairvoyantly observed the dead talking to each other on hills by the Iraqi city of Kufa. Geographical locations could offer people a preview of the afterlife. The practice of identifying specific areas as prefiguration or actual sites of the hereafter was reflected across the whole range of medieval Islamic ākhira works. The hell’s entrance was typically located in the Yemeni Wādī Barhūt because of its smelly sulphur water pools. The Zaqqūm tree was believed to grow in Yemen. Other locations included a valley in Jerusalem. In some traditions Constantinople, Rome, Antioch and Sanaa were equalled to hell and some ‘Abbasid emissaries associated hell with the Volga valley. The traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (d. 1377) identified al-Ukhayḍir, near Mecca, as the

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valley of hell. In the east, in the twelfth century Wādī Jahannam was located in Balkh in Afghanistan. The well of Zamzam, near Mecca, is often associated with the barzakh or having prominence in the paradisial universe. Traditions list Medina, Mecca, Damascus and Jerusalem as paradise. Ḥadīths narratives describe the rivers of paradise flowing in a tunnel below al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf in Jerusalem. The Nile, the Euphrates and the Turkish rivers Sayhan and Jayhan were said to spring from al-Kawthar well in paradise. Graves were logically seen as the obvious gates into the afterlife which made cemeteries conceived as lands with entrances to the ākhira. Cemeteries like al-Qarāfa in Cairo were declared part of paradise in their entirety. Post-apocalypse resurrected bodies would assemble in a place of gathering (arḍ al-maḥshar) typically identified with Jerusalem. In the first century of Islam the sacred precinct of Thaqīf in Arabia was said to be the place where God had set his last step on earth, hence the primordial paradise. The list of paradise cities continued to expand as different political formations and local communities developed their own visions of paradise on earth. If Damascus was the eastern paradise under the Umayyads, in al-Andalus Córdoba’s Madīnat al-ẓahrā’ was its western counterpart. The Umayyads of Spain imported from Syria the custom of planting or representing trees in mosques’ courtyards such as that in Córdoba, to emulate the Umayyad Great mosque of Damascus. In Egypt, Cairo was paradise garden due to the Nile and al-Qarāfa cemetery. For the Shi‘is, Kerbela, the place of the martyrdom of Muḥammad’s grandson al-Ḥusayn, became part of the garden of paradise and so did, elsewhere, the shrines of ‘Alī and the Imam ‘Alī Riḍā. The paradisiac association with tombs can be most appreciated in the case of the famous Taj Mahal in Agra – dedicated to Mumtāz, wife of the Mughal emperor Shāh Jahān’s (d. 1666). It represents a prime example of this type of shrine with its chahārbāgh (lit. “four gardens”) – a typical feature of Islamic gardens – modelled on the Quranic prototype of the Islamic paradise. Beside tombs and gardens, the ruler’s palace became the site where paradise could be physically actualised. Two examples best reflect the idea that mortals could prefigure the pleasures of heaven in a palace setting. The first example is found in Marco Polo’s (d. 1324) legend of the Old Man of the Mountain. This moniker was historically applied to the Syrian Isma‘ili leader Rashīd al-Dīn Sinān (d.  1193) but, as legendary character, was associated with Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ (d. 1124), the Nizari Isma‘ili lord of the fortress of Alamut in Iran. According to Polo, the Old Man had secretly built a garden by his fortress modelled along the Quranic paradise. The Old Man would select his adepts, drug them and then enter them into the garden. On waking up, they would think to be in heaven. Strong of what they thought to be a foreknowledge of what the afterlife had to offer, they then would be prepared to die to fight against the Old Man’s enemies, reassured that they would be guaranteed return to paradise upon self-sacrificing themselves. The second example refers to the city-palace Madīnat al-ẓahrā’ . Ordered by ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III (d. 961) this site represents arguably the most determined effort in Islamic history to build a paradise city. Madīnat al-ẓahrā’ evoked



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paradise in several ways: its eight doors; its tank supposedly filled with mercury to replicate the light effects of the Kawthar river; its layered gardens as described in the Quran; ornaments with heavenly symbolism. Having inaugurated an Umayyad Caliphate in al-Andalus, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III conceived the city as the architectural answer to the messianic claims of the Umayyads’ caliphal rivals: the Sunni ‘Abbasids (750– 1258) in Baghdad and, in Egypt, the Shi‘a Isma‘ili Fatimids (909–1171). The ‘Abbasids had tapped into messianic appeal to establish themselves as leaders of the Islamic empire, originally rooting their propaganda in Shi‘i apocalyptic aspirations only to turn to Sunnism when in power. As for the Fatimids, their propaganda about the resurfacing of a line of hidden imams from the progeny of Fāṭima and ‘Alī eventually took hold in North Africa in 909 under the leadership of ‘Abd Allāh. Recognised by some as the Shi‘a Isma‘ili Imam-Caliph of the time he founded a new dynasty under the messianic name al-Mahdī. Long after the Fatimids moved their site of power to Egypt in 969, in North Africa the allure of messianism grew around Ibn Tūmart (d. ca. 1128) who gave rise to the Almohad dynasty. Hell too was made a manifest, observable reality. As a deterrent, rulers meted out punishments against criminals and opponents in public spectacles echoing the imagery associated with hell. In 1101 in Isfahan, Isma‘ilis deemed heretics were publicly burned on a pyre managed by man nicknamed Mālik like the infernal angel. Another hellish punishment was ignominious parading (tashhīr) with offenders paraded sitting backwards on animals, sometime teased by monkeys, a potent sign of the end after period of tribulation. The convicts, with faces smeared with soot like the Quranic black faces of sinners, were vilified by onlookers. Offenders would have written records of their crimes hanging from the neck like dead sinners who would have lists of bad deeds dangling in front of them at resurrection. Punishing parades would involve floggers mimicking the infernal al-zabāniyya. In Fatimid Cairo, in 1127 ignominious processions were accompanied by torch bearers imitating those angels. Some Islamic practices gave the general public the opportunity to be actors, instead of spectators, in dress-rehearsing the events of the afterlife. Of the five Islamic mandatory rituals, ḥajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, can be defined as a veritable tour of paradise. The Ka‘ba, the structure encasing the Black Stone at the heart of the ritual, is the earthly Quranic Enlivened House in heaven. The Zamzam well in its vicinity is believed to be fed by the waters of paradise. The pilgrimage was typically described as a journey towards the hereafter and Mecca as a vision of paradise on earth. The ḥajj is the setting for the ultimate pre-enactment of what the believers will experience at the moment of resurrection and foretaste of the joyous return to the pre-Adamic Garden. As for other mandatory rituals, the ablution before prayer is intended to purify the body in imitation of the state of the Garden’s dwellers. According to ḥadīths, fasting would be a protection from hell. To these rituals the Sufis added self-annihilating ecstatic practices that  – when performed under the strict guidance of a master  – could induce in the practitioners a fleeting glimpse of God, the ultimate afterlife experience.

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Rather than having an impression of experiencing the afterlife on one extraordinary occasion participants found themselves to be the actual people of the day of resurrection. On 17 Ramadan 559/8 August 1164 Ḥasan II (d. 1166) leader of the Nizari Isma‘ilis and representative of their hidden imam proclaimed to his adherents that the end of the world had arrived. The announcement was delivered in Alamut, to a crowd of Nizari delegates and people, from a purpose-built pulpit adorned with coloured flags. Ḥasan II read a letter allegedly sent by the hidden imam to his community proclaiming the arrival of the day of resurrection and with it the dispensation for the people of the imam from the outward (ẓāhir) following of the Islamic obligations since their esoteric (bāṭin) meanings would finally prevail from that day. The event marked the end of (Islamic) time and the start of a new “resurrected” state of earthly existence: adherents ended the fast in the middle of Ramadan; the prayer was redirected; the calendar was restarted from that day. The proclamation of the qiyāma was replicated in other Nizari Isma‘ili domains. The qiyāma doctrine introduced by Ḥasan II was reformulated by his son Muḥammad (d. 1210). He, by declaring his father to be in fact the imam, claimed the imamate for himself thus bringing about the resurfacing of what to the Nizaris had been, up to that point, the concealed line of their political-spiritual leaders. In time the adherence to the outer performance of the rituals was reintroduced but the Nizari adepts were to recognise every present and living imam to be the imām-qā’im of the time. In this way the adepts would realise in their lives the full meaning of the resurrection understood as attainment of spiritual perfection rather than as a materially occurring event in the afterlife. All the contexts examined so far promised varied eschatological experiences which, at least in theory, people might be able to partake in. However, pre-enacting the events of the afterlife or prognosticating them relied on being equipped with a sophisticated body of knowledge, moral judgement and ability to decode mundane symbols and signs. It required power of imagination to translate observable realities into eschatological images. Instead afterlife-themed paintings delivered the most direct and graphic appreciation of what the hereafter might look like. From the twelfth century onwards the complete range of pictorial representations of the hereafter became available in manuscript illuminations. Cosmological works such as al-Qazwīnī’s (d. 1283) K.‘Ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt (“Wonders of Creatures”) included eschatological narratives often matched with miniatures. Isolated pictures of the mi‘rāj are known to have appeared from the late fourteenth century. A pictorial phenomenon limited to the Persianate world, this imagery reached its peak in the sixteenth century with the affirmation of an apocalyptic painterly tradition that intersected with the religio-political rivalry between the Sunni Ottomans of Turkey and the Safavids who made Shi‘ism the state religion of Iran. With the approaching of the Islamic millennium, occult and prognosticative arts flourished to enable individuals on both side of the divide to chart their respective paths of salvation or damnation. Divination could be sought by consulting the Dīwān of the Persian poet Ḥāfiẓ (d. 1390) or the Quran or books of omens (fālnāma). In these books, Persian paintings of the last judgement



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served also as a tool the Safavids used to curse their political rivals. A vivid eyewitness account of the Safavids’ use of eschatological paintings for anti-Sunni propaganda is found in the travelogue of the Italian Michele Mambré. Having visited the court of Shāh Tahmāsp (d. 1576) in 1539–1542, Mambré saw in Tabriz preachers, cursers, augury-tellers and storytellers use large painted images and texts to entertain people with stories of Persian kings and Shi‘i heroes while cursing Sunni and Ottoman figures. At court, Shāh Tahmāsp employed cursers and augury tellers known to use monumental fālnāma paintings and written omens with emphasis on eschatological themes. In Safavid last judgement paintings the people of the house of the Prophet and the Imams function as visual proofs of the rightful restoration of the sacred order according to the Shi‘i millenarian worldview. In these paintings, ‘Alī regularly appears figuratively more prominent than Muḥammad. While the acceptance of the physical reality of the afterlife became normative among Muslims, there were nevertheless some important dissenting voices. The Mu‘tazili rationalist theologians understood the events of the afterlife figuratively. The Shi‘a Isma‘ilis espoused the spiritual and non-corporeal nature of pleasure and torment in the hereafter. The Sufis interiorised and intellectualised paradise and hell. The famous Ibn Sīnā/Avicenna (d. 1037) denied the corporeal ascent of Muḥammad, the bodily resurrection and the physical reality of the afterlife. His non-material imagination of the hereafter was further developed by the illuminationist (ishrāqī) philosopher Suhrawardī (d. 1191) whose ideas found following among Shi‘is such as Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1640) with his vision of a philosophical-spiritual eschatology.

Developments and Discussions In a ḥadīth Muḥammad stated that at the end of the world God would send a member of his family named like him who would fill the world with justice and righteousness. This prediction was paramount to the emergence of messianic movements in Islam. By the second century of Islam the idea of a coming Mahdī as bringer of justice before the last judgement was already well established. In Shi‘ism, contrary to Sunnism, the coming of the Mahdī would become an article of faith. After Muḥammad’s death in 632, a faction (shī‘a) formed in support of ‘Alī and his progeny from Fāṭima to be the rightful leaders of the community. However, the leadership aspirations of what would become a fully-fledged religious-political faction were dashed with the martyrdom of ‘Alī’s son al-Ḥusayn and, later on, the ‘Abbasids’ endorsement of Sunnism. This sense of injustice led to expectation for a deliverer to rid the Shi‘a of opponents and usurpers. Muḥammad’s prediction of the Mahdī from his blood line coupled with ḥadīths that Shi‘is interpreted as privileging members of his family prompted the identification of this messianic figure with a descendant in the line of ‘Alī. The vast majority of Shi‘is deferred the coming of this restorer to an appointed time while in

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the interim directing love and devotion (walāya) to each of the imams. Though perceived to be under the constant threat of their enemies, the Shi‘i imams succeeded one another until their safety could no longer be secured. For a group, this time came in 941, year that marked the great occultation (al-ghayba al-kubrā) of the twelfth imam Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan. For Twelver Shi‘is it is this imam that will return as the Mahdī. Before the occultation of the twelfth Imam, Shi‘is had to grapple with the question of who exactly would be the Mahdī announced by Muḥammad. ‘Alī and his son, al-Ḥusayn were believed to be the awaited restores but so were a son of ‘Alī via a non-Fāṭima line and a descendant of Muḥammad from ‘Alī and Fāṭima’s other son, al-Ḥasan. In turn Imams like Muḥammad al-Bāqir (d. ca. 733) and Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq were also believed to be the Mahdī. Centuries later, the Twelver Shi‘i messianic appeal spilled into Sufism as reflected in Muḥammad Nūrbakhsh’s (d. 1464) claim to mahdiship. Muḥammad’s promise of a coming Mahdī combined with the Shi‘i belief in the return of a hidden Imam provoked – in time of strife – the appearance of a plethora of claimants to the role. It also led to attempts at prognosticating apocalyptic signs, the time of the Mahdī’s appearance and the marks of his identity. For example in the thirteenth century massive fires in cities like Aden and al-Harra near Medina came to be seen as signs of the Hour. The appearance of comets was commonly seen as a strong sign of an impending apocalypse. Comets, not mentioned in the Quran, were understood as visible, inexplicable and long lasting signs from God to his creatures which must have meant something. A correlation has been noted between the appearance of comets and the emergence of messianic claimants and movements throughout medieval Islamic history (Cook, 2002). The Halley comet is recorded to have appeared in 607, that is, no long before the start of Muḥammad’s revelations. The appearance of a comet in 718 coincided with intense messianic speculation around the Umayyad Caliph ʻUmar II (d. 720), known for his piety. The year 841 saw a comet at the time of Abū Ḥarb al-Mubarqa‘, figure who operated under the mantle of Ṣufyānī, an eschatological character predicted to appear in Syria to confront the Mahdī. A comet was recorded in coincidence in Basra with the Zanj messianic-inspired agrarian revolt (869–883) against the ‘Abbasids. Shortly after the appearance of the self-proclaimed Umayyad Mahdī Abū Rakwa (d. 1007) in 1004–1005 in North Africa there was a supernova. His revolt against the Fatimids was eventually halted in Egypt by the Imam-Caliph al-Ḥākim (d. 1021), himself at the centre of distinctive millennial beliefs. The messianic movement that in the twelfth century brought the Almohads to power coincided with the appearance of a comet. Although, according to Shi‘i traditions, predicting the time of the Mahdī’s rise was prohibited, nevertheless this type of divination formed part of a distinctive literary genre focused on universal signs of the Mahdī’s rise which prompted every generation to expect this figure in its lifetime. For example, to some this event would happen in 70 years from ‘Alī’s time, to others it was postponed to 140 years. Unfulfilled promises gave rise to the idea that God could change the time of the imam’s reappearance due to considerations only know to him. However, the most cited day for the return of the



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Mahdī is when 10 Muharram – the day of al-Ḥusayn ’s martyrdom – would fall on a Saturday in an odd numbered year of the Islamic calendar. Recently this was on Saturday 10 Muharram 1437/Saturday 24 October 2015. Details of that special day are found in al-Mufaḍḍal’s apocalyptic ḥadīths. The Mahdī’s name will be called out on the twenty-third night of Ramadan, the date when the Quran’s revelation is believed to have started. Having entered Kufa first, the Mahdī would then become manifest in Mecca. Meanwhile an ‘Alī descendant will announce the awaited imam’s reappearance inviting the faithful to militant action in his support. They will converge in Kufa where they will meet the Mahdī and ask him to identify himself by showing Muḥammad’s ring, his armoury and the Quran compiled by ‘Alī. Upon showing the signs, allegiance will be paid to him. Troops will then be sent to Damascus to kill the Ṣufyānī. At this point the raj‘a, as prelude to the final resurrection, will take place. Al-Ḥusayn and his followers will return, followed by ‘Alī, Muḥammad, his Companions and believers as well as his doubters. The Mahdī will rule from Kufa assisted by his close associates, for a length of time variously placed between 7 and 309 years. However, there is general agreement on the Mahdī and his community succumbing to cosmic death 40 days before the day of judgement.

The Broader Cultural Milieu Although the centrality of the hereafter in the Quran finds no equal in other scriptures parallelisms can be drawn between Islamic beliefs and practices and those belonging to the pre-Islamic milieu in which Islam emerged. Strong similarities are noted with ideas that were already circulating in the ancient Middle East through the Gospels, Talmudic and Christian Syriac literature as well as through Arab paganism. The notion of the corpse experiencing some kind of life in the grave and the imagery attached to the intermediate state of the dead before resurrection are comparable to doctrines and beliefs widespread among Syriac Christian in late antiquity. Likewise shared is the idea of resurrected sinners and the righteous experiencing the consequences of their actions in life. The Islamic topographical descriptions of the afterlife shares similarities with late antiquity eschatology. Ephrem of Nisibis (d. 373), in his Hymns of Paradise conceived paradise as a vertical corridor between this world and the next. The Syriac Cave of Treasures (prob. sixth century) describes paradise as being on top of a mountain. Echoes of pagan Arabian and astral religions are also notable in apocalyptic events linked to sightings of unusual astronomical activities. The depiction of torment in the Islamic Fire shows some similarities with Zoroastrian narratives. Indeed, the Islamic picture of hell can be said to be the result of the confluence of several eschatological traditions. Apocalyptic monsters such as Gog and Magog are found in Middle eastern mythology and the Bible. Other evidence of fusion of ideas can be noted in the mi‘rāj stories which echo the Jewish Enoch account and the Chris-

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tian Apocalypse of Paul. The malḥama genre has equivalents in Syriac literature such as Ḥasan ibn al-Bahlūl’s K. al-Dalā’il (“Book of Prognostication”). Commonality of eschatological ideas and the incorporation into an Islamic fold of beliefs and practices that were already prevalent in the lands where Islam expanded did not result into inter-religious harmony. On the contrary, eschatology became the preferred battlefield for religio-political polemics between Muslims and Christians. In the hands of medieval Christians the “carnality” of the Islamic paradise became the ultimate proof of Islam as a “false religion”, devoid of spirituality and favouring debauchery on earth. To them, Muḥammad’s mi‘rāj was no more than a fabrication to impress followers. On the whole, Christians understood the very rise of Islam to be one of their apocalyptic signs. In a sort of eschatological tit-for-tat Dante cast Muḥammad to hell for sowing religious discord while al-Majlisī cast the Apostle Paul to hell for falsifying the true teachings of Jesus.

Selected Bibliography Buckley, Ron P. The Night Journey and Ascension in Islam: The Reception of Religious Narrative in Sunnī, Shī‘ī and Western Culture. London, 2013. Cook, David. Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic. Princeton, 2002. Filiu, Jean-Pierre. Apocalypse in Islam. Berkeley, 2011. Gruber, Christiane, and Frederick S. Colby (eds.). The Prophet’s Ascension: Cross-cultural Encounters with the Islamic mi‘rāj Tales. Bloomington, 2010. Günther, Sebastian, and Todd Lawson (eds). Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam. 2 vols. Leiden, 2017. Lange, Christian (ed.). Locating Hell in Islamic Traditions. Leiden, 2015. Lange, Christian. Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions. New York, 2016. Mahdisme et Millénarisme en Islam. Special issue of Revue des mondes musulmans et de la méditerranée. 2000. Rustomji, Nerina. The Garden and the Fire: Heaven and Hell in Islamic Culture. New York, 2009. Sachedina, Abdulaziz Abdulhussein. Islamic Messianism: The Idea of the Mahdi in Twelver Shi‘ism. Albany, 1981. Smith, Jane, and Yvonne Haddad. The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection. Albany, GA, 1981.

Prophecy and Visions Anke Holdenried

Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World Basics, Definitions and Terminology The English term “prophecy” means a foretelling of the future. In the Middle Ages, however, prophecy (prophetia) was much wider in scope. It was not merely the future that could be known prophetically but all things that were hidden in mystery. Being a prophet was about seeing “things that others did not see”, as Isidore, Bishop of Seville (d. 636) acknowledged in his Etymologiae (Book 7, viii), a work very widely read throughout the medieval period. Thus in the Middle Ages the term prophetia could be applied to a much wider variety of phenomena than today, such as, for example, certain kinds of intellectual understanding or the miraculous knowledge of contemporary events too geographically distant to be known to the individual in question. The foundation stone for Christian culture was the Bible which provides many examples of prophecy. These examples legitimised prophecy in the medieval Western Christian World and ensured it was not merely a historical phenomenon. The prevailing Christian belief was that prophecy could still occur in contemporary society. In the Bible, prophecy is a gift, freely given by God through the action of the Holy Spirit. Strictly speaking therefore, as a gift from God, prophecy cannot be triggered by the individual. It is not an active “practice” associated with “techniques” to bring about supernatural knowledge of the future. Rather, prophecy is a personal experience received at divine discretion. Consequently, there are no medieval manuals on “how to do prophecy” but only records, descriptions, and abstract analyses of prophetic experience and the divine messages this had brought. Another important feature of medieval prophecy is that it was not narrowly restricted to a small group of experts but potentially open to all – men, women or even children (see 1 Cor. 12 and 14). Thus, in line with the Bible’s egalitarian approach to the prophetic gift, surviving accounts of medieval visions and revelations show that individuals from across the medieval social spectrum were credited with visionary experiences. Indeed, as the Old Testament story of Balaam and the ass taught its medieval audience, even animals could be prophets (with the miraculous ability to speak necessary to communicate their revelations (Num. 22:28)). Ultimately, prophecy enjoyed great authority (even if there were sometimes doubts about a particular prophecy’s divine origins). This authority derived from the https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-014

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belief, grounded in Scripture, that a prophet was God’s mouthpiece, that is, a divinely illuminated proclaimer of divine revelations. In medieval culture understanding the nature and purpose of divine illumination was an important intellectual tradition in its own right and prophecy was understood in relation to it. The term “divine illumination” had a special meaning for medieval thinkers. It had originated with ancient philosophers and was then considered by the Church Fathers. Thus, by the central Middle Ages there was a substantial body of discussion around the topic. Roughly, divine illumination is the belief that “the human mind regularly relies on some kind of special supernatural assistance in order to complete (some part of) its ordinary cognitive activity” (Pasnau, Divine Illumination). Thus theories of divine illumination tried to understand how the divine mind influences the human mind. Since divine illumination allowed the human mind to know something otherwise beyond it, medieval philosophers approached it as a means of knowing. Prophecy was thus a subset of divine illumination. As such, many of the ideas associated with divine illumination came to be applied to prophecy, especially the notion that it was a form of knowledge. Prophecy thus became entangled in epistemological arguments. This is well illustrated by the section in the Summa Theologiae by the leading theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) which presents a rigorous analysis of prophecy (Summa II.2, Q. 171). In Aquinas’s Summa prophecy is expressly labelled as a charism of knowledge, as opposed to a charism of speech or action (i.  e. miracles). Aquinas distinguishes two phases of prophecy. Firstly, an elevation of the prophet’s mind whereby the range of his intellect is extended so that it becomes capable of perceiving divine truths. Aquinas designates this “inspiration” (inspiratio), which is due to the action of the Holy Spirit. Prophecy’s second phase is the actual perception of the supernatural truths, for the sake of which the inspiration has been given. Aquinas calls this perception “revelation” (revelatio). Thus, thanks to the divine light, the mind discovers truths previously hidden to it. For Aquinas, revelation expresses the essential characteristic of prophecy: the disclosure of a truth which was unknown to the prophet (Synave 1961; von Balthasar 1996). Aquinas’s treatment of these ideas illustrates that prophecy, as an idea, intersects with ideas about the abstract process by which an individual comes to know. Prophecy thus occupied an important place in medieval intellectual culture as a mode of knowing. Just as important was prophecy’s function as a tool for communication because, as illustrated in the Bible, prophets proclaim to their community a message revealed to them by God, often an exhortation to reform. On the basis of this scripturally endorsed function, prophecy became an important vehicle for expressing contemporary social, religious and political anxiety in the guise of divinely revealed messages. Capitalising on prophecy’s supposed divine origins, many individuals merely alleged to have communicated with the divine and created fake prophecies to articulate their particular partisan opinions. Such alleged prophecies were often carefully crafted and adhered to a set of conventions, including pseudonymity and the incorporation of “proph-



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ecy after the event” (i.  e. presenting as prophecy reports of events that had already occurred) to enhance their credibility. Prophecies of this type were often free-floating texts, but could also be found embedded in different genres, for example, in works of historiography where such prophecies often assumed the form of Visions, as, for example, in the case of the “The Vision of Charles the Fat” (Visio Caroli Grossi, ed. Gardiner). This text, which originated ca. 887–900 in Reims, possibly in the circles around the then archbishop of the city, describes a vision supposedly experienced by the Carolingian Emperor Charles III (d. 888). In this vision Charles encounters his ancestors who warn him of the coming demise of his family, that is, the text articulates contemporary concerns about dynastic change in the near future. Significantly, the text remained in circulation for many centuries to come and was transmitted both as a free-floating text and as a component of works of history, including, for example, the Gesta Anglorum by William of Malmesbury (d. 1143) (Stubbs 1887, 1:112–116). Such literary longevity is common for medieval visions and prophetic texts of this kind. Many remained in circulation long after the original events leading to their composition – and thus their immediate social relevance – had passed. This aspect of medieval prophecy is well represented in some other parts of this handbook like the legend of the coming of a Last Emperor, texts such as the Sibylla Tiburtina (known also as the Tiburtine Sibyl) or the Revelationes by Pseudo-Methodius (known also as the Apocalyps of Pseudo-Methodius; ↗ Möhring, Eschatology Western Christian World; ↗ Brandes, Eschatology Eastern Christian World).

Written Sources and Material Culture Given the clerical monopoly on literacy in the period, the extant written source material was mostly – but not exclusively – produced in ecclesiastical circles and written in Latin, although vernacular texts became increasingly prominent after ca. 1200 and were certainly not unknown even before then. Note there were no manuals on how to achieve prophetic revelation. Rather, texts were limited either to recording prophetic messages (e.  g. copies of the prophetic books of the Bible, accounts of visions, records of oracular pronouncements) or to dissecting prophetic experience (whether in incidental comments on the phenomenon of prophecy or full-blown systematic discussions of it as a mode of knowing, or in tracts about the detection of false prophecy, called “the discernments of spirits”). While from a modern perspective it may be convenient to group written material into these two broad categories, note that they each cover many different genres. Often these genres overlap and so for any particular prophetic text it can be difficult to decide to which genre it should belong. Hence in practice it is not always possible to clearly categorise surviving materials. The extant source material for prophecy also includes Saint Lives (since prophecy was seen as a sign of holiness) and, of course, the actual prophetic writings of proph-

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ets, mystics, and visionaries. Women’s history has always placed particular value on the study of personal experience as it survives in various autobiographical genres. For the medieval period this includes accounts of visionary women’s religious experience, although the involvement of male scribes and confessors in the production of these texts has led scholars to debate whether such writings should be considered autobiography. Rare in the early Middle Ages, such accounts proliferated after 1200, when religious life diversified to include communities outside the walls of the cloister. Post-1200, memoirs by nuns, female mendicants and women tertiaries of their interior revelations and visionary experiences are thus plentiful by the standard of medieval sources. Autobiographical material does not survive for men in the same way. Men (and this is true for the vast majority of them throughout the entire Middle Ages, before and after 1200) did not write the same kind of detailed memoirs of their own interior revelations and visionary experiences as women. This fact is well known and the reasons for it are well understood. Men had access to education and the formal study of theology, as well as to the other, more scientific, branches of knowledge. Men could write about experiencing God in a number of genres all grounded in scriptural authority. Occasionally, male authors abandoned the commentary genre to act as compilers instead, gathering together stories of nightly visions and ghostly apparitions in a single volume, as did Otloh of St Emmeram (d. 1070) and Peter of Cornwall (d. 1221) (Schmidt 1989; Easting and Sharpe 2014). After 1200, male engagement with traditions of divine illumination of the mind rapidly intellectualised even further. This is the period when scholastic thinkers such as Albertus Magnus (d. 1280) and Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) produced abstract and rigorous discussions of prophecy (Torrell 1992). Women, on the other hand, being largely barred from education, could write about God only from the vantage point of how He had revealed Himself to them and their experience of this encounter. The different types of sources that survive for the study of medieval prophecy thus also reflect the difference in the educational opportunities for men and women in the Middle Ages. The imprint of prophecy can be seen also in medieval material culture more broadly. For example it is not uncommon to find sculptures or images of the Old Testament prophets and the ancient prophetesses called Sibyls integrated into the decorative programmes of churches and cathedrals where they might variously adorn pulpits, facades, or ceilings, and thus pay tribute to the mixture of ancient classical and Christian prophetic traditions – a large topic in itself (↗ Wagner, Prophecy in Visual Art). The Sibyls are a particularly prominent example of the influence of Classical rather than Christian models in the Middle Ages. Oracular pronouncements attributed to them were compiled over an extended period in antiquity as a collection of texts (in Greek hexameters) known as the Oracula Sibyllina. Thanks to the depiction of the Sibyls by the Christian Church Fathers such as Lactantius (d. around 320) and Augustine (d. 430) (who mentions the Oracula) these ancient prophetesses were cel-



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ebrated in the medieval tradition, often treated as independent, non-Christian evidence of the divinity of Christ. When anonymous medieval authors wished to make their supposed prophetic revelations seem authoritative, they were often attributed to one of the Sibyls. The thirteenth-century pseudo-Joachimite prophecy known as Sibilla Erithea Babilonica is a case in point (Jostmann 2006).

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts In the late antique and medieval periods concepts of prophecy were adapted to new social realities. I begin by briefly reviewing the early history of this process of adaptation. The institutional Church’s attitude to prophecy was profoundly shaped by biblical concepts of prophecy. In the Old Testament the prophet is a divinely authorised social critic and foreteller of future events. Likewise, in the New Testament (1 Cor. 12) the Apostle Paul had given explicit approval to prophecy as a charism, that is, a divine gift. The Pauline texts also assume that prophecy is a practical ministry whose function is to proclaim moral truths important to a specific community. In both the Old and New Testaments the prophet’s right to express statements publicly came directly from his or her communication with God. This made the prophet a vocal and authoritative figure who lay outside the Church’s institutional structure. This was perhaps less of a problem when the early Church was still relatively small and simple in organisation. Subsequently, however, as the Church developed between the second and sixth century, institutional ecclesiastical leadership increasingly replaced charismatic leadership. As charismatic leaders, prophets in some ways threatened the Church’s institutional authority. Prophets and prophecy could not be done away with, however, because prophecy was supported by biblical and Apostolic authority. In order to resolve this conflict, and in parallel with the institutional changes in the Church, the notion of prophecy was simultaneously restricted and extended. Prophecy was restricted in that a variety of locally resident ministers officially selected by the Church hierarchy (bishops, deacons, presbyters) replaced itinerant charismatic individuals considered to have been chosen by the Holy Spirit, such as apostles and prophets. Moreover, developments such as the condemnation of the heresy of Montanism and, a little later, the recognition of a fixed canon of scripture meant ecclesiastical authority was increasingly limited to a relatively small group of officially defined Christian institutions, texts and interpretations. This growth of institutional leadership increasingly marginalized the charismatic leader and thus diminished prophecy’s practical use in the life of the Church as an instrument of instruction and leadership – intentionally so, given prophecy’s potential to divide communities and challenge established doctrine (Aune 1983; Mayeski 1997). Conversely, the role of prophecy was extended in the late patristic period by re-defining the didactic and communal role of the prophet. According to Paul prophets

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served in the new Israel to build up the community of the Church by delivering, in intelligible form, messages received directly from God. In late antiquity the view emerged that while previously prophets had made intelligible the word of God revealed to them directly, now making intelligible the word of God recorded in the Bible also counted as prophecy. A passage in the preface to Cassiodorus’s Commentary on Psalms (ca. 550) which enjoyed widespread influence in subsequent centuries embodies this understanding: “Clearly the prophet builds up the Church when through the function of this foretelling he makes wholly clear matters exceedingly vital that were unknown. Those who have been granted the ability to understand well and to interpret the divine Scriptures are obviously not excluded from the gift of prophecy” (Cassiodorus, Commentary on Psalms, ed. Walsh, 28). Thus the late antique period expanded the type of activity that is considered prophetic. Basically, from this point forward the concept of prophecy as the intelligible transmission of divine revelation was extended to include the intellectual activity of biblical exegesis. The social and institutional context in which prophecy appeared changed over the course of the Middle Ages, although there are certain broad patterns. In the historiography on the subject the year 1200 is generally regarded as somewhat of a watershed. Before ca. 1200 the pursuit of direct consciousness of God through contemplation (see section Techniques and Manifestations below) had been a matter for a fairly small spiritual elite confined to the relatively controlled environment of the monastery or nunnery. This was the setting in which, for example, the Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179) and the Cistercian abbot Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202) appeared. Both enjoyed reputations as prophets in their own days. After 1200 new forms of religious life grew outside the walls of the cloister among the laity and particularly women. In this later medieval period the options for expressing a religious vocation expanded to include joining urban communities of Beguines or becoming a Tertiary, that is, joining the so-called Third Orders (McGinn 1998). These orders were groups of lay members of the mendicant orders founded by two men who soon after their death were considered saints, the Italian wandering preacher Francis of Assisi (d. 1226; canonized 1228) and the Castilian priest Dominic de Guzman (d. 1221; canonized 1234). Women with a reputation for receiving visions or being prophetically gifted were often associated with these new types of communities. A prominent example was Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) who was a Dominican Tertiary and one the key prophetic figures of the Great Schism (1378–1417) which had divided Christendom’s allegiance to the papacy. These new ways of religious life and new forms of spirituality were not subject to such close supervision by clerical authority as their monastic predecessors had been. This lead to anxieties about a loss of institutional control over the power bestowed by contact with the divine. Ultimately these anxieties had a restrictive effect on prophecy, see the section Medieval Classifications and Discussions below. Another feature of the period post-1200 is the growth of the educated laity’s increasing engagement with writings of prophetic content, both biblical and non-bib-



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lical. Various factors contributed to this growth. Especially the expansion of literacy in the vernacular and the enhanced provision of pastoral care for the laity after the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) also encouraged the mediation of the Bible to the laity through a whole range of different vernacular media, from rhymed verse to manuscripts written in the vernacular and containing illustrations of prophetic parts of the Bible. This trend is well illustrated by the post-1215 innovations in the transmission of the last book in the Bible, the Book of Revelation (also known as the Apocalypse) which predicts the End of the World and the Second Coming of Christ. For example, sixteen lavishly illustrated manuscript copies of the Apocalypse were produced in England in a short space of time (ca. 1250–1275); of these, six copies employ the vernacular (four copies have all their text in French, and two have it both in Latin and French). These manuscripts often also have aristocratic patrons and readers and thus illustrate the consumption of prophecy outside clerical circles. For example, the historiated initial (fol. 1r) which precedes the Anglo-Norman prose text of the Book of Revelation in manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 180 (the so-called Douce-Apocalypse, ca. 1265–1270) shows England’s Prince Edward and his wife Eleanor bearing shields with their arms kneeling before the throne of Grace. The Douce-Apocalypse permits a glimpse, therefore, of prophecy’s appeal to both laymen and women, including royalty. (Morgan 2006, 11–18, 33–34). Other manuscript evidence, such as Rennes, Bibliotheque Municipale, Ms. 593 (ca. 1303/1304) illustrates that the taste for prophecy among Europe’s high aristocracy clearly went beyond the merely scriptural: this manuscript also includes a vast array of non-biblical prophetic material in Old French, either as free-floating texts or contained within other works of an encyclopaedic nature, including the Old French Livre de Sidrac. Scholars link this luxury illustrated manuscript collection both with Joan I of Navarre (d. 1305), wife of the French king Phillip IV and Clementia of Hungary (d. 1328), wife of King Louis X of France (Waffner 2017, 65–66). It is not always possible to determine precisely the use such manuscripts were put to. In the case both of the English illustrated Apocalypse manuscripts and that of Rennes Ms. 593 their social use oscillated between devotional reading for the purposes of moral and religious instruction on the one hand and reading for the more secular purpose of literary entertainment on the other. The Apocalypse, in particular, with its depiction of a cosmic struggle between the forces of good and evil might well have resonated with the chivalric values of an audience of knights and aristocrats (Muir Wright 1995). In addition, medieval narrative sources suggest that sometimes medieval readers sought to exploit the specifically predictive value of prophetic texts for their own purposes. We often lack concrete evidence of the practical application of prophecies, but we cannot exclude the possibility that they played a real part in guiding actual decision-making, including that of kings. For instance, the English chronicler Roger of Howden tells us that in the winter of 1190/1191 while at the port of Messina with his crusading army the English king, Richard the Lionheart (d. 1199), sought the views of

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Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202) about the tribulations to be endured by the crusaders in the near future. Joachim had a reputation for possessing the spirit of prophecy based on his skilful interpretation of the Book of Revelation. On other occasions Joachim also met with the Hohenstaufen imperial couple (Emperor Henry IV (d. 1197) and Empress Constance (d. 1198)) making pronouncements about the future, again based on his interpretation of scripture (Reeves 1969, 6–11).

Techniques and Manifestations As a gift from God (1 Cor. 12:1–11), strictly speaking prophecy is not an active “practice” with associated “techniques” which can bring about supernatural knowledge; rather, prophecy is a personal experience that one receives passively. This state of inaction and passivity is often understood as “sleep” in ancient and medieval Christian culture; for example, John, the author of the biblical Book of Revelation was asleep on the Island of Patmos when he received his vision; this scene is a favourite motif, for example, in medieval illustrated manuscripts of the Book of Revelation. Yet, while it would be misleading to speak of “prophetic practice” for this reason, prophecy nevertheless intersected very powerfully with other medieval cultural practices. This is because prophecy, of course, implies some form of divine illumination of the mind. In the last instance, therefore, prophecy is about an individual’s direct communication with God (or, at least, the claim to have had such an experience). Both prophets and mystics have (or claim to have) private encounters with the divine. Prophets, however, go further and express this publicly, for the purposes of social criticism (Lerner 1976). Prophetic experience is thus a subset of mysticism. As such, concepts and intellectual traditions pertaining to prophecy elide with those pertaining to mysticism, as well as to contemplation, a process of actively seeking a direct personal encounter with the divine. Contemplation was a central practice of medieval monasticism where it was very intimately tied to the reading practice of lectio divina prescribed by the Rule of St Benedict by Benedict of Nursia (d. 550) which became the predominant set of precepts in western monasticism for regulating both individual conduct and living as a community. This practice of reading (lectio divina) went hand in hand with meditatio, that is, it revolved around close meditative study of the sacred page and the Church Fathers. In other words, careful reading and interpretation of God’s revealed word in the Bible provided the dedicated student of scripture with a means for comprehending God. If we recall, Cassiodorus had taught that the insights gained through mastery of Bible study were akin to those granted to prophets [see above, section Developments, Historical and Social Context]. Medieval texts often preserve echoes in some form of the various affinities between contemplative, exegetical, and prophetic insight which were perceived in the Middle Ages. For example, Rupert of Deutz and Joachim of Fiore



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confirmed the necessity of prophetic vision for their exegetical breakthroughs [see above, section Developments, Historical and Social Context]. A further and unusually overt example survives in a religious didactic text called Benjamin Major (also known as The Mystical Ark) by Richard of Saint Victor (d. 1173). In this example prophetia was expressly harnessed to contemplation. The term prophetia appears in the fourth chapter of Book 5, which is entitled “Concerning raising up of mind, by what stages it is accustomed to rise up”. Here Richard considers the progressive stages of the expansion of the field of consciousness. This expansion takes place throughout the contemplative ascent and ultimately leads to what Richard calls enlarging, the lifting up of and finally the alienation of the spirit. When Richard discusses the third, and penultimate, stage of contemplation he expressly refers to prophetia. This third stage is reached, says Richard, when “we transcend the bounds of the human condition by the flight of our contemplation”. Richard then goes on to say “every kind of Prophecy, if it happens without alienation of mind, seems to pertain to this third stage of raising up”. (Richard of Saint Victor, Benjamin Maior, ed. Zinn 1979, 315–316). In other words, Richard presents prophecy as analogous to a specific contemplative state in his Benjamin Major, one of the first works to systematically discuss and teach the nature and modes of contemplation and the discipline that leads to it. To be clear, in the context of this teaching text the mention of prophetic experience is no more than a pedagogical device to help to explain the different states of contemplation, rather than a “how to” guide to attaining prophecy. Yet, the fact that Richard of Saint Victor gave prophecy a place in his meditational script for his fellow monks is indicative of a pervasive medieval “visionary culture”, that is, of the existence of a distinct component of medieval religious culture that combined techniques to facilitate visionary experience with theories to explain it (Newman 2005).

Medieval Classifications and Discussions In the thirteenth-century scholastic theologians, such as Albertus Magnus (d. 1280) or Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) systematically discussed prophecy, that is, the nature, causes, and the manner of prophetic knowledge. These are highly specialised medieval debates about prophecy. They reflect the efforts of medieval intellectuals at synthesising the Christian tradition with Aristotelian metaphysics in the wake of the introduction into the Latin West of hitherto unavailable works by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle on diverse topics such as logic, or the problem of the eternity of the world. By the thirteenth century this Aristotelian corpus was having an impact on Christian medieval attitudes to how far (and where) theological speculation should go. What were its proper and improper objects, and what was the role of God-given grace (a form of divine illumination) in attaining understanding? Church Fathers such as Augustine had insisted that intellect had to be supplemented by revelation, but the

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works of Aristotle suggested that this may not be so. In short, the intensification of engagement with the Aristotelian corpus resulted in the intensification of medieval discourses about how humans come to know. In his discussion of prophecy as a charism of knowledge Aquinas stresses the role of mind and intellect, but also considers: (a) the auxiliary role of sense perception in the creation of prophetic knowledge and (b) the question whether prophecy demands that the prophet has a disposition toward prophecy, that is, whether it demands the perfection of the prophet’s imaginative faculty, and the acuteness and clarity of his intellect. Hence, a significant part of medieval discussions about prophecy (where understood as a form of divine illumination), concerned the issue of a prophet’s bodily and mental capabilities (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II.2, Q.171–Q.174; Torrell 1992). Bodies, of course, are either female or male; clearly therefore it was possible that medieval discussions about knowing God prophetically could be conducted in gendered terms. This was often the case especially where medieval individuals confronted the tri-partite hierarchy of vision which Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (d. 430) had included in Book 12 of his Literal Meaning of Genesis (Taylor, 1982). In the Middle Ages Augustine’s writings commanded the highest authority and were treated as foundational by medieval writers. Here in his Genesis commentary Augustine set out his understanding that visions involving the senses pertained to the lowest rank of visionary experience, those involving the imagination the second, middle, rank, and those being purely intellectual the third, and highest, rank. Not surprisingly, in medieval culture which emphasised women’s physicality and their sensory nature Augustine’s theory of vision could be used to relegate the prophetic and visionary experience of women to second division. For the period before 1200 we lack the kind of systematic discussions of both prophecy, such as that produced by Aquinas , and of how one can distinguish true from false revelations produced in the later Middle Ages by several writers, most notably Henry of Langenstein (d.  1397, theologian first at the Sorbonne and later in Vienna), Bishop Alfonso Pecha (also Alfonso of Jaén, d.  1389) and in particular Jean Gerson (d. 1429), a French theologian and chancellor of the University of Paris (Sclosser 2000; Voaden 1999). We thus observe a debate conducted within the clerical elite about the ability to distinguish spirits and revelations sent by God from those sent by the devil – in the parlance of the times, the discernment of spirits (Anderson 2011; Caciola 2003; Elliott 2004). However, although especially vigorously debated in the later Middle Ages the discernment of spirits is in fact a much older tradition with roots in ancient Christianity. Fear of deception and wrong teaching by false apostles and deceitful workers is already referred to in the Bible by St Paul who reminded the Christian community that Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14) and who numbered the ability to discern spirits amongst the divine gifts. Patristic writers interpreted this “gift” in various different ways. For example, Augustine usually connected it with the



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interpretation or judgement of prophetic or visionary activity (The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Book 12). Overall, however, medieval thinkers devoted little attention to discernment. This changed when uncertainties over the Pope’s leadership of the Church during the Great Schism (1378–1417) generated renewed interest in the alternative leadership of prophetically inspired individuals. Contemporary female visionaries such as Catherine of Siena (d.  1380) and Birgitta of Sweden (d.  1373) were controversial figures and prompted the composition of treatises which offered increasingly specific guidelines for discernment of spirits and the detection of false prophecy. Yet, as Wendy Love Anderson’s study of the discernment tradition has demonstrated “the late medieval discourse on the discernment of spirits was […] a series of reactions to key events in the history of Christianity, and a dynamic conversation across several centuries […]. To reduce it to static doctrine or limit it to discussions of female spirituality is to miss a great deal”. (Anderson 2011, 8) Indeed, medieval medical theories concerning the physiology of demonic possession are as much part of the discernment discourse as are the wider changes in intellectual culture which took place from the twelfth century. These changes involved a growing emphasis across different intellectual domains (principally law and theology) on rational techniques of enquiry and on the questioning of witnesses. For example, the elaborate canonization process with its inquiry into the “truth” of miracles dates to the time of Pope Innocent III (d. 1216). In medieval classrooms the scholastic method instilled a mindset which prized the critical interrogation of sacred scripture. In law courts supernatural proof supplied by trial by ordeal increasingly gave way to other forms of testimony. Similarly, the inquisition sought to establish doctrinal error through processes based on asking questions. In short, the period after 1200 was characterized by the rise of what scholars have termed an “inquistional culture” (Elliott 2004). It created an intellectual climate that made the critical examination of supernatural phenomena such as prophecy both legitimate and desirable, not only in clerical circles but also within the local communities in which prophets often operated.

Selected Bibliography Albert the Great. Questio de prophetia. Ed. Anna Rodolfi. Florence, 2009. Alfonso of Jaén. His Life and Works with Critical Editions of the Epistola solitarii, the Informaciones and the Epistola servi Christi. Lund, 1989. Anderson, Wendy Love. The Discernment of Spirits. Assessing Visions and Visionaries in the Late Middle Ages. Tübingen, 2011. Augustine of Hippo. De Genesi ad litteram / The Literal Meaning of Genesis (Ancient Christian Writers 41). Trans. John H. Taylor. Mahwah, NJ, 1982. Aune, David Edward. Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World. Grand Rapids, 1983. Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Thomas und die Charismatik: Kommentar zu Thomas von Aquin Summa Theologica Quaestiones II–II 171–182. Freiburg, 1996.

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Caciola, Nancy. Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, 2003. Cassiodorus. Expositio Psalmorum / Explanation of the Psalms (Ancient Christian Writers 51). Vol. 1: Psalms 1–50. Trans. Patrick Gerard Walsh. Mahwah, NJ, 1990. Coote, Lesley A. Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England. York, 2000. Elliott, Dyan. Proving Women. Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Middle Ages. Princeton and Oxford, 2004. Henriet, Patrick, Klaus Herbers, and Hans-Christian Lehner. Hagiographie et Prophétie (VIe-XIIIe siècle). Florence, 2017. Henry of Langenstein. De discretio spirituum. Heinrichs von Langenstein: “Unterscheidung der Geister,” Lateinisch und Deutsch: Texte und Untersuchungen zur Übersetzungsliteratur aus der Wiener Schule. Ed. Thomas Hohmann. Zurich and Munich, 1977. Isidore of Seville. Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX, 2 vols. Ed. Wallace M. Lindsay. Oxford, 1911 Isidore of Seville. Etymologies. Trans. Stephen A. Barney et al. Cambridge, 2006. Jean Gerson. On Distinguishing True from False Revelations, which is included in Jean Gerson: Early Works. Trans. and introduced Brian Patrick McGuire (New York, 1998). Latin text: Jean Gerson. “De distinctione verarum visionum a falsis.” Oeuvres Complètes 3:36–56. Eds. Palémon Glorieux and Jean Gerson. Paris, 1962. Jostmann, Christian. Sibilla Erithea Babilonica. Papsttum und Prophetie im 13. Jahrhundert. Hanover, 2006. Lerner, Robert E. “Medieval Prophecy and Religious Dissent.” Past and Present 72 (1976): 3–24. Mayeski, Marie Anne. “  ‘Let Women Not Despair’: Rabanus Maurus on Women Prophets.” Theological Studies 58 (1997): 237–253. McGinn, Bernard. The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200–1350). The Presence of God. A History of Western Christian Mysticism. Vol. 3. New York, 1998. Muir Wright, Rosemary. Art and Antichrist in Medieval Europe. Manchester, 1995. Newman, Barbara. “What did it mean to say ‘I saw’? The clash between theory and practice in medieval visionary culture.” Speculum 80.1 (Jan., 2005): 1–42. Nigel Morgan, Nigel. The Douce Apocalypse. Picturing the End of the World in the Middle Ages. Treasures from the Bodleian Library. Oxford, 2006. Oracula Sibyllina. The Sibylline Oracles: with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on the First and Second Books. Ed. Jane L. Lightfoot. Oxford, 2007. Othloh von St. Emmeram, and Paul Gerhardt Schmidt. Otloh von St Emmeram, Liber Visionum (MGH, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 13). Weimar, 1989. Pasnau, Robert. “Divine Illumination”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition). Ed. Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/ illumination/ (9 March 2020). Peter of Cornwall, Robert Easting, and Richard Sharpe. Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations. Toronto, 2014. Richard of St Victor. Benjamin Maior (Mystical Ark). English text: Richard of St Victor. The Twelve Patriarchs; The Mystical Ark; Book Three of The Trinity, Preface by Jean Châtillon (The Classics of Western Spirituality). Ed. Grover A. Zinn. London, 1979. Latin text: Richard of St Victor. Benjamin Maior (Mystical Ark). Latin text, see especially Migne, Jacques-Paul. Richardi a Sancto Victore Opera Omnia (Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Ser. Latina). Vol. 196. Paris, 1880. Reeves, Marjorie. The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages. A Study in Joachimism. Oxford, 1969. Rupert of Deutz. De Gloria et honore filii hominis super Mattheum (CCCM 29). Ed. Rhaban Haacke. Turnhout, 1979. Trans. in Os meum aperui: die Autobiographie Ruperts von Deutz. Ed. Walter Berschin. Cologne, 1985.



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Schlosser, Marianne. “Lucerna in calignoso loco.” Aspekte des Prophetie-Begriffes in der scholastischen Theologie (Veröffentlichungen des Grabmann-Institutes zur Erforschung der Mittelalterlichen Theologie und Philosophie, Neue Folge 43). Eds. Michael Schmaus et al. Paderborn, 2000. Synave, Paul, and Pierre Benoit. Prophecy and Inspiration. A Commentary on the Summa Theologia II–II, Questions 171–178. New York, 1961. Part II. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. Blackfriars edition (61 vols., Latin and English with Notes and Introductions, London and New York, 1964–1980). Paperback edition 2006. Torrell, Jean Pierre. Recherches sur la théorie de la prophétie au moyen âge XIIe-XIVe siècles. Études et textes, Dokimion 13. Fribourg, 1992. Visio Caroli Grossi (Vision of Charles the Fat). Trans. included in Gardiner, Eileen. Visions of Heaven and Hell before Dante. New York, 1989. Voaden, Rosalynn. God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writings of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries. York, 1999. Waffner, Petra. Le Livre de Sidrac. Die Quellen alles Wissens. Aspekte zur Tradition und Rezeption eines altfranzoesischen Textes. Ph.D. Diss. FernUniversität in Hagen, 2017. William of Malmesbury. De Gestis Regum Anglorum Libri Quinque, Historiae Nouellae Libri Tres (Rolls Series 90). Ed. William Stubbs. London, 1887. Young, Abigail Ann. “Mission and Message: Two Prophetic Voices in the Twelfth Century.” Essays in Medieval Philosophy and Theology in Memory of Walter H. Principe, CBS: Fortresses and Launching Pads. Eds. James R. Ginther and Carl. N. Still. Ashgate, 2005.

Michael T. Miller

Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World Definitions and Terminology The Biblical Hebrew noun translated as “prophet” is navi’i (‫)נָ ִ ֣ביא‬, and the correlating noun for prophecy is nevu’ah (‫בּואה‬ ָ ְ‫)נ‬. These were used still in the Middle Ages when writing in Hebrew; the Arabic cognate was ‫نبي‬. The words indicate (one who receives) a message from God, usually a message intended for the people of Israel regarding how they should live. Ergo, prophecy itself is a general phenomenon, meaning any kind of direct communication from God which was intended for public consumption. This could take the form either of warnings about lifestyle – for the pursuit of the correct way of living and worshipping so as to please God and avoid evil – or of revelation concerning metaphysics or God’s own nature. Prognostication then is only one part of prophecy, and had usually taken the form of warning about the consequences for the people, should they not change their ways. Vision is an overlapping category with prophecy, which is usually delivered verbally via an appearance of God or an angel; however it is possible to have visions which are not prophetic (any such experience not directed from God is not prophecy) just as it is possible to have prophecies which are not visions (but verbal, or even simply by insight). Rabbinic tradition names 55 biblical characters who earn the title of prophet, although some other figures received prophecy (Daniel is an example of a non-prophet who received prophecy). However, it is one of the principles of rabbinic Judaism that prophecy ended after biblical times and God no longer communicates in this way with any human beings; Now, the only medium for understanding God’s nature and expectations from humans is the Torah as revealed to the exemplary prophet, Moses. How then can we discuss Jewish prophecy in the Middle Ages? Many thinkers – philosophers and mystics – speculated about how prophecy would in principle be possible, how it could occur, and what form the experience and the information revealed would take. These speculations concerned the biblical prophets, with a nod to the tradition that prophecy would, in or just before the messianic age, again become possible for human beings. So prophetic experience stood in the mythical past and the mythical future but not in the present. This notwithstanding, there have been some instances of individuals claiming prognostic revelation; most usually concerning the date of the Messiah’s arrival, and this was reached through the textual analysis of particular passages of the Torah. Some philosophers also appear to have subtly hinted that the intellectual process of philosophy was as one with the prophetic, although the material which they themselves had received through this seems to have concerned the nature of Divinity and not the future (or the Law). Lastly, some mystics did claim https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-015



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to receive revelatory visions or information regarding the future, without claiming the title of prophet for themselves. One notable exception to this is Abraham Abulafia, who explicitly claimed that prophecy had now returned, and that he had received prophetic revelation. It should be noted that in twelfth and thirteenth-century Germany and France, several figures bore the appellation ha-Navi (the Prophet); this did not necessarily indicate active prognostication, but rather the ability to embark on heavenly journeys, communicate with angels, and access secrets of the Divine (a small portion of which may have been predictive). Some thinkers  – most famously Maimonides  – saw the rabbinic sages of the Mishna and Talmud as following in the footsteps of the prophets, and receiving Divine inspiration. The difference is that they gained their insight from the study of Torah, and not directly from God. However, even the perfection of the sages was now a long way from possible in the time that these thinkers were writing, and so in the period under our purview quite few specific predictions were made; in keeping with the intellectual agenda of the rabbinate at this time, speculation on the divine nature and the theoretical method of prophecy was far more interesting than any actual predictions about the future. The one exception to this rule may be predictive dreams – these are discussed in b. Ber.55a–57b with the typical variety of ideas, but appear to be generally considered a minor form of prophecy which can potentially (though far from always) accurately foretell the future. The dreams discussed are visionary and opaque – which is to say that they do not contain a specific prophetic message passed on by a messenger, but once the required interpretation is carried out, their meaning can be extracted. This was probably the influence on R. Hai Gaon (Pumbedita, 939–1038)’s discussion regarding two varieties of dream prophecy: the first through signs in a dream (which requires an interpreter to elicit the meaning from), and the second through an explicit message delivered by a messenger within the dream. Hai in principle accepted both but was highly suspicious of the second.

Written Sources and Artifacts During the time period of 500–1500, the theoretical discussion of prophecy and prognostic visions took place in a number of distinct literary forms. First of these would be the rabbinic literature of the Talmud and Midrashim, the Babylonian Talmud having only been completed ca. 600 in Babylonia. This literature was written and compiled in the rabbinic centres of the Near East, but its influence throughout European Jewry in the following centuries was pivotal, and was the foundation for what followed it. Second would be the writings of Jewish philosophers. These thinkers, taking their influence from Muslim philosophers who were translating, interpreting, and incorporating into Islamic theology the concepts of Aristotle and the Neo-Platonists, worked

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throughout the Islamic world including Spain. Important texts include Saadia Gaon’s Book of Beliefs and Opinions (933 Baghdad), and Commentary on Daniel (which concentrates on prophecy as divination); Judah Halevi’s The Kuzari, and Abraham ibn Daud’s Exalted Faith (both twelfth-century Spain); Abraham ibn Ezra’s Bible commentaries contain numerous discussions of prophecy (twelfth-century Western Europe); but, most important is the RaMBaM, Moses ben Maimonides: born in Spain but writing in twelfth-century Cairo, his texts would forever change the intellectual world of Judaism. For our purposes these are Mishneh Torah (of which the first section, Book of Knowledge, is relevant) and Guide of the Perplexed. After Maimonides, Gersonides’ Wars of the Lord (Provence, 1329) is also an important source. Thirdly, the mystical tradition. This is the most complex area, having undergone several iterations in the different cultural centres of the Middle Ages. Beginning in Babylonia between the fourth and ninth centuries with the arcane heavenly journeys described in the Hekhalot literature (↗ Miller, Journeys to the Other World: Medieval Jewish Traditions), this material was preserved and interpreted by the Ashkenazi Pietists, the Hasidim of Germany. This group (initially of the Kalonymus family, twelfth century, their students spread throughout western Europe) copied and edited Hekhalot manuscripts, developing their own mystical theology from the material. As well as those manuscripts preserved by the Ashkenazi Hasidim, some Hekhalot texts were discovered in the Cairo Genizah and serve to support the antiquity of the material as well as the corruption of the German manuscripts. Other groups also inherited these Babylonian concepts and blended them with those of the philosophers; thus emerged the Kabbalah of France and Spain between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, of which the latter concerns us most here; particularly the work of Abraham Abulafia, Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla, and Moses of León, from whose extended circle the Zohar came. Abulafia also lived and taught in Greece and Italy. Finally, in a less orthodox manner, there are a few magical texts such as Sefer HaRazim (evidenced in the Cairo Genizah (↗ Saar, Divination in the Cairo Genizah) and possibly composed as early as fourth century), which provides magical incantations and rites requesting assistance from angels; the possibilities include predictions about the future, life, and death, which can be gained from the angels who pull the sun.

Techniques and Manifestations The Angelic Vision Biblically, when prophecy is described, it is almost always provided by God or an angel speaking to the prophet, usually in the form of a vision. In some cases the prophetic vision appears in a dream. Still in medieval times these were seen as the usual



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channels for passive reception of prophecy, although the active pursuit of revelation became more fashionable during this period. The Hekhalot literature describes rabbinic mystics ascending into the heavenly palace, conversing with angels, receiving information and entering God’s presence. This therefore falls under the category of visionary experience which is sometimes prognostic, although its self-description is not visionary but ascent. The ascent would usually take place with the help of angels, who could be conjured by magical means, or who would whisk one away after imbibing a special preparation. R. Ishmael reports the instruction to summon Yophiel, Prince of Torah, by fasting for 40 days, bathing twenty-four times, not seeing certain colours and praying vigorously, then invoking God by the twelve letter name. Then, God will send down “magnificent ones of wisdom” who will “bring down secrets of wisdom by permission of Your Name” (Ma’aseh Merkavah, §  562). The tenth-century Babylonian R. Hai Gaon records a similar description of preparation for prophetic visions, incorporating fasting and whispered songs and prayers. In another passage the seer can request specific information of God, enquiring “tell me about this certain matter, whether it will happen or not” (§ 504) upon which “The figure of a man will come to you and tell you all that you ask him”, within a dream, or that the angel will “come to me this night…and tell me about a certain matter, everything which will be about it, and what will be with it in the future.” (§ 505) Enoch, although not a prophet in the Bible, by the Islamic period had become the archetypal heavenly traveller – carried into heaven by angels and witness to the mechanics of the stars, and secrets of the course of creation from beginning to end, including even those secrets of creation unknown to the angels. Enoch was identified as the archangel Metatron, a trans-temporal office for which he was either pre-ordained or elected due to his righteousness. Enoch-Metatron’s omniscience parallels God’s in the (Palestinian or Babylonian) Medieval text 3 Enoch (a.k.a. Sefer Hekhalot), where he receives the entire pre-ordained plan of history (3 En 11:2–3), and displays to R. Ishmael the heavenly curtain “on which are printed all the generations of the world and their deeds, whether done or to be done, till the last generation.” (3 En 45:1) This suggests that Metatron had the ability to reveal future knowledge to any successful “descender to the Merkavah”. In contemporaneous texts he plays an important role in communicating information to human beings – including at one point even revealing the Torah to Moses. For the Merkava mystics, Metatron was among a number of different angelic names (who may or may not be different beings) upon which they could call for special powers of knowledge, and who may relate to them future events. The Ashkenazi Hasid Eleazar of Worms claimed that the future is known to all angels who have access to God’s presence “through seeing the splendour of the Glory”, hereby suggesting that the vision of God itself imparted foreknowledge (perhaps due to some relationship between the curtain bearing the timeline of history and the Divine Garment).

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A similar semi-angelic intermediary motif is found from the thirteenth century onward where revelation is delivered by the only other biblical figure to be taken into heaven without dying, the prophet Elijah (notably in the fifteenth-century Spanish kabbalistic text, Sefer ha-Meshiv). In thirteenth-century France one kabbalist reports communing with Elijah every Yom Kippur, and Ezra of Montcontour is said to have received mysteries of the Torah and prophets from a voice in the clouds. It is worth noting that the vision is not necessarily a passive process: some kabbalists describe intentionally visualising an angel or God before them as a preliminary procedure to attaining an actual vision (Abulafia, and R. Yehuda Albotini, Jerusalem, sixteenth century).

The Active Intellect The philosophers interpreted these angelic traditions in their own way, arguing that these were metaphorical “created” entities or aspects of divinity (notably Maimonides; although Saadia argued that visions accompanying prophecy must be taken as literally as the content of prophecy itself, whether of angels, or of the enthroned Glory). Commonly referenced was the Neoplatonic concept of the Active Intellect, the Divine Mind to which all rationality was in some way due. This had been picked up by Arabic philosophy and entered the Jewish philosophical lexicon from there. The Active Intellect acted as a rational structure which the human mind could, once in a state of utmost perfection, unite with and thus channel into consciousness information not otherwise available. For most philosophers, the individual would become ontologically united with the Active Intellect such that there was “no distinction between them.” (Halevi, citing here a phrase which was used of Enoch during his ascension and transformation into Metatron). At this point, information could be absorbed into the individual’s consciousness, having been processed by the imaginative faculty into pictorial narrative – thus producing the vision or dream wherein the information was imparted by an angel or semi-divine intermediary – the Glory/Shekhinah. Uniting with the supra-finite Active Intellect in this way demanded a high degree of personal perfection. As the biblical prophets were exemplary, so must any prophet be; for most this would include absolute adherence to God’s revealed Law as well as moral and intellectual perfection. So, Maimonides wrote that prophecy “is the highest degree of man and the ultimate term of perfection that can exist for his species” (Guide, 2.36:369). For Judah Halevi, prophecy was in some way the ultimate goal of Judaism, representing the perfection of an individual which was only possible by following the way of life set out by the commandments. There is therefore a mechanical or natural aspect to prophecy: it is not simply bestowed by God, but is the culmination of an individual process. For some (e.  g. Ger-



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sonides), prophecy is an entirely natural phenomenon, one achieved without Divine intervention but simply due to the nature of the human intellect and imagination. In this, it is little different from philosophical knowledge, although the distinguishing feature of prophecy is that it grants foreknowledge of future events. Others argued that Divine Will was the final necessary stage. While the philosophers rationalised prior religious categories, the kabbalists remythologised the philosophers; so, concepts like the Active Intellect were given highly pictorial emphasis and identified with the character of Metatron in the Spanish Kabbalah. For Abulafia the process of prophecy is a mystical union of the individual’s intellect with the Divine Intellect, such that “he and He will become one entity.” (Ms. Paris BN 774, fol. 155a.) His contemporary R. Ezra of Gerona wrote that “The righteous causes his unblemished and pure soul to ascend [until she reaches] the supernal holy soul and she unites with her and knows future things […] Thus, the soul of the prophet is united with the supernal soul in a complete union.” (Idel 2011, 42) It is also found post-Zohar in Isaac of Acre’s Meirat Einaim (fourteenth century, Spain), which describes cleaving (devekut) to God as the first stage of the process whereby one “will reach the divine spirit…and he will prophesy and foretell the future.” Crucial to this, for Isaac, is the cultivation of equanimity or detachment from the world and others’ opinions. Unusually, Isaac understands the sefirot as internal (psychological) stages of prophetic cognition, the object of which was always the Infinite, En Sof. The experience of Divine communication could entail substantial side effects. Both Moses and Enoch were said to have altered appearances, including a shining or glowing face, after the encounter and, as noted above, in the later stages of the tradition Enoch was transformed into a fiery angel. Maimonides wrote that when the prophet would “view the entire wisdom of God from the First Form to the navel of the earth,” and “immediately the holy spirit alights upon him … his soul conjoins with the rank of angels called ishim. He is transformed into a different individual. He understands through an intellect that is not as it had been up to that point. He is elevated above the rank of the rest of the sages, as it says of Saul: You will prophesy with them and be transformed into a different individual [1 Sam. 10:6].” (Ch.7) This ontic transformation of the prophet was also seen in the Kabbalah. Abulafia described the mystic being ceremonially anointed and named as Metatron – who for him and his contemporaries was identical with the Active Intellect. A thirteenth-century French rabbi, known as Michael the Angel, is reported to have lain as if dead for three days following his prophetic experience, after which his apparent resurrection gained him the title of Angel.

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Divine Names One of the primary elements of Jewish mysticism is its dependence upon language, and so it is no surprise that linguistic means inform prophetic techniques. The tenth-century Italian Shabbetai Donnolo (913–982) devoted a large portion of his Sefer Hakhmoni (a commentary on the famous linguistic-mystical text Sefer Yetsirah) to astrology and to explaining that prophecy was possible via the Hebrew alphabet because of the alphabet’s foundational role in creation. At the same time, the Name of God is an important element of Jewish religion, especially in the mystical tradition. The Name or names of God are therefore used not infrequently to precipitate prophetic and visionary experiences. Some Hekhalot texts describe the chanting of Divine names as a method of accessing the Heavenly realm. In one text, the name Totrosiai must be repeated exactly 112 times – no more and no less (other texts, unfortunately, record the number as 111 – no more and no less). The names of angelic guardians are also required to gain passage to higher levels of heaven prior to attaining the vision of God enthroned. This technique is mentioned also by the twelfth/thirteenth-century Ashkenazi Hasid Eleazar of Worms (and gained opprobrium as a method the Germans used to attain prophecy by the thirteenth-century R. Moses Taku), and even the eleventh-century French commentator Rashi makes note of it as an established method of ascent into Heaven (see his commentary to b.Hag.14b). However, it finds its most definitive statement in thirteenth-century Spain, when Abraham Abulafia developed his “Prophetic Kabbalah” based on the meditative manipulation of the Divine Name(s). This practice, described at length by Abulafia and used by many after him, involved the writing, recitation, and visualisation of one of God’s names (most potently the Tetragrammaton, but all were related), accompanied by specific breathing patterns and bodily movements. The name would be turned around in the mind and articulated into its individual letters, and then these letters and their numerical values could be recombined, forming new words or phrases. Because of the primacy of (Hebrew) language in kabbalistic cosmology, this technique could reveal information about the relationships between objects, events, and individuals in reality. The climax would involve the creative dissolution and restructuring of the mystic’s conscious self, and their transportation into the presence of God. Like the philosophers, Abulafia emphasises seclusion and clearing the mind of worldly concerns before attempting this, as well as traditional practices such as wearing prayer shawl and tefillin. Despite the very active focus of Abulafia’s prophetic technique, he sometimes refers to it as a “receiving” – in this case, like the philosophers, it appears as an ever-present overflow of divine wisdom which the mystic must prepare himself for in very specific ways, so as to be able to receive its influx. Using these methods, Abulafia claimed to have received a prophecy including the end of the Jewish exile and the time of redemption, wherein the Divine names and attributes will alter, languages and nations will change and mix, and



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the Jews shall gain political prominence (see VeZot LeYehuda, and Sefer Otzar Eden Ganuz). So for the kabbalists from Abulafia onward, the name of God or angel granted access to that being, providing a direct line which brought the mystic and divinity into proximity. The intentional drawing of the divine energy into the verbal expression of the name would form the presence of the Divine within and through the mystic, and this pseudo-carnal embodied manifestation of divinity would effect the knowledge and promulgation of secrets including those of the future. The kabbalists’ fluid approach to metaphor and meaning meant that this usage of the Divine Name could easily combine with the angelic vision; Abulafia describes how, after massaging the Name within their mind, the seer would receive a vision of the letters of the tetragrammaton arranged as an angelic anthropos; which was itself the vessel of revelation. In another text he describes visualising the 72 letter Name of God as God and His angels arranged as a king and servants, who will instruct the messenger/seer. Ergo, there is a flow between the concept of language and of visualisation which may represent the intellectual and imaginative faculties enacting their respective capacities in the process of bringing divine power and knowledge into the world, providing progressively concrete forms of embodiment. This process is one of cleaving (devekut) to God by means of unifying God’s explicit Name (the Tetragrammaton) with the transcendent divine essence (Ein Sof), a well-known kabbalistic practice. Other mystics combined the motifs of Divine Name and angelic vision in different ways: the fifteenth-century Spanish text Sefer ha-Meshiv (“Book of the Answering Angel”) describes the method of prophecy as one of reciting the Divine Name forty-five times during a forty day fast, at the end of which the “garment” or angel of God would appear and communicate whatever knowledge was required, and for Moshe Cordovero (sixteenth century, Palestine) such a manifestation was identical with the bat qol (“Divine Voice”) described by the early rabbis. Similarly, the prominent Ashkenazi Hasid, R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo ha-Navi of Erfurt (ca. 1200, also known as R. Troestlin of Erfurt) who wrote several anonymous works, including a Commentary on the Seventy Names of Metatron, which utilised dense gematria codes to provide an array of angelic/divine names which, with the correct adjuration formulas, would place these heavenly beings under one’s command for the realisation of prophecy (one text even draws on the early heterodox tradition of Shiur Qomah, whereby God is adjured by names attributed to various parts of His body). These methods and writings of Nehemiah and his circle drew heavily on Hekhalot traditions but substantially developed them and were influential on several successive generations of mystics, including those of thirteenth-century Spain. In sixteenth-century Palestine Hayyim Vital also described a dream method involving the recitation of Divine Names prior to sleep in order to receive the answer to a question (specifically including prognostications) (see Ketavim Hadashim l’Rabbenu Hayyim Vital).

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Finally, the Sword of Moses (likely pre-eleventh century, but the extant manuscript dates from the fourteenth century) utilises Divine Names in concert with practical touches to gain insight into the future (such as whether a journey will be successful, the outcome of an illness); however this would not strictly be considered prophecy.

Torah As previously mentioned, the analysis of the Torah text held a special place in Jewish religion since the early rabbinic period. The Torah was now the sole means of revelation – the text was provided to Moses as a complete string of letters within which was contained everything which God needed to communicate to humanity – the concealed layers of information could be found through manipulating the text in different ways and so it was in principle possible to discover new information within the ancient scripture – effectively receiving new revelation. There is a tradition that the Torah is a “blueprint” for the world, and so the whole of history and the future can be found within the text. This could be attempted in various ways – for example through interpreting the visions given to Daniel which describe the End of Days, or by finding subtle hints within other books which, taken out of context, might appear to suggest some future event. For the kabbalists, the manipulation of the text was taken to an extreme with techniques such as gematria (using the numerical values of letters, words, and phrases to make connections and form conclusions), notarikon (forming acronyms from initial letters) and temurah (where letters are exchanged for those preceding or following them in the alphabet). Gematria, although an ancient practice, may have been developed as a tool of mystical experience by the Ashkenazi Hasidim, and from there passed to Castilian Kabbalah in the thirteenth century. Maimonides too notes that some parables involve the names of objects, which must be rearranged in order to find the meaning of the vision. The book of Daniel was frequently mined for information about the impending Messianic age; the figures 2300, 1290, and 1335 were interpreted by many to refer to years (although the point from which counting should begin was more contentious). Even some Karaites indulged in this speculation, expecting the end to come 2300 years after the Exodus. Saadia Gaon placed the Messiah’s advent in 1023/1024 (Book of Beliefs and Opinions), and Maimonides records a tradition according to which the restoration of prophecy to Israel – which is “undoubtedly […] among the vanguards of the Messiah” – will occur in the year 1215/16. Several other messianic movements are recorded in Europe (↗ Latteri, Eschatology Jewish Traditions), and it is worth noting the tale of the Ashkenazi Hasid R. Samuel ben R Kalonymus the Elder of Speyer (eleventh/twelfth century) who received the year of the Messiah’s coming but died before he could write it down; appearing in a dream to his son R. Judah the Pious, the latter received the year but



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also died before he was able to preserve it – perhaps a warning to those who indulge in such speculations. Some biblical prophecies were applied to contemporary events (with the corresponding expectation that they would unfold as in the Bible). In particular, the battles between Muslim and Christian forces inspired some analysis; the tenth-century Basra/Jerusalem Karaite Yefet ben Ali read Daniel 11:29 as describing the progressive conquests of Byzantium, while for Hai Gaon the same was predicted in Numbers 24. Muslim victories were also read in this light – perhaps more so, as Christendom represented the biblical final enemy of Edom. So, in the seventh-century passages of the Mysteries of Shimon ben Yohai the conquests of Muhammad himself are cited. Abulafia describes the final of seven methods of (biblical) interpretation as leading to the intellect’s reception of “speech” from the Active Intellect; “and it is the path of the essence of prophecy.” (Sheva Netivot Torah). Again, it is worth noting the kabbalistic predilection for syncretism and for equating symbols, since the Torah was frequently identified not just as the intellectual strata which undergirds creation (e.  g. Abraham ibn Ezra, ibn Latif; drawing on the prior rabbinic tradition that God contemplated the Torah prior to creating: Ber.R.1.1, 1.4), but explicitly as the Divine Name (e.  g. Barukh Togarmi and Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla, presumably finding inspiration from Nachmanides who concluded that the entire Torah is, in its pre-mundane state, nothing but names of God).

Socio-Political Role of the Prophet The status of prophet usually incorporates a moral leadership role. For many Jewish philosophers – most notably Maimonides and Halevi – the prophet is something like Plato’s philosopher king, a wise figure who can guide society towards the best state of order based on the revelations accorded to them. In terms of prognostication this figure can, as did the biblical prophets, foresee catastrophes resulting from present modes of behavior and help to steer society away from them. Even Gersonides, who held that prophecy is subordinate to human free will, maintains that its essential desideratum is to edge human beings back toward the natural (and therefore perfect, divinely ordained) order of events. This facet, while a central concern of philosophers, is not emphasized in the mystical literature, the latter being more interested in metaphysical than sociological revelation.

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts This time period is one of philosophy (in the Islamic world) and mysticism (under Christianity). Mostly Jews lived separately from the majority community but still the

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elites mixed freely with the majority and for those curious enough written material and public debates provided for the absorption of material from other backgrounds (ergo this was true in philosophy especially, as philosophers tended to be those who had absorbed and engaged with other philosophical material and viewpoints). However, from the thirteenth century until the sixteenth many expulsions uprooted Jewish communities which had existed in Western and Central Europe since the beginning of the Common Era, many of whom relocated to the Ottoman Empire. The influence of Muslim thought is palpable throughout Medieval Jewish philosophy. While prophecy depends to a large degree upon biblical and rabbinic tradition, the concept was filtered through Islamicised Aristotelean and Neoplatonic concepts such as the separate intellects; the categorisation of kinds of prophecy also depends ultimately upon the trend ascribed in Ismailite Islam to Ja‘far al-Sadiq, the Sixth Imam. Abraham Maimonides, son of Moses, attempted to incorporate Sufi practices into his synagogue in Cairo, apparently as a means of renewing the prophetic age; it was his belief that the sufi methods were the authentic method of prophecy which had been lost during Israel’s time in the diaspora. A shift in emphasis happened within the Hekhalot literature of sixth-ninth century Babylonia: here, the angelic revelation became something one could request, or demand: certain formulas, rituals and prayers are recorded with the purpose of bringing and binding an angelic being who would pass on wisdom or information. These mystics are noteworthy in their belief that a seer could also ascend into heaven (although this is based on the prior example of Enoch’s heavenly journeys); in most other schools prophecy comes to the mystic rather than the other way around. Some kabbalists did follow their example but many understood the descriptions psychologically. However, there are still differing opinions about the active role of the prophet in achieving prophecy. For many kabbalists, and some philosophers, the individual must take practical steps to draw down the divine overflow, thereby limiting the extent of God’s role in choosing the prophet.

Medieval Classifications and Discussions Free Will Classically, free will and Divine omniscience are balanced in Judaism. The important and oft-cited statement is “All is foreseen, and freedom of choice is granted. The world is judged with goodness, but in accordance with the amount of man’s positive deeds.” (Pirkei Avot 3:15). This however did not deter the philosophers from debating the matter and reaching different conclusions. Gersonides was the most extreme in this regard, being heavily in favour of free will to the extent of limiting even God’s knowledge of future human actions (thus invalidating any certain prophecy regard-



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ing human choices). Because of this, he claimed that any prophecy involving human beings is given only in degrees of probability. Others were more nuanced. Isaac ibn Latif (thirteenth century, Toledo, Castile) claimed that the spiritual vision consists of perceiving the “the secret of the supernal beings in one timeless moment” (Sha’ar haShamayim), thereby bridging eternity and temporality.

The Glory The difficulty inherent in God communicating directly with human beings vexed the philosophers, who (building on prior rabbinic equivocations) postulated an intermediary form which passed on the message from God. This was designated first by Saadia Gaon as the Glory of God (Kavod YHWH, a biblical term, possibly originally equivocal for God’s presence or appearance but later one of many terms, including Shekhinah, used to designate a phenomenal manifestation of divine energy); later authorities identified this created intermediary with the Active Intellect. The Glory is an accompanying sign of the prophecy’s validity and authenticity. It may appear as an enthroned human form which speaks to the recipient, or simply as light.

Non-Jews Several philosophers claim that prophecy is technically available to any individual who reaches the required degree of perfection; the only tenets are heredity, the environment, and the training required for such experiences. Of course, in practice this does limit prophecy to Jews; universal availability is something of a technicality because the strict following of the Mosaic law is a necessary part of the preparatory training. This special access to prophecy then places the Jews above other humans, in between the simply rational and the spiritual, where not only does one access knowledge such as that of the future, but also accesses special physical abilities like protection from fire and not needing food. Saadia wrote that in the times of redemption all Israel will receive the ability to know the future, and that this will be a sign to other nations of one’s status as a Jew (BBO 8.9, 9.11). Several philosophers (Halevi and Saadia among them) argued that living in Israel was necessary for attaining perfection, due in part to its climate. This was in fact an early rabbinic dictum based on Deut 18:15: “Prophecy was only possible in the Land of Israel, and was only possible in a pure environment.” (Mekhilta Exod 12:1, cf. b. Moed Katan 25a, Sifre Deut. 18:15, Sifre Zuta 35:33, an interpretation cited also by Nachmanides in the twelfth century, Barcelona). Maimonides wrote that the condition of exile prevented prophecy because it inculcated a clouding mental sadness – which prevented the required prophetic state of joy (Guide 7.4, cf. y. Sukk.22b).

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Other conditions included purity, worship, sacrifices and reverence for the Shekhinah.

Categories of Prophecy As noted above, the Islamic hierarchical ordering of forms of prophecy was very influential on Medieval Jewish philosophers. Many philosophers gave their own hierarchy or system of categorisation, often differentiating between dreams and waking visions, sometimes including solely auditory phenomena, but usually with the highest level reserved for Moses.

Verification of Prophecy Knowing the difference between a true and a false prophet is of paramount importance. Many philosophers developed strict rules for vetting self-claimed prophets. These restrictions were largely intended to limit the damage that false prophets could do – and additionally, even when accepted, a prophet’s power was limited to political rather than religious matters. While theoretically holding that prophecy was the peak capability of perfected humanity, Maimonides’ wariness still led him to famously proclaim in his early Mishnah commentary that “If a thousand prophets, all equal to Elijah and Elisha, interpret the law one way, and a thousand and one sages without the power of prophecy, offer an opposing interpretation – ‘Follow the majority position!’ [Ex 23:3].” (Seder Zeraim 14) In general it is argued that miracles are a necessary but not sufficient condition of prophecy. Both Saadia and Maimonides make clear that authentic prophecy will never contradict or abnegate the contents of the Torah. The reasonableness and reliability of prophecy are also considerations. Maimonides added that while prediction – with absolute minute accuracy – is a necessary sign of the prophet, this too is not proof, as the prophet is not the only person capable of predicting the future. Maimonides lists three qualities which immediately invalidate a prophecy: That the prophecy is made not in God’s Name; that it commands idolatry (cf. Deut. 13:1–3); and that it regards legal matters or the interpretation of Torah. However, if the message is “political”, regarding human affairs, then it may be permissible. For Saadia, a prediction must be matched up against reason and reliable tradition to ascertain whether it is likely to be true. So, we know that God will not again flood the world; this prophetic message would be rejected. (Nowadays we might reject that the sun will stand still in the sky, due to our rational knowledge of the solar system’s workings).



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Selected Bibliography Alexander, Philip S. (trans.). “3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch.” Old Testament Pseudepigrapha I: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments. Ed. James H. Charlesworth. Garden City, 1983. 223–315. Jephet ibn ‘Alī the Karaite. A Commentary on the Book of Daniel. Ed. and trans. David Samuel Margoliouth. Oxford, 1889. Ben-Shammai, Haggai. “Saadia’s Introduction to Daniel: Prophetic Calculation of the End of Days vs. Astrological and Magical Speculation.” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 4 (2004): 11–86. Davila, James R. (ed.). Hekhalot Literature in Translation: Major Texts of Merkava Mysticism. Leiden, 2013. Fine, Lawrence Brian. Techniques of Mystical Meditation for Achieving Prophecy and the Holy Spirit in the Teachings of Isaac Luria and Hayyim Vital. Ph.D. Diss. Brandeis University Waltham, MA, 1976. Heschel, Abraham Joshua. Prophetic Inspiration after the Prophets: Maimonides and Other Medieval Authorities. Hoboken, 1996. Idel, Moshe. The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia. New York, 1987. Idel, Moshe. Enchanted Chains: Ritual and Techniques in Jewish Mysticism. Los Angeles, 2005. Idel, Moshe. Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders. Budapest, 2005. Idel, Moshe. Kabbalah in Italy 1280–1510: A Survey. London, 2011. Kreisel, Howard. Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Dordrecht, 2001. Morgan, Michael A. (trans.). Sefer HaRazim: The Book of the Mysteries. Chicago, 1983. Moses Maimonides. The Guide for the Perplexed. Trans. Shlomo Pines. Chicago, 1963. Wolfson, Elliot R. Through A Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism. New Jersey, 1994.

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Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World Definitions and Terminology A statement in the traditions (ḥadīths) recording the sayings of the prophet of Islam, Muḥammad (d. 632), proclaims that there is no divination after [his] prophetic mission (lā kihāna ba‘d al-nubuwwa). With investigation into divination and prognostication in Islam so authoritatively restricted, the bar potentially limiting the scope of this enquiry is further raised by the Quran where Muḥammad is called khātam al-nabiyyīn, Seal of the Prophets (Q. 33:40). This expression would be understood to mean that God chose Muḥammad as his last prophet to humanity, a belief that is dogma in Islam. If we were to take both these ḥadīth and Quranic statements at face value, this chapter should end here. Yet, divination became integral part of Islamic beliefs and practices. As for prophecy, the Islamic understanding of term nabī (prophet), while never challenging the finality dogma associated to Muḥammad, became fluid and manifestations of forms of nubuwwa continued well beyond after the Prophet’s death. In keeping with a covenantal vision of sacred history according to which, from the moment of creation, God sent a sequence of prophets – starting with Adam – to each community to instruct humanity to obey him exclusively and warn of the consequences for failing to do that, Muḥammad fits in this line of prophets. Of these, among the most extensively covered in the Quran are Abraham, Moses and Jesus. While the Quran depicts all prophets as equal to each other, Muḥammad was assigned an extra-special universal mandate: to affirm once and for all the true, original religion (that is, absolute monotheism) from which other prophet-led communities had deviated or that non-believers had chosen to ignore. Throughout history the nabīs’ number amounted somewhere in the region of 124,000, some Biblical and some Arabian, with only a few named in the Quran. However, as the Islamic proclamation of faith and first pillar of Islam clearly demonstrates (There is no god but God and Muḥammad is his messenger), Muḥammad is first of all rasūl, messenger, since it was he – of about 313 believed to have appeared in history – that was chosen as God’s mouthpiece to deliver in Arabic what is to Muslims the ultimate divine revelation to humankind, the Quran. The angel Gabriel is the agent that brought down (tanzīl) the scripture from heaven into Muḥammad’s heart. Rasūl, often synonymous with Muḥammad, occurs 332 times in the Quran. As the last rasūl Allāh Muḥammad was instructed to establish the final, complete version of the divine pathway or source, sharī‘a, for people to know how to obey God by his laws. While in the Quran occasionally rasūl and nabī overlap, typically the privilege of delivering a new sacred law would not automatically befall every https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-016



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nabī. In the Quran Muḥammad is typically called a rasūl in the revelations he received in Mecca (610–622) and a nabī in those he received in Medina (622–632). In early and medieval Islamic contexts, the term nabī acquired a variety of meanings: someone bestowed by God with the power of precognition and prediction of the future; someone invested with true divine revelation (waḥy), rather than the false, satanic waḥy; someone who accessed and would be source of exclusive knowledge; a bringer of anbā’ al-ghayb, accounts of the unseen, of good tidings or wrath to come. The Quran affirms in several instances that the prophets are divinely elected to have extraordinary abilities: God knows the unseen and only shares it with them. Divine election makes also prophets infallible and immune from sin. As source of guidance, sometime the Quran describes the prophets imāms, those who guide the people to obey God’s laws. The prophet is nothing like the pre-Islamic seer or soothsayer (kāhin, ḥāzī, ‘arrāf). In terms of means of communication, the prophet is inspired by angels while the diviner is informed by demons. The muḥaddath, although spoken to by God via angels, is not a prophet. This person is simply a mulham, someone who receives divine inspiration (ilhām) and speaks the truth or a mufahham “a person who has been given understanding”. An example in Islam of one such persons is Mary, mother of Jesus. Mentioned more often in the Quran than in the New Testament, Mariam – reportedly spoken to by Gabriel – became subject of Islamic theological debate on whether or not she should be considered a prophet. The Quran warns the believers against revelations that may seem genuinely prophetic but that in fact come from Satan. While both the godly and satanic revelations are termed waḥy satanic inspiration is more typically described by the verb waswasa, to “whisper”. Satan also can intrude with his own verses into genuine revelations destined for the prophets. Also to be dismissed is the pseudo prophetic-like knowledge of the majnūn, that is the person possessed by jinns (demons). To the Tunisian polymath Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406) the deliverances of such figure were the product of mental weakness caused by physical impairment. Also different is the prophet from the inspired speaker (khaṭīb). Another term connected to prophecy is ru’yā, waking visions or dream. In the Quran dreaming is associated with prophets such as Joseph and Abraham and Muḥammad is believed to have received part of the revelation through dreams and visions. Hence, the occurrence of dreams came to be seen as a vehicle to transmit divinely-sanctioned predictive knowledge (↗ Cortese, Dream interpretation Islamic World).

Written Sources The Quran is the first source of authority for information about Muḥammad and his mission. When the Quran illustrates the past, it does so typically through the lens

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of stories of ancient prophets. The prophecies it contains deal primarily with eschatological matters. However, the Quran does not contain a systematic and cohesive conception of prophecy, displaying in fact a relatively limited terminology with nabī occurring only 75 times and nubuwwa a mere five. In ḥadīths collections, special sections are dedicated to the past prophets. In al-Bukhārī’s (d. 870) Ṣaḥīḥ (“The Authentic”), there is a book called Aḥādīth al-anbiyā’ (“Traditions of the Prophets”). As records of Muḥammad’s voice or that of his close Companions, these traditions served to demonstrate Muḥammad’s awareness of his prophetic pedigree and his innate knowledge of the history of humankind that derived from it. Historiographers portrayed prophets as transmitters of religious knowledge that would be passed on from one generation to the next in a hereditary line. Among the first and most authoritative descriptions of this transmission are extracts from the biographer of Muḥammad, Ibn Isḥāq (d. 760s) and other sources found in the historian al-Ṭabarī’s (d. 923) Ta’rīkh al-rusul wa’l-mulūk (“The History of Messengers and Kings”). The topic of a universal charismatic chain of transmission via genealogical lines was ideologically highly relevant to the minority branch of Islam, the Shi‘is, who championed the succession of ‘Alī (d. 661) (and his progeny), cousin and son-inlaw of Muḥammad, to the leadership of the Muslim community. The pro-Shi‘i author al-Ya‘qūbī (d. 897/898) rooted his treatment of the pre-Islamic period in his historiography in a prophetic past that served also as a literary device to prolong backward the genealogical roots of the lineage of authority ascribed to ‘Alī and his descendants. The narration of stories of Biblical prophets as found in various genres of Islamic literature served – some post factum – predictive purposes: to recollect past prophetic experiences that would illustrate the rationale for what would be the future advent of Islam; to remind the Muslim community that prophetic past predictions of what future would befall on those who deviated came true; to reinforce Muḥammad’s role as warner of what the future might hold for his community based on the acceptance or refusal of his message. In time the distinctive nature of Muḥammad’s mission led to the emergence of specialist writings on prophethood. Elaborating on cryptic Quranic passages and random ḥadīth information, authors resorted to incorporate in their works Jewish sources, Christian apocryphal material and ancient near east folklore. This collation resulted in a genre known as qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā’ (“Tales of the Prophets”) that developed mainly in the ninth-eleventh centuries. The Yemeni Whab ibn Munabbih (eighth century) is the first known author of a book dedicated exclusively to stories of prophets. Ibn Isḥāq used him as source for the section on past prophets in his Sīra (Muḥammad’s Biography). Works attributed to Wahb on Biblical prophets are Kitāb al-Mubtadā’ wa-qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā’ (“The Book of the Beginning and the Tales of the Prophets”) and K. Al-Isrā’īliyyāt (“The Book of Jewish Traditions”). Through him stories of prophets entered into the wider religious literature. The Iranian Isḥāq ibn Bishr (d. 821), possibly a Shi‘i sympathiser, collated stories of the prophets that are found cited in many historiographical works. The first



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work of the genre to enjoy great popularity was al-Kisā’ī’s (d. 805) Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā’ (“Tales of the Prophets”). Little is known about the author whose text appears in many variant manuscripts. Some stories in his corpus show clear Shi‘i leanings. Instead, the most representative book of the genre was written by the eleventh century al-Tha‘labī. He was able to collect traditions on Biblical prophets by predecessors and access other sources of Islamic sciences, most important of all, the works by al-Ṭabarī. Originally from Nishapur, in Iran, he was connected with famous mystics of his time and was considered to be a Shi‘i sympathiser. Al-Tha‘labī was mainly an exegete, therefore his stories of the prophets are linked to his Quran commentary work. When compared with al-Kisā’ī, al-Tha‘labī can be credited with a wider range of stories including more figures from Hebrew scriptures and New Testament as well as Arabian prophets as reported in Muslims traditions. Al-Kisā’ī instead shows greater reliance on isrā’īliyyāt, that is a body of narratives originating directly from Jewish and Christian writings. Al-Kisā’ī’s interest in reporting the story rested in the drama it contained. For al-Tha‘labī instead what mattered was the authenticity of what was narrated. While he covered tens of prophets, al-Tha‘labī’s most popular tales are those dealing with the Biblical prophet Joseph whose colorful adventures made him the benchmark of male virtue in Islamic view. Important as an example for the diffusion of the genre in Muslim Spain was the work of the Andalusian al-Ṭarafī (d. 1062). Among Shi‘i compilers of stories of the prophets, of note is Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāwandī (d.  1177) whose work served as source for al-Majlisī’s (d. 1699) monumental Biḥār al-anwār’s (“Seas of Lights”) section on the topic. This type of literature was rejected however by the theologian Ibn Taymīya (d. 1328) and the historian Ibn Kathīr (d. 1373) who refuted the use of Christian and Jewish sources to narrate stories that were non-Quranic. Beside the Quran, the ḥadīths and the qiṣaṣ books, stories of the prophets can also be found in Quranic commentaries (tafsīrs) as a device to complement or elucidate the holy scripture and in universal histories where they served as gap fillers in the narration of what the historian conceived to be the remote pre-Islamic past. The need to prove humanity’s necessity for a prophet, to demonstrate the distinctiveness of a prophet compared to others and to defend Muḥammad’s claim to prophethood against accusations of falsehood from both Jews and Christians, gave rise to the emergence of another literary theme: the proof of prophecy. From the ninth century onwards titles such as A‘lām al-nubuwwa (“The Signs of Prophecy”), Ithbāt al-nubuwwa (“The Establishment of Prophecy”) and similar, proliferated. Authors belonged to various religious affiliations from the rationalist Mu‘tazilites to the dogmatist Ash‘arites, from Sunnis to Shi‘i Isma‘ilis. The polymath al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868) produced K. Ḥujaj al-nubuwwa (“The Proofs of Prophecy”) where he contemplates two types of proof: one based on sensorial experience and the other relaying on sound traditions. Al-Māturīdī’s (d. 944) K. al-Tawḥīd (“On Monotheism”) dedicates ample space to the arguments in favour of prophecy while the Mu‘tazili ‘Abd al-Jabbār (d. 1025) wrote Tathbīt dalā’il al-nubuwwa (“Confirmation of the Proofs of Prophecy”). Isma‘ili authors such as Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 934) and Abū Ya‘qūb al-Sijistānī (d. ca. 971) both

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wrote works on the proof and need of prophecy in the context of wider argumentations in favour of the Isma‘ili concept of imamate. Also of note are al-Māwardī’s (d. 1058) K. A‘lām al-nubuwwa and Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī’s (d. 1066) Dalā’il al-nubuwwa (“The Proofs of Prophecy”). A somewhat dissonant voice was that of Ibn al-Rāwandī (d. 911) who in his K. al-Zumurrud (“The Book of the Emerald”) proposed an unconventional doctrine of prophecy influenced by foreign elements. Somewhat related to the theme of “signs” is Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s (d. 1210) ‘Iṣmat al-anbiyā’ (“On the Infallibility of the Prophets”). Beside dedicated works, theories on prophecy came to form part of the content of most medieval Islamic philosophical works. Ibn Khaldūn in his Muqaddima (“Prolegomena”) provided an important analysis of prophecy theory. The most distinguished philosophers to have discussed prophecy at length are al-Fārābī (d. 950), Ibn Sīnā/ Avicenna (d. 1037) and al-Ghazālī (d. 1111). The latter questioned the merits of excessively seeking the perfect proof of prophecy as it could backfire and undermine faith. Instead his argument that prophecy could only be accessed through the mystical way confirmed to the Sufis, the mystics of Islam, their view that their visionary experiences were akin to prophetic inspiration. Within the Sufi tradition Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī (d. 1191) was the first to formulate a formal theory of dreams and visions within a mystic-philosophical system. This was eventually expanded by Ibn ‘Arabī (d. 1240) whose lifework was dedicated to the systematization of the mystical experience as a whole. Deeming imagination an essential part of the journey to God, it was this function that would allow visions to take place. Ibn ‘Arabī therefore viewed visions as a form of private revelation as well as a kind of visual divine encounter. Recording the testimonies of these visions gave way to the formation of another literary genre: the Sufi biography. Seen as a form of revelatory unveiling in their own right, the visions that Sufis experienced represented to them a continuum with the revelation of the Quran itself, thus establishing a direct link between Muḥammad’s mission and that of the Sufi masters. Al-Sulamī (d. 1021) is among the earliest Sufis to write about the visions reportedly experienced by others. Beside the celebrated visionary autobiographies of al-Tirmidhī (d. ca. 908), al-Tawḥīdī (d. 1023), Rūzbihān Baqlī (d. 1209) and al-Zawāwī (d.  1477) (↗ Cortese, Dream Interpretation Islamic World), notable are the visions’ diaries by the female Ottoman dervish ‘Ashiya Khātūn (fl. 1641–1643) and by Niyazī Miṣrī (d. 1694). The latter recorded in his prison diaries extraordinary esoteric encounters and angelic visions that, he claimed, culminated in the angel Gabriel revealing to him the secrets of letter divination. A distinctive voice, within the philosophical-mystical literary tradition, is that of the Andalusian Ibn Ṭufayl (d. 1185) whose novel, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (“Alive son of Awake”), charts the protagonist’s self-taught spiritual path to God without the aid of prophets or revealed scriptures. Beside and beyond the Sufi tradition, the belief that along the Quranic revelation God also disclosed a secret, esoteric knowledge accessible to elected few who would be trusted to be its guardians, resulted in speculations of what the nature of that knowledge might be, what it consisted of and what its function might be. For a person



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to penetrate at least parts of that secret knowledge would mean entering into possession of supernatural powers such as the ability to predict the future and, by default, to manipulate events to one’s own advantage. The literature promising to disclose or share these secrets is vast, complex, specialised and thus far under-researched (cf. chapters of specific divination techniques). Suffice here to mention Aḥmad al-Būnī (d. 1225) as one of the most representative and authoritative authors of this esoteric strand of prophetic writing.

Techniques and Manifestations Muslims believe that between 610 and 632 Muḥammad was the recipient of divine revelations mostly conveyed to him by the angel Gabriel. In sensorial terms, Muḥammad’s prophetic experience has been understood to belong on the whole to the aural rather than the visual sphere of perceptions. Originally memorised, transmitted orally and fragmentarily annotated, this corpus of divine revelations was eventually collected in a canonical written book, the Quran. Given the exceptional scale of Muḥammad’s mission, it made sense to his biographers to conceive the idea that Muḥammad had not been just randomly chosen by God at some point in history but that his advent was part of a divinely preordained, eternal plan. Hagiographical accounts are rich in describing portents and miraculous deeds surrounding Muḥammad’s birth. In addition to that, reporting prophecies prognosticating Muḥammad’s future appearance projected back into a distant pre-Islamic time became an essential corollary to the story of the Prophet of Islam. In his biography of Muḥammad, Ibn Isḥāq refers to a Jewish visionary addressing Arabian pagans on the coming of a prophet, foretelling the rise of Islam. Beside placing this prediction within the context of Jewish authoritativeness, Ibn Isḥāq also read the Gospels as containing the announcement of Muḥammad’s coming. The Sīra as well as other biographical accounts of Muḥammad narrate the tale of his encounter in the Syrian town of Bosra at the age of 9 (or 12) with the Arab Christian monk Baḥīrā. According to the story this man saw in Muḥammad unmistakable signs of his would-be prophetic mission. The reality of Baḥīrā’s existence is undisputed among Muslims. Eastern Christian polemists too did not question the historicity of Baḥīrā who is seen in apocalyptic literature as having had a role in influencing the Quranic revelation. Predictions of Muḥammad’s advent were also attributed to ancient kings of Yemen and pre-Islamic poets. Following Muḥammad’s astonishment at his first ever metaphysical encounter with Gabriel in the cave of Hira near Mecca, it was Ibn Waraqa, uncle of Muḥammad’s first wife Khadīja (d. 619), who foresaw in that occurrence the start of Muḥammad’s prophetic role in disclosing the ultimate divine law. As divinely chosen mouthpiece, Muḥammad could not be credited with prophetic agency of his own as far as the content of the Quran was concerned. It is instead in the

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ḥadīths that Muḥammad emerges as a personality who is shown as having credible power of predicting future events. In a relatively extensive set of traditions Muḥammad is reported as the recipient of extra-Quranic divine revelations. Though also sent from God through the angel Gabriel, these revelations – known as ḥadīths qudsī – did not form part of the Quran but were instead presented as messages for Muḥammad’s use and guidance. This personalised non-Quranic brand of revelation establish an epistemological link between the divine word of the Quran and the prophetic word of the ḥadīths, a link that lent extra-special authoritativeness to the latter. Thus, Muḥammad’s power of prediction is shown to be articulated in a variety of modes: through the account of insights ascribed to him, sometime happening in conjunction with natural portents, or through the record of his narration of dreams and visions he experienced. Belonging to this latter category is Muḥammad’s visions during the mi‘rāj, the night journey during which he foresaw hell and heaven and that culminated with his encounter with God. (↗ Cortese, Eschatology Islamic World; ↗ Cortese, Dream Interpretation Islamic World). Narratives containing Muḥammad’s predictions of the future are typically found in the apocalyptic sections of ḥadīths collections. Beside eschatological predictions, Muḥammad’s prognostications are found across the complete body of ḥadīths literature where he is shown to have foreknowledge of future conquests, of the leadership of the first four Caliphs to lead the Muslim community after him, of future schisms, of the duration of Islam and of the totality of history. Some ḥadīths narratives point to Muḥammad’s divinatory powers as displayed on an esoteric register that rests on the belief that alongside the “outer” Quranic revelation Muḥammad had also knowledge of its “hidden”, esoteric meaning. Speculations on the existence of this secret body of knowledge featured in a range of stories and anecdotes found in varied literary genres. In one tradition Muḥammad is reported as saying “I was given the book and with it something similar” the latter expression interpreted to mean esoteric wisdom. This interpretation fits with other traditions such as the one quoted by the historian al-Ṭabarī where Muḥammad is reported saying that God revealed to him secrets that he was not allowed to communicate. As trusted keeper of divine confidence, Muḥammad was granted the “knowledge of those who came before and those who came afterwards”. Even more explicitly, Muḥammad was quoted as claiming to have been given the keys to all things except five: God’s knowledge of the Hour; his sending of the rain; the secret of what would be in the womb; tomorrow’s come-uppance and the knowledge of the land where one will die. The extra-Quranic revelations recorded in the ḥadīths qudsī somewhat confirmed the reality of an additional line of communication between Muḥammad and God that made feasible the existence of a divinely inspired secret knowledge to those who had a vested interest in endorsing it. But while the Quranic revelation was uniquely conveyed via Muḥammad who was granted the exclusive and final power to receive it and deliver it, the faculty of receiving and sharing the content of this other secret knowledge was believed by some to be transferable to others. It was this perceived gap



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between two distinctive modes and contents of Muḥammad’s prophetic experiences that opened the way for the manifestation of other expressions of Muḥammad-endorsed prophecy in Islam while never questioning his status as the last prophet as far as the divine revelation was concerned. A number of traditions served to support the Shi‘i belief in the supreme excellence of the Ahl al-Bayt (the people of the Prophet’s household) with ‘Alī (and his progeny) indicated as the rightful recipient and continuator of Muḥammad’s esoteric wisdom. The Shi‘is root ‘Alī’s hereditary secular and spiritual rights in the doctrine of nūr Muḥammadī, that is the belief in an eternal luminous prophetic light that was genealogically transmitted from Adam to Muḥammad and then to ‘Alī and his progeny from Muḥammad’s daughter Fāṭima. Alongside this light ‘Alī also would come to be seen by the Shi‘is as the continuator of Muḥammad as recipient of nūr Allāh (the light of God) a light encapsulating all divine spiritual virtues and eternal knowledge, the worldly existence of which was to be continued via ‘Alī and the Shi‘i Imams after him. Indeed ‘Alī is portrayed in Shi‘i literature as bursting into prophesying activity suppling new insights about the future on account of being the natural inheritor of the Prophet’s exclusive esoteric science. According to some traditions shared as sound by both Sunnis and Shi‘is Allāh ordered Muḥammad to transfer his secret knowledge to ‘Alī together with the exclusive knowledge of the ism al-a‘ẓam (God’s most excellent name) and the knowledge of prophethood to secure continuation among his offspring. In keeping with this belief, some Shi‘i exegetes applied the term “prophet” to a range of prominent descendants of ‘Alī’, ranging from his grandchildren to the would-be sixth Shi‘i Imam Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq (d. 765). By contrast, Sunni counter-narratives claim that these secret instructions were passed to ʻUthman, son-in-law of Muḥammad and would-be third Caliph. Some accounts go as far as claiming that the dying Muḥammad passed thousands of chapters of secret knowledge to ‘Alī. While there is no material evidence that such book ever exited, the idea of it was sufficient to generate speculations that the transfer of esoteric wisdom between Muḥammad and ‘Alī was not only metaphysically but also textually based. Allusions to a secret written book preserved among the Prophet’s household members generated speculations on the content of this elusive book, the practical means by which it was preserved and how it was passed on. Fāṭima, the daughter of the Prophet and wife of ‘Alī stands out as a locus of esoteric knowledge to the point of being credited with having her own muṣḥaf (loosely “gospel” here), a mysterious book that some medieval Shi‘i traditionists rated as rivalling in power the Quran and as a tool for foretelling the future. In another report the Prophet is said to have given a book written by himself to one of his wives, Umm Salama, who then passed it to ‘Alī according to whom the book contained new knowledge not found in the Quran and the traditions. This new knowledge was in time credited to include, among others, the art of jafr (letter divination). The Ahl al-Bayt, credited with infallible knowledge, emerged therefore as the ultimate household of divination, a prestige that would be eventually acknowledged by many medieval Muslim occultist scholars irrespective of the Sunni-Shi‘i sectarian

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divide. Stories of a book that found its way into ‘Alī’s hands inspired the production of a vast body of jafr literature within a Shi‘i/pro-‘Alid milieu aimed at disclosing techniques to unveil the Quran’s esoteric meaning, based on the Imams’ authority. In time, the proliferation and circulation of jafr manuals made it possible for other people, besides the Prophet, ‘Alī and the Imams, to tap into the science of divination thus enabling them to claim divinatory powers and the faculty of predicting the future. Beside the Shi‘is, the Sufis were the other major group to capitalise – for the sake of their own brand of spiritual legitimacy – on the belief in a continuous release of divinely inspired prophetic knowledge after Muḥammad’s death. The Sufis gave great importance to the ḥadīths qudsī which they understood to be equivalent to ecstatic sayings (shaṭḥ) communicated by God to an individual. The Sufis sought to enact this experience via the recourse to ecstatic techniques: dhikr typically consisted of the persistent and prolonged repetition of God’s divine names aimed at achieving a state of perfect closeness to the divine with the view to visualize Allāh. Samā‘, the ritualized ceremony in which dhikr would take place, could also include the performance of meditation, music and dance to induce a state of ecstatic trance. Whirling, the continuous circular spinning on the same axis of one’s own body, performed correctly under the strict guidance of a master, could result in the practitioner experiencing a sense of complete self-annihilation in God. The Sufis blurred the epistemological line that separated the non-legislative prophets from those among them who became muḥaddathūn, those spoken to by God, credited with having achieved the highest possible spiritual experience. To them there was no real difference between the two to the point of regarding Sufi spiritual leaders (shaykhs) like prophets of their communities. After the death of Muḥammad, Muslims identified alternative ways through which prophetic-like, divinely inspired guidance could reach their community. First and foremost, God continued to communicate with his community through dreams (↗ Cortese, Dream Interpretation Islamic World). Secondly, personalities in position of spiritual and/or political authority came to be credited by some with prophetic traits. For example, in some quarters religious scholars (‘ulamā’) came to be regarded as heirs of the Prophet for continuing his work by having generated and codified the example of Muḥammad (sunna) and defined a body of laws based primarily on that source of authority as well as the Quran. Memorisers of the Quran were “almost prophets” and its readers enjoyed a “share of prophecy”. The four Caliphs that led the community after Muḥammad’s death while not deemed prophets, were nevertheless ascribed superhuman qualities by their respective supporters. The Umayyads, the Sunni dynasty that ruled the Islamic empire from Damascus between 661 and 750, claimed their descent from the Biblical prophets. Some traditions came to be interpreted to mean that God determined their rise as chosen successors of Muḥammad to rule ʻalā minhāj al-nubuwwa, “in the manner of prophethood”, an expression that captures the shift (but also establishes a continuity) from prophethood to kingship in the exercise of political authority. Thirdly, some ḥadīths quote Muḥammad as saying that every 100 years God would send a reviver of faith (mujaddid) to his community. While



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having an eschatological appeal, this claim also caused a number of Muslim personalities to claim that role or to have it attributed to them. Among them the Umayyad Caliph ʻUmar (d. 720), the founder of one of the four Sunni schools of jurisprudence al-Shāfi‘ī (d. 820), the dogmatist al-Ash‘arī (d. 936), the theologian al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), and the polymath al-Suyūṭī (d. 1505). Inspired by Muḥammad’s success, throughout early and medieval Islamic history a large number of personalities came forward with their own claim to prophethood. Already during the last phase of Muḥammad’s life rival prophets had appeared in Arabia. One of the most famous was a tribesman called Musaylima. Portrayed as a magician, he claimed to have received verses from God, gathering around him a substantial following. A female contemporary of his, Shajāḥ, also declared herself to be a prophetess following the period of religio-political turmoil (ridda) that ensued immediately after Muḥammad’s death. Allegedly, Shajāḥ had taken inspiration from other claimants, including Musaylima whom she eventually married. Also prominent over the same period was the Yemeni al-Aswad al-‘Ansī who briefly ruled over part of Yemen and gathered followers. With the expansion of Islam through military conquests, the “false prophets” phenomenon became visible in other parts of the growing Islamic empire. In the Iranian province of Khorasan, al-Muqanna‘ declared himself prophet among his people with some degree of success but was eventually executed in 779– 780. In North Africa, among the Berbers, this trend became particularly visible and it has been interpreted as an expression of anti-Arab resistance. A figure among the Ghumara tribe, Mūsā ibn Sāliḥ, was believed up until the fourteenth century to have been a saint, mastering the arts of divination and magic. The best known of the Ghumaras’ prophet was a man called Ḥā-Mīm ibn Mann Allāh al-Muftarī who appeared in the outskirts of Tetuan in 927. Having used his sister’s magic powers, in keeping with the Berber tradition that magic was the exclusive domain of women, Ḥā-Mīm proclaimed himself prophet in 925–926 and died in 927–928. His actions had been inspired by a predecessor, the Berber Sāliḥ al-Barghwatī, a savant and astrologer who in turn had announced himself as a prophet from God. Prophets had appeared also in al-Andalus in the ninth century and in Lisbon in 944/945 a man came forward claiming to be a prophet and a member of the Ahl al-Bayt. According to this man, his mother was a descendant from Fāṭima. He claimed to have been visited by the angel Gabriel and gave his followers rules and laws such as to shave their heads.These prophets fell into two categories: those whose mission was to challenge Islam by pushing forward pre-Islamic practices and those who, being Muslims, sought to root the legitimacy of their claims in Islamic beliefs. Islamic doctrines such as the one about the appearance of a savior at the end of time, the Mahdī, were a catalyst for the emergence of figureheads whose eschatological appeal found fertile ground in times of crisis and among dissenting groups (↗ Cortese, Eschatology Islamic World).

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Discussions and Debates Three main question dominated discussions on prophecy among early and medieval Muslim thinkers: is there a difference between divination and prophecy? Which are the signs of prophecy? By which faculty is a human being able to experience prophecy? In recent times, debates on prophecy among Islamic Studies scholars have revolved around the expression “Seal of Prophethood” when explored in broader religious and historical contexts. The extraordinary nature of Muḥammad’s prophetic mission that manifested itself against the backdrop of a primarily pagan Arabian cultural milieu, prompted among early Muslim commentators the need to draw a distinction between what was true prophecy and what amounted to magic and soothsaying. It is in this context that debates emerged on what could be counted in Islam as legitimate and illegitimate supernatural powers. Neither the Quran nor the Sunna formally forbid kihāna, what is forbidden instead is to consult the kāhin, to believe in what he says and to pay for it. This implicit authoritative endorsement of divination legitimised it as a discipline that could be included in mainstream prophecy as long as all its elements associated with paganism were shed. Ibn Khaldūn classed divination as a lower branch of the prophetic practice, drawing a neat distinction between the two. He identified the prophet as someone whose shift from a normal state into a state of intuitive perception of spiritual things would be immediate and unmediated. The diviner instead would have to induce the reaching of such state through the use of practical devices or objects. Diviners could indeed possess abnormal imaginative powers but these powers were limited to the ability to penetrate the particular. Sometime, diviners would be able to say true things by accident thus giving the impression of being trustworthy to those who consulted them. Instead all they did was to prompt mental images that then they mingled with their perceptions, resulting in false impressions. Dismissing the tradition that Muḥammad’s prophethood had brought divination to an end, Ibn Khaldūn noted that divination could not have finished with Muḥammad’s mission because diviners possessed a form of knowledge that originated either from within themselves and/or from demons. Prognosticators were intuitive diviners, that is, they could foretell the future thanks to a power of perception they were born with. Having delineated the typical traits of a diviner, the question remained as to how the characteristics of a prophet could be categorised. Once again it is Ibn Khaldūn who provides a succinct overview of commonly shared views on these signs. These can be classified into two groups: signs that announce the arrival or birth of a prophet and signs that make the prophet recognisable to others. Of this latter group the following traits are the most significant: first is the ability to enter, in a flash of inspiration, into contact with a spiritual angel thanks to a superhuman faculty. This faculty is marked by a state of absence, chocking, visual loss of consciousness, unconsciousness and a fast return to awareness. The second set of marks of prophethood are infallibility, goodness and purity. Thirdly, it is to be pious and morally upright. The fourth trait is



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noble descent. The fifth characteristic is to perform miracles and prodigies and lastly, and more importantly, the power to abstract from human nature. The belief that experiencing prophethood would depend on a special faculty inherent to special individuals led to discussions on the nature of this faculty. According to the philosopher al-Fārābī prophecy is an innate faculty of the soul rather than the possession of supernatural powers. Prophecy as well as the rational faculty are both indispensable to human perfection, with divine inspiration being the union of the highest philosophical knowledge with the highest form of prophecy. However, in this relationship philosophy comes first, with prophecy confined to the faculty of imagination, ranked below philosophy. Imagination is the realm where prophecy and divination happen. Imagination is what gives access to metaphysical truth which is in turn translated into symbols. Whoever in waking life has reached the utmost perfection of imaginative power can be credited to be gifted with prophecy. This person is aware of present and future particulars and is able to visualise the divine in symbols, thus attaining the highest level of perfection that imagination can reach. To al-Fārābī divination is reflective of lower and partial levels of perfection reached by the power of imagination in certain individuals. Al-Fārābī’s theory of prophecy was not fully shared by Ibn Sīnā who saw the Prophet as the perfect man, thus making it impossible for prophecy to be subsumed to philosophy. Muslims saw Muḥammad as the most perfect of all the prophets, being the “seal of the prophets”. The Islamic idea of the end of prophecy finds parallels in Judaism where, with the appearance of Christianity, it served as a way to debunk beliefs in Jesus’ prophethood. In recent years Islamic Studies scholars have debated on what “seal” might have actually meant to the earliest Muslims. Beside “seal” the term khātam encompasses meanings such as securing, confirming, authenticating and even a signet ring. To some Muḥammad’s prophecy might have been understood at first as confirming the veracity of the whole prophetic history of humanity at a time when the Quranic message might have been seen as announcing the imminent end of the word (Friedman, 1986). This argument has been challenged by those who support the idea that Muḥammad’s prophethood was understood as final from the outset (Rubin, 2014).

Medieval Encounters and Reception Judaism, Christianity and Islam share the same roots and many areas of common ground. On prophecy Judaism and Islam display many affinities, especially in the Quranic treatment of Biblical prophets, but also significant differences. While in Islam the prophet, Muḥammad in primis, is the exemplar figure on whom every Muslim should model every aspect of their lives, this is not the case for the Jews with their prophets. In his relation with God, the Jewish prophet wrestles with the divine, while

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the Islamic prophet submits unquestionably to God’s command. Despite these differences, the Islamic claim to its prophetic origins was rarely theologically challenged by Jews who did not see Islam as a deviation or “heresy” emerging from within Judaism as it had been the case with Christianity. Instead, from a very early period, Christians perceived Islam as a major threat to their doctrinal primacy and integrity. With the expansion of Islam into Christian lands that threat became also political and territorial. Eastern Christians responded to these challenges by seeking to denounce Islam as a false religion or as a Christian heresy. In the late seventh century Eastern Christian authors sought to explain the expansion of Islam at Christianity’s expense in order to debase it. The Melkite theologian John of Damascus (b. before 754), who called false Muḥammad’s claim to the revelation, devoted a chapter to Islam in his work De Haeresibus (“On Heresies”), one of the oldest Christian texts to discuss the Quran. Eastern Christian polemics against Islam appeared in various genres from apologetics to apocalyptic texts as well as appearing embedded in diplomatic correspondence that – as rival areas of domain encroached on each other – was exchanged between Byzantine emperors and Muslim rulers. Throughout the middle ages, in the eastern part of the Islamic world literary attacks on Islam increased as Christians found themselves – due to Arabisation and conversion – squeezed out of lands in which they once prevailed. Christian writers resorted to an arsenal of methods to prove Islam’s falsity. These approaches however generated Muslim counter-arguments that could be just as convincing. The most effective refutation tactic was to let the content of Islamic history as Muslims recorded it to speak for itself. Retold through the lens of a Christian medieval world view, that very same history would make Islam’s falsity self-evident. In applying this counter-historical method, Christians focused their attention on the facts of Muḥammad’s life as reported in Muslim sources. To a medieval Christian it would be self-explanatory that a personality with a “carnal” lifestyle such as that of Muḥammad’s could not possibly be a prophet. To debunk the prophetic nature of Islam became a major preoccupation in Western Christianity. In the twelfth century the earliest Latin translations of the Quran came into circulation showing that Christians understood who Muḥammad was to Muslims since words like propheta (or pseudopropheta), nuntius (envoy) and apostolus (apostle) are used. What was not understood was the concept of nūr Muḥammadī. Also obscure was the belief that Islam superseded all the previous revelations. Facts of Muḥammad’s life as reported in Muslim sources were widely and fairly accurately known to medieval western Christian audiences. Based on this knowledge, arguments centred around how Muḥammad did not meet set standards of prophethood. Also, Christian polemists deliberately chose to understand the word “prophecy” in its narrower meaning as ability to foretell the future, something Muḥammad could not do. The Muslim responses to such accusations were just as robust and as inflammatory in their contempt of Christians. Medieval Muslims sought to understand religious and spiritual leadership in other faiths through the filter of their own concept of prophethood. For example,



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the bibliographer Ibn al-Nadīm (d. ca. 998) and the heresiographer al-Shahrastanī (d. 1153) regarded Buddha as a God-sent prophet-like figure. In the eighteenth-century elements in the Naqshabandi Sufi order conceived the idea that that prophets were sent to India: Krishna might have been one of such possible prophet. In recent times some Hindus have advanced the idea that Muḥammad might have been one of their awaited avatars.

Selected Bibliography Brinner, William M. “Prophets and Prophecy in the Islamic and Jewish Traditions.” Studies in Islamic and Judaic Traditions II. Eds. William M. Brinner and Stephen D. Ricks. Atlanta, 1989. 63–82. Daniel, Norman. Islam and the West: The Making of an Image. Oxford, rep. 1997. Fahd, Toufic. La divination arabe: études religieuses, sociologiques et folkloriques sur le milieu natif de l’Islam. Paris, 1987. Ferhat, Halima, and Hamid Triki. “Faux prophètes et mahdis dans le Maroc médiéval.” Hespéris Tamuda 26 (1988): 5–28. Friedmann, Yohanan. Prophecy Continuous: Aspects of Aḥmadī Religious Thought and Its Medieval Background. Berkeley, 1989. Friedmann, Yohanan. “Finality of Prophethood in Sunni Islam.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 7 (1986): 177–215. Graham, William A. Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Early Islam. A Reconsideration of the Sources, with Special References to the Divine Saying or Hadith Qudsi. The Hague and Paris, 1977. Rahman, Fazlur. Prophecy in Islam: Philosophy and Orthodoxy. London, rep. 2008. Rubin, Uri. “Prophets and Progenitors in the Early Shıa Tradition.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 1 (1979): 41–65. Rubin, Uri. “The Seal of the Prophets and the Finality of Prophecy: On the Interpretation of the Qurʾānic Sūrat al-Aḥzāb (33).” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 164 (2014): 65–96. Stroumsa, Sarah. “The Signs of Prophecy: The Emergence and Early Development of a Theme in Arabic Theological Literature.” Harvard Theological Review 78, 1–2 (1985): 101–114. Tottoli, Roberto. Biblical Prophets in the Qur’an and Muslim Literature. London, 2002. Waltzer, Richard. “Al-Fārābī’s Theory of Prophecy and Divination.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 77.1 (1957): 142–148.

Dream Interpretation Albert Schirrmeister

Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World Definitions and Terminology Dreams are considered, in the Latin Christian traditions of the Middle Ages, as mental processes that occur while sleeping and as provoked by different causes. The Ancient Roman terms tended to be adopted, establishing the differentiation between corporeally provoked dreams and dreams initiated by different transcendental entities, enabling more or less reliable prognostics or prophecies to be drawn from them: Somnium, insomnium, visum, visio, oraculum. This Latin terminology and its unclear distinction between sleep, dreams and visions exerted an influence over the vernacular languages, especially perceptible in the Romanic languages, in the form of intersections between dreams and sleep or etymological links between the Latin visio and the Romanian a visa (“to dream”). Whereas the alternative French noun for dreams, rêve, has been in use only since the seventeenth century, the verb, rêver, has been used since the twelfth century, albeit not meaning “to dream” but “to roam, and to fantasize, to speak crazy” (Schalk 1955, 8–10). Considering this terminology, it becomes clear that a distinction between dreams and visions is only possible through differentiating between an experience while sleeping or an awakened experience (for example, in the autobiography of Guibert of Nogent: Schmitt 2001, 266). Revelatio, as an important medieval term for visions, emphasizes the relation to a secret part of reality, which can be unveiled via the vision. The perspective on temporality covers only a part of this reality (see Thomas Aquinas on prophecy, Summa Theologiae II.II., Q.171) – and perhaps the idea of a linearity of time points sometimes in the wrong direction: At least for some revelationes, an understanding of the abolition of all temporality appears more appropriate. To mention only two examples from the early Middle Ages and the late Medieval Ages: Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg (975– 1018) mentions in his Chronicle, in addition to several dreams about future matters, also some dreams which open the door to other hidden parts of reality, such as in a dream he had in which Willigis, his predecessor as Dean of Walbeck, complained that he could not find any peace and rest in his death due to certain acts of negligence (Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon VI, 45); and Veronica Negronis of Binasco (1445–1497) shows in a vision the human life of Christ.

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The focus on the nature of prognostication as an attempt to gain access to restricted (and therefore, to most people, forbidden) areas of reality opens the door to an understanding of the differentiation between the various techniques of dream interpretation (and thus prognostication) on the one side, with an equivocal status, mostly forbidden (see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica  II–II, Q. 96.3), and the grace of a divine vision on the other side.

Written Sources and Artifacts Within the written sources, it is possible to distinguish at least three different areas: 1. Dream-books, as practical, generally technical guidance on how to interpret dreams. These sources provide the only possible differentiation between dreams and visions, for visions do not feature in any technical guides. The dream-books, as the most important source for dream prognostication practices, exist in at least five types, and were used across Europe in all written cultures. These sources relinquish generally all theoretical debate. Only a small group of texts include extremely humble theoretical remarks (Palmer and Speckenbach 1990, 138): Here are mentioned three German manuscripts with a prologue, including a theoretical passage about the formation and validity of dreams according to scholastic thought. In any case, it is impossible to prove a transmission with theoretical treatises and classifications. Prognostics and theory are mutually exclusive, as the user of dream-books was interested not in a discussion of the problems of dreams, but solely in their meaning (Palmer and Specken­bach 1990, 197). 2. The theoretical sources of different contexts of knowledge (theology, medicine, natural science) in single texts and within encyclopaedias, as for example Conrad of Megenberg, in the fourteenth century, in his book of Nature with the reception of Rhazes; the most important of which certainly being the Speculum maius of Vincenz of Beauvais in the thirteenth century, which was printed from 1474 until 1624 in four editions and diffused scholastic thought in early modernity. 3. Poetical and political dream narrations. These should be considered as acts of prognostication in their own right and in their own manner – at times, they also represent preceding acts of prognostication, but their importance, their weight, lay in the written realization of the prognostication. Images which were conceived as representations of dream visions, documented in all media (manuscripts, door panels, stained-glass windows, reliquary shrines, etc.) are founded almost entirely upon these narrations – or are integrated within them, as in the famous case of the Chronicle of John of Worcester, with the Dreams of Henry I, the earliest surviving narrative scenes in an English chronicle, dating to approximatively 1140 (Collard 2010, 109; Carozzi 1989). These images diffuse, support and legitimate the written and oral dream prognostications (Paravicini-Bagliani 1989). The vast



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number of biblical dream representations that appeared in ecclesiastical and monastic sculpture and painting, in liturgical manuscripts, and on liturgical objects visually affirmed the dream experience in general on the basis of this divine authorized text. It should be kept in mind that these written sources cover only part of all dream prognostications (albeit the major part) and that we lack access to the oral practices except through their written critique.

Techniques and Manifestations Dream prognostications are fundamentally distinguishable from other prognostications since they are grounded on pure internal reflection and introspection rather than on external observation using tools or artifacts – the conditions for dream prognostications are thus solely anthropological in character. The tools, instruments and external practices should be considered as attempts to transform these internal, ephemeral special perceptions of another part of reality into external, durable forms or as attempts to handle these perceptions. The supposed interdependence between microcosm and macrocosm represents, therefore, a fundamental element in the evolution of Christian dream prognostications (Gregory 1985). The conversion of dreams into written form engenders a fundamental intrusion upon the existence, validity and legitimacy of this perception. It is not only the dreamer or the writer whose personality affects the dream vision but also the action itself and its transformation. This opens up not a unique possibility for greater validity, but transformation as an act of publication can be understood as – quite the contrary – a loss of dignity for the exclusive dream perception. All prognosticated knowledge about the future via dreams is doubtful since there exist both divine dreams and diabolically-provoked dreams, so that there is a fundamental need for expertise. In some regard, the dream-books may have replaced this expertise – at least for those who were able to read. The dream-books should be considered as guides that offer relatively precise hints about how to interpret, in a very general form, concrete dream narrations: they either refer to the content (Ibn Sīrīn, translated by Leo Tuscus; Paschalis Romanus (1165)), sometimes establishing an alphabetical order (Somniale Danielis) or to the time of the dream (astrological, dream lunar). Other kinds of dream-books are based on the concept of analogy, the practice of drawing lots (Somniale Joseph), or the principles of humoral pathology (Rhazes). Most of the dream-books were transmitted in collected manuscripts, for everyday use in a simple, modest setting. The content-orientated dream-books are concentrated on simple actions and events, animals, celestial phenomena, natural images and the things of ordinary life, but rarely is it possible to identify an antique origin for them. They mention not only nouns, but also verbs, adjectives and prepositions.

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The dream-books give approximatively equal positive and negative interpretations, and the majority of the interpretations concern happiness, damages, winning, honor, war and fear (Palmer and Speckenbach 1990, 237). One may conclude that these prognostics reflect the current social values with gratification and countercharge (Paradis 1975, 127). The dream-books which are oriented toward the dream’s time and, therefore, toward the astrological-astronomical observations and lunar days, offer only very general prognostications or indicate the time when a dream might be fulfilled. The orientation toward ordinary life and the social and cultural environment of the dreamer offers a hint regarding the kind of prognostication which can be linked with the dream-books: they open up the possibility to change the exclusive dream into a common practice. The medical-astrological books were, therefore, probably conceived for medical users like surgeons – interested in practice and able to read German and Latin technical prose (Fachprosa). At this point, one may observe the very close relation between prognostication and (medical) diagnostics as two gateways to a hidden part of reality. Additionally, astrologically-interested and leisured dilettantes might have received these books, while the mantic Alphabets might have been used at times by those recipients as convivial games (Palmer and Speckenbach 1990, 197). Usually, these dream-books were linked to Joseph, the dream-interpreter in the Old Testament, but Chardonnens has pointed out that the mantic alphabets from the British Isles contain attributions that are unusual in continental dream-books: some of them were ascribed to philosophers, to Aristotle, and only a single text to Daniel (Chardonnens 2014, 647). Similarly to other mantic alphabets, these dreambooks generally consisted of a short introduction and alphabet key, which refers to a book, almost a psalter or another biblical book, from which it was to identify a letter at random, and look up this letter in the alphabet key (Chardonnens 2011, 111; Chardonnens 2013). As Speckenbach pointed out, this highly detailed and complicated proceeding seemed to be only a bluff, at least in the Late Middle Ages, with the sole function of making the application appear highly recondite, deep and cryptic. Nevertheless, Chardonnens showed that these dream-books were taken so seriously even in the sixteenth century that they were criticized and censored (Palmer and Speckenbach 1990, 197). These fundamentally different observations emphasize the tension between a sovereign, almost playful use of dream-books, which can be interpreted as a sign of rationality – with the clear consciousness that it is impossible to gain true knowledge through these books – and, on the other side, a suspicion that these books could be the source of certain, perhaps forbidden, knowledge (on mantic alphabets see also ↗ Chardonnens, Mantic Alphabets Western Christian World). In contrast to the dream-books, the narrations within longer texts are prognostications in an individual form. As noted above, these are not solely representations or protocols of preceding (oral) prognostications but acts in their own (literary, textual, narrative) logic. Nevertheless, it is possible to make some generalizing observations: dream prognostications form part of historiography, autobiography, and hagiography.



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Within these texts, the dream narration fulfils different, mutually associated functions and can serve as a retrospective prognostication to legitimate decisions; at times, they mark a turning point in a biographical or political evolution, which can be unchained by the dream. The dream and its narration become, therefore, an event in a narratological sense. They fulfil these functions either in history and politics as for a single life. They are often – as Dinzelbacher summed up with regard to poetical dream visions – either warnings or promises, or present an order, or solution to a problem (Dinzelbacher 1981). Therefore, dreams help to deal with contingency, and allow it to disappear. The divination legitimates acting and choosing when the options seem otherwise arbitrarily: it constructs an expectation through narration. They therefore consolidate the social and political order and confirm the cosmological order and personal identity beyond breaks and conflicts, in the case of, for example, dynastical decisions. This practice can be recognized in early historiography and epic literature, in Latin and vernacular languages, as for example the Chanson de Roland (around 1100) with the dreams of Charlemagne, or Gregory of Tours’ Decem libri historiarum (sixth century). Within these narrations, various elements are described to underline the relevance of the dream and its connection to the divine, the transcendent reality: First of all, the person and his social status – royal, papal, episcopal dreamer – are assigned an outstanding competence for true dreams (Schmitt 2003, 554). In addition to this social distinction, the moral pre-eminence of the dreamer is, at times, accentuated (as in the case of Saints), and these accentuations are interlinked: into the legenda maior of Bonaventura, about the life of Saint Francis of Assisi and the foundation of his order, is inserted the narration of a dreaming priest, who experiences a dream in which he overcomes his doubts regarding the way of life of Francis and his followers. Bonaventura characterized this priest as a man with impeccable habits (honestae conversationis viro), who received the dream as divine advice. Through the narration is realized both the condition of the dreamers’ extraordinary moral qualities and their proof via evidentia: the dream marks out the person as preferred and distinguished by the celestial authority. Consequently, Speckenbach argued that unveiled mantic dreams dominate in the legends: they are sent as direct divine or angelic messages to express appreciation of a singular person (Speckenbach 1976, 178). Through their insertion in the history, a differentiation between roles can be established: the historiographer can be instituted as the interpreter, as an expert who can explain the content or legitimate, via the narration, the dream as a true vision (Lehner 2015, 213). An example where this differentiation is exploited occurs in Arnaldus de Villanova, with his Interpretatio facta per magistrum Arnaldum de Villanova de visionibus in somnis dominorum Jacobi secundi, Regis Aragonum, et Frederici tercii, Regis Sicilie, eius fratris, written in 1308 or 1309: the legitimacy of the dreams is secured by the personality of the two royal brothers, whereas Arnaldus occupies the position of dream-expert, consolidating a position already required in a medical context. Arnaldus delivers, therefore, a good example (similarly to Albertus Magnus) of the fact that being attributed the role of expert in dream-interpretation could provoke the

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(misguided) attribution of other mantic works; in his case, the dream-book of William of Aragon (Thorndike II, 300–302). Another element that underlines the validity of dream narrations is a reference to the corporeal and physical conditions for receiving true dreams, a ritualized corporeal preparation, as in the case of Guibert of Nogent’s mother, with ascetic preparation before the dream (Schmitt 2001, 270). Sometimes, it has been mentioned, the dreamer fasted or meditated prior to falling asleep – here it is possible to recognize the relation between corporeal and mental conditions and the ability to receive a dream vision. The attention paid to the time of the dream is twofold, since it concerns the temporal condition of the dreamer, such as his age, and simultaneously the temporality of the dream: within the night, the week, and the season in the year (only two examples: the time of the dream (within the night): Gerald of Wales, Expugnatio Hiberniae, Opera 5, lib. I, cap. 41, 292–293; the time of year: Autobiography of Emperor Charles IV (Chapter  VII: in die dominica, in qua erat XV. Aug. dies assumpcionis sancte Marie virginis)). This double attention reflects the interdependence between the microcosmos and the macrocosmos, the human condition and human dependence from the transcendent reality. The relevance of a dream-vision is, on occasion, accentuated by a repeated dream, such as the thrice-repeated dream of the priest Silvester in the Legenda maior of Bonaventura, mentioned above, and referring perhaps to Samuel, who has visited the house of Eli thrice (1 Sam. 3). It appears to be very rare that, within a dream, another mantic practice is inserted (Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon VI, 47: The Prior Walthard swings a plummet pendulum over a martyrologium to obtain certainty about the future). The majority of the theoretical treatises are unrelated in an intense manner to the practices – William of Aragon justified his own treatise by the lack of any reasonable foundation within the pragmatic dream-books (Thorndike II, 300). As an exception, John of Salisbury attempted, in the Policraticus, to establish rules on how to interpret dreams, which were founded on the principles of similarity (with a hierarchical foundation) and on the technical virtuosity of the interpreter to recognize the differences between signs and the signified object. Finally, his reflections point at a semiotic theory of uncertainty, which make all dream-interpretation based on dream-books like the Somniale Danielis impossible (Ricklin 1998, 230–233).

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts Dream prognostics in the Middle Ages feature in theological, philosophical and political contexts, and also later in medical and heterodox scientific (alchemic) ones. These contexts overlap in many cases and determine the social frame. Since the transmission of prognostications is bound within their written form, it is possible to reconstruct these examples mainly from an erudite context, at least from literary culture.



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Two strong traditions influenced the written realizations of dream-prognostics: the biblical fundament remained stable throughout the Middle Ages, and the connection and reference to biblical dream-visions left their mark not only on the denomination of the dream-books, the Somniale Danielis and the Somniale Joseph (I will return to these traditions later) but also, and with greater intensity, on the dream narrations and their form. The Greek and Roman Antique Basics for dreamed narrations and the thought regarding their prognostic capability were formed by Aristoteles’ Parva naturalia (De insomniis, De divinatione per somnum PN 458b–464b 15) and Macrobius’ Commentary on Cicero, Somnium Scipionis in Republica VI, 9–12. The medical basis was identified in the later Middle Ages by Galen, De dignotione ex somniis libellus (Latin version from the fourteenth century; Greek version known in the West since the fifteenth century), and ps.-Hippocrates, De insomniis (Latin version first printed 1481). The Florilegia, such as, for example, the Parvi flores, provided the main sources for a broader reception of Aristotle. Thus, his thought was not read as a whole system but as single phrases that were combined with other contexts. The Early Christian Sources for the theoretical background have been texts by the Church fathers, especially Gregory the Great (Dialogues IV, 50), and Augustine, who both referred (at least implicitly) to Macrobius and established a categorization that was closely related to the system of Macrobius in the somnium Scipionis, with the important Christian addition of a false dream, sent by the devil to misconduct the dreamer. Gregory distinguished three kinds of dreams (with sub-groups, making a total of six groups), a categorization which was highly efficacious: those sent by God, those sent by the devil, and those caused by eating or hunger. An important late-antique Christian text containing dream narrations is the Shepherd Hermas, which served in a Latin version as important input for religious contexts in the Middle Ages, built on the idea that, when a man is asleep and his bodily senses are stilled, the frontier lies wide open between himself and God (Cox Miller 1988). In the Early Middle Ages, Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae served as a transmitter for most of these antique texts and their authority. Consequently, the social context for these dream discussions was, above all, the monastic culture. This milieu was well-connected to the university culture from its foundation onward. Already, Hildegard of Bingen, in the twelfth century, had named corporeal binding as a restriction that blocked nevertheless not the possibility of discerning the future in dream visions: the divine origin of the soul offers an opportunity to gain insights into the future, provided that the soul is not weighted with sin (Newman 1985). She emphasized the moral binding of true dreams (Kruger 1992, 76–77). On the other hand, Hildegard argued that it can be easy for the devil to frighten a soul and disturb sleep through a dream, if the dreamer has experienced negative emotions before falling asleep, which might endure even while sleeping (Wittmer-Butsch 1990). Most important for the scholastic view of dreams are the reflections of John of Salisbury, beginning in the fourteenth chapter of the second book of his Policraticus. His remarks form,

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therefore, part of an ethical political treatise, a mirror for princes. John of Salisbury structured the treatise into two contrasting parts: one about the “footprints of the philosophers”, thus their doctrines, and the other about the “frivolities of the courtiers.” The remarks about the dream feature in this part (Helbling-Gloor 1956, 75–93; Kruger 1992, 75). He does not reject the reality of dream-visions (particularly with regard to the biblical references) but is highly skeptical regarding the divination practices: he judged them as being directed by ethical condemnable reasons, avarice or meanness. Referring to the classifications and remarks of Macrobius, the dreams of kings are of special interest to John of Salisbury, since they elucidate problems associated with the res publica. Connected to the reception of Aristotle and the influence of Arabian and Greek Science, a profound somatisation of dreams and reference to the natural phenomenon has been noticed by Steven Kruger and Tullio Gregory (Kruger 1992, 70, 89 sqq.; Gregory 1985). It seems that this evolution in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries has been limited to erudite contexts, especially the progressing university culture, where it strengthened the medical and scientific framing of dreams. Very unusual is the juridical dream; only two examples are known from the fourteenth century: John of Legnano’s Sompnium and the far more famous Somnium Viridarii, a juridico-political treatise composed about 1375 at the court of King Charles V of France, probably by Évrart de Trémaugon (Donovan and Keen 1981; Kram 2014). Legnanos Somnium relates a dream vision which should reinforce the scientific status of both canon law and civil law against attacks by theologians and pseudo artistae. The Somnium viridarii constitutes the most important and most famous of the works on public law written in France in the Late Middle Ages (Schnerb-Lièvre 1982; Schnerb-Lièvre 1993/1995; Schnerb 2010). From the thirteenth century, the Visio Arislei is the best example of an alchemical dream vision: in the form of a philosophical dialogue, the dream opens the path to exclusive knowledge and a hidden part of reality. This is the more typical way of utilizing dreams in a scientific context. The second strong tradition in addition to the Aristotelian influence of dream-prognostics in the Christian Middle Ages, the dream-books, found their way from the Somnialia Danielis, created in Byzantium (fourth century?), into Latin translations from 500 on up to 800 – the first surviving Latin manuscripts were written in the ninth century. The first vernacular versions appear to be Old English interlinear manuscripts from the eleventh century. The situation regarding the Latin traditions of Lunare and the Somnialia Joseph are relatively similar: the Latin sortilegia with dream interpretations that first appeared in the twelfth century. Very different vernacular versions of collective lunaries have been identified (Palmer and Speckenbach 1990, 153). The late antique dream-book of Artemidorus was efficacious in the Middle Ages only through the Byzantine banalisation of a certain Achmet (around 820 a. Chr.), translated around 1176 by Leo Tuscus, a secretary of the Byzantine Emperor, Manuel Komnenos: in the twelfth century, a first version arrived in England. Nevertheless, there does not exist a strong tradition. Speckenbach counted ten Latin manuscripts



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between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, three old-French manuscripts and two Czech manuscripts, which transmitted Byzantine together with Indian, Persian and Egypt ideas in European contexts (Palmer and Speckenbach 1990, 127). The Latin Somniale Danielis, in the early Middle Ages, showed signs of their monastic provenance within their social contextualization, but the ecclesiastical critique and interdiction in canon law reduced the importance of this milieu in the twelfth century. Kruger mentions, nevertheless, several manuscripts from a clerical context in the late Middle Ages (Kruger 1992, 15). Only the Somniale Joseph, with their accentuated religious character, resisted for some time. In the fourteenth century, the manors and aristocratic courts were the priority contexts (and John of Salisbury’s critique of divination practice was aimed at these books) while, in the fifteenth century, the urban reception strengthened the diffusion, not only in Latin language but also in vernacular and mixed manuscripts. Most of these books were written for everyday use, with an almost humble materiality (Palmer and Speckenbach 1990, 196). Despite the intellectual distance, it is possible to discern some contact between these dream-books and theoretical reflections: William of Conches used the dream contents of the Somniale Danielis in his own commentary on Macrobius, declaring these dreams to be his own (Ricklin 1998, 205). In 1489, Marsilio Ficino translated and edited Synesios’ De Insomniis¸ which this late antique author had written against casuistic dream interpretation and especially against Artemidorus: with this publication an epistemological foundation of dream-mantics and a fresh look at its significance became possible. Nevertheless, this erudite evolution did not immediately alter the practice of dream-prognostication within the most distinct social and cultural contexts. Historiographical narrations of dreams were less common in the later Middle Ages, especially under the influence of Humanism, due to the separation of historical thought from religious thought and revelation. The religious dream-visions, with their characteristic interplay between their passive (they are sent by God, they are a divine grace) and active elements (contemplative prayer, trance and sleep as conditions), remain the most frequent narrations of prognostics. Their special intermediary role between God and the individual human raises an opportunity to discuss the differentiation between vision and dream through the distinction between dreamed revelation and conscious vision (Newman 2005, 21). These religious dreams may represent the evolution of the gender-balance (even if we take into account the dream reports of the monks in the Middle Ages) of dream-prognostications: while there are many cases of dreaming and visionary nouns in the Middle Ages, in the sixteenth century, in contrast, visionary dreams are reported in Germany exclusively with reference to masculine reformers, especially Thomas Müntzer and Philipp Melanchthon: Müntzer used dreams experience by at least two men as oracula for his own biographical decisions, events, and theological, respectively religious, topics (Fauth 1999; Melanchthon, Etliche trawm Philippi). The hypothesis that the urban reception of the dream-books replaces the expert (who can be found rather at the court) can be illustrated rarely as impressing as in the case of a printed Somniale Danielis from the mid-sixteenth century: the anon-

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ymous user underlined approximately 180 interpretations and noted in the margins where and when (at which hour) he dreamed the dream in question; for example: Hoc quoque somniaui Anno 1545, 15 die Martij hora 4. ante diluculum. […] 1550 19 Septem: Ioannes Nepos somniarat de me cum mater irasceretur. 1550 20 Septembris somniaui quando mihi mater succensuit (at the margins of Fossas uidere aut intus cadere significat angustiam resp. Organum audire sonare significat iracundiam). […] 1554 12 Maj videbar cor habere exiguum, quod eximens Doctori Stephano explorandum dedi. Ille rursus exangue mihi reddidit (at the margins of Cor sentire cadere cum dolore, significat periculum vel infirmitatem). (Önnerfors 1977, 48)

In the majority, the practice of dream-prognostics via dream-books was recognizable, outside their own treatises, almost exclusively via the erudite (juridical, theological) critique. This is also the case especially for oral prognostic practices, which are defamed in respect of social and gender criteria: the theologians condemn simple women in villages as illegitimate dream interpreters (see below: Humbert de Romans, William of Auvergne).

Medieval Classifications and Discussions Theoretical discussions about dreams and the classifications of dream prognostication were contained in manuscripts and printed books, as were more practical contestations and controversies, which were engraved on the writings, also in artifacts and, above all, on images that stabilized the legitimacy of dream prognostications, especially in the case of dream narrations of saints, kings or popes (Carty 1999, 47: “Thus, the dream image functioned like an imprimatur: it not only visually confirmed the divine character of the depicted event, but it also simultaneously visually sanctioned the dream’s message.” (See Paravicini Bagliani and Stabile 1989 for case studies and general remarks). Theological critique and discussion about dream prognostication and revelation through dreams refers almost exclusively to dream narrations, establishing a theoretical discourse that is separated from dream-books, which are completely forbidden as a superstitious practice, without any in-depth discussion. The most relevant juridical and normative act was the decretum Gratiani (twelfth century), including the ban on prognostic practices, especially the Somniale Danielis (Kruger 1992, 12–13). The practical contestation of dream prognostications can be recognized in the manuscripts and later in printed books: in the margins, commentaries and erasures, crossings out, and deletions. These reactions are almost signs of religious critics, sometimes also in an epistemological sense. In the Clm 25005 manuscript from the fifteenth century, the user meticulously erased precisely those four lines of text that contain directions on how to perform the mantic procedure, that immediately followed the introductory phrase et si habueris secretum somnium et pregnans (Chardon-



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nens 2014, 655; Speckenbach 1995, col. 1024). Similarly, in other dream-books with commentaries from the sixteenth century, “Das ist das traum puch” is crossed out, and on the margin stands the gloss: “ist als erstuncken vnd erlogen vnd wider das erst gepot gotz” (Chardonnens 2014, 651, 654; Palmer and Speckenbach 1990, 134). Even a fundamentally Christianised dream-book was destroyed in such a manner and rigorously crossed out (Speckenbach 1995, col. 1017, col. 1019–1020: Somniale Danielis, BSB Munich, cgm 270, 215v–216; in the same manner was destroyed a Somniale Joseph: Munich, cgm 270, 201r/v). The biblical legitimation of dream prognostication always exists in tension with the defence of divination as a pagan art, as mentioned by Rupert von Deutz (d. 1129) in his interpretations of the history of Joseph: Rupert concludes from his example that the ability to prognosticate is a celestial gift – he applies this to a personal dream and as legitimation for his own theological writings. The significance of dream-visions for the validation are underlined by the address to Rupert’s patron (Wittmer-Butsch 1990, 120; Newman 1985, 172  sq.). He follows the advice of Gregory the Great, who cautioned against placing excessive confidence in dreams, since only preeminent persons were able to discern illusio and revelatio. At around the same time as Rupert, William of Conches (ca. 1090 – after 1154) bound together with his glosses on Macrobius’ Commentary on the Dream of Scipio a discussion about the veracity of dreams and the veiled secrecy of nature (Bezner 2005, 265–266; Hadot 2004, 77), while Hildegard of Bingen argued, in a letter to the monk Rüdiger, that in any case all knowledge will be unveiled to a single person, but God revealed only those elements which were useful in the particular case. For Hildegard, this constitutes a justification and legitimation for making use of her prophetic spiritual gift (Newman 2005, Wittmer-Butsch 1990, 132; Ricklin 1998, 225). John of Salisbury, while a pupil of William of Conches, built on the latter’s reflections. He identified the difference between the dream content and his linguistic structure of meaning as identical to that between nature and the imitating artist – whereby fundamental problems for dream interpretation are explained (Ricklin 1998, 231  sq, with a profound discussion of the intellectual connections and traditions of John of Salisbury’s thought). John introduces also the intensity of the dreamer’s faith in the omen as a fundamental element of prognostics (“All omens however possess power only in proportion to the faith of him who receives them,” John of Salisbury, Policraticus, Book 2, Chap. 1). Jacques LeGoff has already pointed out how clerics attempted to control dreamers and restrict the handling of dreams, labelling most dreams devilish illusions and limiting the reception of true dreams to an elite of saints and Christian kings. He interpreted the later evolution into broader access to dreams (or, at least, their broader delivery) as democratization (Le Goff 1991), but there were also attempts to control this amplification, as for example in the twelfth century, when Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, collected dream narrations from various people with a multi-layered goal: he evaluated the dream-narrations in order to overcome his own skepticism regarding dreams and, at the same time, to control the dreams’ content

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(Petrus Venerabilis, De miraculis libri duo). The uncontrolled, illegitimate practice of dream-interpretation, especially by women without erudition, has been criticized in sermons and by preachers, condemning them as impostures, swindlers, and liars, as by William of Auvergne (or William of Paris, 1180–1249) and the fifth Master General of the Dominican Order, Humbert de Romans (1190/1200–1277) (Boglioni 2000, 49). In the highly-developed theoretical discussion presented in erudite contexts since the twelfth century, the conditions for dream-interpretation are evaluated, also. In the following paragraphs, I will restrict myself to relevant remarks connected to prognostication (for a fuller discussion of the scholastic reflections on dreaming, see: Ricklin 1998; Kruger 1992). The thirteenth century was, therefore, the time of the profoundest theoretical controversy concerning the possible veracity of dream-visions, with the Dominicans as Aristotelians and the Franciscans as protagonists. The Franciscans – and most prominent among them being Bonaventura – fortified the opinion of possible prognostication through dreams by Saints to strengthen the founding history of their order (Lerner 1994). The Aristotelian philosopher Boetius of Dacia, who was accused of being an Averroist, held strongly empirical and rational views about dreams, and sought to establish a science of dream-interpretation in his De Sompniis. Within the universities, the position of the Aristotelian writings changed between use and ban, which influenced the validity of his thought about dreams. Albertus Magnus, in his De somno et vigili, distinguished different modes of astral influences, holding the view that it might be possible for wise persons to interpret dreams, and that there exists a system of decipherment within the magical arts. Albertus included equally the inner influences as corporeal and psychic disposition and elements from outside in his concept. In his view, it is possible to interpret dreams for those who have a natural talent and specific skills in estimating and judging their affects and the disposition of the dreamer: The basis for this exploration is the differentiation between the dreamer and the expert who practise prophecy (Albertus Magnus, De somno et vigilia; see also Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputata 12. 7 and 12. 12: The pharaoh who had the dream is not the prophet, but Joseph, who received an intellectual understanding; see also Altmann 1978, 13). Albertus discerned dreams and visions as lying on a scale between confused dreams and clear prophecies. Albertus became one of the most widely-quoted authorities on mantic practices and dream-prognostication. In the fourteenth century, Conrad of Megenberg referred repeatedly in his Latin scientific works and in his vernacular Buch der Natur on Albertus, for whom he claimed the authority (as erudite and bishop), to the distinction between orthodox knowledge and allowed practice, and forbidden practices and techniques. Conrad attributed to him also the treatise De pronosticatione sompniorum, written by William of Aragon, built on Albertus’ De somno et vigili, with a differentiation of the rational soul which is able to view future events especially while asleep because it is not disturbed by outer influences or under physiological conditions. He held the view that the ability of individuals to receive dream-visions depended on their psychological and physiological disposition. The other reference to Conrad of Megenberg represents Rhazes’ dream



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doctrine, De significatione somniorum, in the Liber ad Almansorem, with a clearly and exclusively medical character, where dreams possess, above all, a diagnostic significance – far from all occult matters. On the other hand, Peter of Abano (fourteenth century) defended, in a scholastic discussion, the possibility that dreams contain therapeutic advice, since these dreams came from God and so, even if the dreamer does not receive a remedy for his illness, he can gain insights into the deeper reasons for his sickness. Combined physiological and psychological aspects represented the main arguments for Jean Gerson in his discernment of real visions and guided him toward a misogynous suspicion of female visionaries (such as Birgitta of Sweden), since he judged them as more often prone to suffering from mental illness and delusions. He estimated Birgitta’s visions as dangerous since they required a high ranking position, close to divine revelation (De distinctione verarum visionum a falsis). The veracity of the visions is estimated based on their conformity to the Bible. Jean Gerson argues that moral qualities, especially humility, are indispensable in gaining access to visionary knowledge. They help to solve the basic epistemological problems related to distinguishing between visions and dreams. Whether the individual who experiences the vision is awake or asleep is not always discernible, because the vivid and sometimes even reflexive character of the dream may seduce the dreamer into supposing that he is thinking and, therefore, awake. Conversely, while an individual is awake, it may be possible deliberately to turn off the sensual organs and bypass images, as if dreaming. Only the basis of a humble attitude secures the solid consideration of dreams and visions and Gerson argues that many human beings pretend to live virtuous (Wittmer-Butsch 1990, 164). The moral disqualification of dream prognostication, already pronounced by John of Salisbury in his Policraticus, occurs later in courtly contexts combined with an intellectual disqualification; for example, in a treatise of Augustine of Ancona (d. 1328, Tractatus contra divinatores et somniatores), who warned Pope Clement V that dream interpreters were trying to exert an influence, in a clever, hypocritical manner (Wittmer-Butsch 1990, 157 sqq); and also in a Burgundian treatise of Laurens Pignon, who wrote Contre les devineurs, based on his belief that the French royal court’s dabbling in magic had brought about its degeneration, which undermined the order of the world and led to the civil war of 1411. He judged that they were acting sans cervelle et sans entendement (Veenstra 1998, 181). The physiological aspect of misinterpreting dreams was articulated by Nicole Oresme (d. 1384; De configurationibus qualitatum et motuum): The internal and external senses may be misled through the effect of fasting and ascetic exercises, whereas only the completely free soul may be able to receive celestial messages.

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Selected Bibliography Bezner, Frank. Vela Veritatis. Hermeneutik, Wissen und Sprache in der Intellectual History des 12. Jahrhunderts (Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 85). Leiden and Boston, 2005. Boglioni, Pierre. “L’Église et la divination au Moyen Âge, ou les avatars d’une pastorale ambiguë.” Théologiques 8,1 (2000): 37–66. Carozzi, Claude. “Die drei Stände gegen den König: Mythos, Traum, Bild.” Träume im Mittelalter. Ikonologische Studien. Eds. Agostino Paravicini Bagliani and Giorgio Stabile. Stuttgart et al., 1989. 149–160. Carty, Carolyn M. “The Role of Medieval Dream Images in Authenticating Ecclesiastical Construction.” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 62, 1 (1999): 45–90. Chardonnens, László Sándor. “Two Newly Discovered Mantic Dream Alphabets in Medieval French.” Medium aevum 80.1 (2011): 111–116. Chardonnens, László Sándor. “Mantic Alphabets in Medieval Western Manuscripts and Early Printed Books.” Modern Philology 110.3 (2013): 340–366. Chardonnens, László Sándor. “Mantic Alphabets in Late Medieval England, Early Modern Europe, and Modern America: The Reception and Afterlife of a Medieval Form of Dream Divination.” Anglia. Journal of English Philology 132.4 (2014): 641–675. Collard, Judith. “Henry I’s Dream in John of Worcester’s Chronicle (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 157) and the Illustration of Twelfth-Century English Chronicles.” Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010): 105–125. Cox Miller, Patricia. “  ‘All the Words Were Frightful’: Salvation by Dreams in the Shepherd of Hermas.” Vigiliae Christianae 42.4 (1988): 327–338. Dinzelbacher, Peter. Vision und Visionsliteratur im Mittelalter (Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 23). Stuttgart, 1981. Donovan, Glynis M., and Maurice H. Keen. “The ‘Somnium’ of John of Legnano.” Traditio 37 (1981): 325–345. Fauth, Dieter. “Träume bei religiösen Dissidenten in der frühen Reformation.” Religiöse Devianz in christlich geprägten Gesellschaften. Vom hohen Mittelalter bis zur Frühaufklärung. Ed. Dieter Fauth. Würzburg, 1999. 71–106. Gerald of Wales. Expugnatio Hiberniae, in: Opera, vol. 5. Ed. John S. Brewer. London, 1867. Gregory, Tullio. “I sogni e gli astri.” I sogni nel medioevo. Seminario internazionale Roma, 2–4 ottobre 1983. Ed. Tullio Gregory. Rome (Lessico intellettuale europeo, 35), 1985. 111–148. Hadot, Pierre. Le voile d’Isis. Essai sur l’histoire de l’idée de nature. Paris, 2004 (nrf essais). Helbling-Gloor, Barbara. Natur und Aberglaube im Policraticus des Johannes von Salisbury. Einsiedeln, 1956. John of Salisbury. Policraticus (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis, 118). Ed. Katharine S. B. Keats-Rohan. Turnhout, 1993. Kram, Benjamin. In corpore iuris omnia inveniuntur? Gesetz und Heilsgeschichte im somniumTraktat des Johannes von Legnano (um 1320–1383). Constance, 2014. Kruger, Steven F. Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge studies in medieval literature, 14). Cambridge et al., 1992. Le Goff, Jacques. “Les rêves dans la culture et la psychologie collective de l’Occident médiéval.” Pour un autre Moyen âge. Ed. Jacques Le Goff. Paris, 1991. 299–306. Lehner, Hans-Christian. Prophetie zwischen Eschatologie und Politik. Zur Rolle der Vorhersagbarkeit von Zukünftigem in der hochmittelalterlichen Historiografie (Historische Forschungen, 29). Stuttgart, 2015.



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Lerner, Robert E. “Himmelsvision oder Sinnendelirium? Franziskaner und Professoren als Traumdeuter im Paris des 13. Jahrhunderts.” Historische Zeitschrift 259.2 (1994): 337–367. Melanchthon, Philipp. “Etliche Trawm Philippi von gegenwertigen und vergangen verfelschung der wahren Religion sehr lustig und nützlich zu lesen. Item ein Trawm des abtrünnigen Mamelucken Staphyli.” Philipp Melanchthon, Opera quae supersunt omnia. Eds. Carl Gottlieb Bretschneider and Heinrich Ernst Bindseil. Vol. 20. Braunschweig, 1854. Col. 686–692. Newman, Barbara. “Hildegard of Bingen: Visions and Validation.” Church History 54.2 (1985): 163–175. Newman, Barbara. “What Did It Mean to Say ‘I Saw’? The Clash between Theory and Practice in Medieval Visionary Culture.” Speculum 80.1 (2005): 1–43. Önnerfors, Alf. “Über die alphabetischen Traumbücher (Somnia Danielis) des Mittelalters.” Mediaevalia. Abhandlungen und Aufsätze (Lateinische Sprache und Literatur des Mittelalters, 6). Ed. Alf Önnerfors. 1997. 32–57. Palmer, Nigel F., and Klaus Speckenbach. Träume und Kräuter. Studien zur Petroneller “Circa instans”-Handschrift und zu den deutschen Traumbüchern des Mittelalters (Pictura et poesis, 4). Cologne, 1990. Paradis, André. “Les oniromanciens et leurs traités des rêves.” Aspects de la marginalité au Moyen Age (Collection explorations, 1). Ed. Guy H. Allard. Montréal, 1975. 118–127. Paravicini Bagliani, Agostino, and Giorgio Stabile (eds.). Träume im Mittelalter. Ikonologische Studien. Stuttgart et al., 1989. Ricklin, Thomas. Der Traum der Philosophie im 12. Jahrhundert. Traumtheorien zwischen Constantinus Africanus und Aristoteles (Mittellateinische Studien und Texte, 24). Leiden and Boston, 1998. Schalk, Fritz. Somnium und verwandte Wörter in den romanischen Sprachen (Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen. Geisteswissenschaften, 32). Cologne and Opladen, 1955. Schmitt, Jean-Claude. “Les rêves de Guibert de Nogent.” Le corps, les rites, les rêves, le temps. Essais d’anthropologie médiévale. Ed. Jean-Claude Schmitt. Paris, 2001. 263–294. Schmitt, Jean-Claude. “Récits et images de rêves au Moyen Âge.” Ethnologie française 33.4 (2003): 553–563. Schnerb, Bertrand. “Charles V au miroir du Songe du Vergier.” Le Moyen Age 116.3 (2010): 545–559. Schnerb-Lièvre, Marion. Le Songe du Vergier, édité d’après le manuscrit Royal 19 C IV de la British Library (Sources d’histoire médiévale). Paris, 1982. Schnerb-Lièvre, Marion. Somnium Viridarii (Sources d’histoire médiévale). 2 vols. Paris, 1993/1995. Speckenbach, Klaus. “Von den troimen. Über den Traum in Theorie und Dichtung.” “Sagen mit Sinne.” Festschrift für Marie-Luise Dittrich zum 65. Geburtstag (Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, 180). Eds. Helmut Rücker and Kurt Otto Seidel. Göppingen, 1976. 169–204. Speckenbach, Klaus. “Traumbücher.” Verfasserlexikon – Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Bd. 9: Slecht, Reinbold – Ulrich von Liechtenstein. Eds. Kurt Ruh et al. Berlin, 1995. Col. 1014–1028. Thietmar of Merseburg. Chronicon (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, Nova Series 9). Ed. Robert Holtzmann. Berlin, 1935. Thorndike, Lynn. A History of Magic and Experimental Science; 2: During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era. New York, 1923. Veenstra, Jan R. Magic and Divination at the Courts of Burgundy and France. Text and Contest of Laurens Pignon’s Contre les devineurs (1411) (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 83). Leiden et al., 1998. Wittmer-Butsch, Maria Elisabeth. Zur Bedeutung von Schlaf und Traum im Mittelalter (Medium aevum quotidianum. Sonderband, 1). Krems, 1990.

Steven M. Oberhelman

Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World Definitions and Terminology The Greek Christian views on dreams and visions were a continuation and expansion on Eastern traditions stretching back to Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt of the third through second millennia BCE and then filtered through Judaism, classical and Hellenistic culture, and paleo-Christianity. Some dreams and visions were considered communications sent by God and his messengers (angels and saints) or by Satan and demonic forces. Other dreams offered a prediction of the future; in such cases, the source was supernatural (a divine revelation) or natural (the soul’s inherent ability to prognosticate). Still other dreams arose from physiological factors like food and drink, disease, imbalances in the body’s humors, and replication of everyday thoughts. There were also visions, which could be received during sleep or in the waking-state, although they were usually reserved for the pious (e.  g., those about to be martyred) or for the unsaved (the purpose being a stimulus to conversion). Many theologians viewed dreams and visions with suspicion since the devil could use them to deceive and inflict believers, despite the prominent role of dreams and visions in Hebrew and Christian scriptures and in everyday culture. Monastics had an especially hostile attitude because of the dream’s potential to contain erotic imagery and due to the association of dreams with pagan divination. Broadly speaking, in the Christian East, dreams and visions were believed to owe their origin to one of three sources: God or one of his messengers (human or angelic); the devil or a demons; or the dreamer himself (the activities of the soul, mind, and body). Whether the dream was allegorical, demonic, divine, healing, prophetic, physiological, psychological, etc., it was grouped into one of two distributive categories: significant and non-significant. By “significant” I mean the dream’s or the vision’s ability to provide to the dreamer correct information on the present or the future. (The idea that dreams can shed light on the past, which is a modern psychological concept, was never a part of ancient or medieval beliefs.) The “non-significant” dream had no relevance for the dreamer insofar as it was neither predictive nor prophetic, although it could shed light on mundane matters like the nature of disease. In the Christian East, definitions, nomenclature, and terminology for dreams and visions were borrowed from pagan culture (ancient and Hellenistic philosophical, medical, and oneirocritic works), the Septuagint, the Greek New Testament, and demotic Greco-Egyptian magical papyri, and then applied, and not always successfully, to Christian belief-systems. Complicating matters, the same dreaming event could be described by a multitude of words and with little consistency; for example, the word for https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-018



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“significant dream” in one text could mean “non-significant dream” in another. Even categories of dreams and visions overlapped or were imprecise in definition. An erotic dream could be discussed by one author purely in physiological terms, and by another as Satan’s attack of a saint. A healing dream could be described by one author as a vision, and by another author as a miracle. In the discussions below, it must be understood that distinctions of dreams and visions were often blurred and terms were differently used from author to author, from genre to genre, and from century to century. One thing on which all our sources agree is that dreaming is an active sensory experience: a person sees the contents of a dream or vision through a cognitive process similar to everyday perception. Thus, the usual Greek verbs for seeing or watching are routinely used: horaō (“I look at”), blepō (“I see”), theōreō (“I perceive”), ephoraō (“I observe”), and optazomai (“I am seen”). Such verbs signify a means of perception that is the same as what occurs during the waking state. The vocabulary also reflects stories of religious dreams and visions in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures where one sees, hears, and talks with God or a heavenly messenger just as he or she would in everyday life. As stated above, Christian Greeks attributed to dreams and visions three primary causes: heaven (God, angels, saints), hell (Satan, demons), and earthly phenomena (the dreamer’s soul or body, food, excessive wine, etc.). To distinguish between dreams and visions and their various subgroupings, Eastern Christians used classical and Hellenistic Greek terminology. Thus, the general word for “dream” was onar or hupar. But dreams were then subdivided on the basis of their ability to predict the future. The significant, meaningful (i.  e., predictive) dream was, in accordance with classical Greek terminology, called the oneiros; the natural, non-meaningful (i.  e., non-predictive) dream was the enupnion. A dream that owed its origin to natural causes like certain kinds of food was labelled a phantasma, while phantasia was still to describe a dream or vision sent by Satan or demons. Authors, especially hagiographers, had a number of words available to them for describing a vision: horasis, horama, and opsis (all synonyms for “vision”), as well as apokalupsis (“manifestation” of someone or “unveiling” of something), chrēsmos (“oracle”), and ekstasis (“entrancement”). If the vision occurred during sleep, a qualifying phrase was often added, e.  g., kath’ hupnous (“during sleep”), or the circumstances surrounding the event may be highlighted, e.  g., koimaomai (“while lying in bed”). A dream or vision whose purpose was to predict the future was often termed a chrēmatismos (“a divine answer,” “an oracular message”), a word strongly connected to the oracles, divinatory practices, and temple-healing of classical and post-classical Greece. Nevertheless, it must be stressed again that a standardized vocabulary did not exist distinguish types of dreams. In the very same text three different words for dream could appear: horama, oneiros, and onar, and with no distinction between any of the terms. While many authors did reserve oneiros for the significant dream and horama for the dream vision, not all did; oneiros could mean a vision, while hupar, instead of its usual meaning of “vision,” may occasionally be used for denoting a dream.

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Even the Byzantines’ paleo-Christian sources were inconsistent in their definitions and vocabulary. In the Greek Septuagint, enupnion, horasis, horama, and hupar were all words used to mean “dream,” while in the Old Testament Apocrypha the word oneiros served the same function. In the Christian New Testament, Matthew used the phrase kat’ onar, and Luke the words horama and onar, to describe both dreams and visions. Throughout Byzantine hagiographic and non-hagiographic literature, a similar blurring of terminology, especially for visions and prophetic dreams, occurs. All this means that an author had many largely synonymous nouns and verbs available to them to describe dreams and dreaming. What specific terminology was used in a particular text probably came down to the author’s preference in word choice or to the source-texts that he may have drawn from.

Written Sources and Artifacts Dreams and visions appear extensively, as may be expected, in religious texts. The Hebrew Bible and the Christian Greek New Testament contain references, but so did late antique non-orthodox writings. Non-orthodox Christian movements like Gnosticism and Montanism were based on revelatory visions and special dreams. The Nag Hammadi Library, consisting of 13 papyrus codices buried around 400 CE in Upper Egypt, includes tractates dealing with various Gnostic sects. In many of these works dreams and visions announce special revelatory or religious experiences to believers and a unique knowledge, or gnōsis, of salvation on the basis of those revelations. Hagiographic texts abound with dreams and visions, many related to miraculous acts of healing. Like the classical Greek healing god Asklepios, saints and even Theotokos (Mary, the mother of Jesus) could appear to ailing suppliants and heal. In such curative dreams a patient was made well through a variety of means: being told to take a wondrous drug, poultice, or ointment; by undertaking a regimen or diet suggested in the dream; or by being operated on by the saint during the dream itself – all practices that mirror perfectly the pagan cult of Asklepios. Christian healing dreams usually occurred at shrines and churches or even in a hospital setting. Collections of healing dreams in hagiographic literature include: Miracles of St. Artemios, Miracles of Cosmas and Damianos, Miracles of Kyros and John, Miracles of Sampson, and Miracles of Thekla. Dreams and visions appear in many biographies of individual saints. While they sometimes function as a plot device, they do have didactic purposes as well: conversion, visions of heaven and hell, prophecy, revelation, and warning. A few notable examples of texts with dreams and visions are the Life of Cyril Phileotes (15 dreams alone), Life of Andrew the Fool, Life of Porphyrios of Gaza, Life of Symeon Stylite the Younger, and Life of Synkletike. As in Greek and Roman historiography, dreams feature prominently in Byzantium and are of a single type: prophetic dreams that result in a true (fulfilled) outcome. Early



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Byzantine texts, like Procopius’ Secret History and Wars, contain not only prophetic dreams but also visions (e.  g., the prophet Zechariah appearing to Photios in prison). Dreams became especially common in historical texts after the years of iconoclasm in the eighth and early ninth centuries, when imagery of all forms, even in dreams, were attacked by church and state. The Continuation of Theophanes, a composite book written by at least three authors and dating to 813–961, contains 10 dream sequences, all prophetic in nature and structured to serve as propaganda for the Macedonian imperial dynasty. Subsequent historical writers, down through the end of the Byzantine Empire, employed dreams in their narratives: John Skylitzes, Anna Komnene, John Kinnamos, Nicetas Choniates, George Pachymeres, Nicephorus Gregoras, and John Kantakouzenos. The dreams in these authors’ texts are prophetic in nature and purpose. They may be allegorical or symbolic in imagery, or could be hagiographical, that is, when a saint appears in the dream (e.  g., ordering the emperor to visit a shrine for a medical cure). During the Komnenian dynasty (1081–1185), the genre of Hellenistic Greek novels was revived. Three Byzantine novels have survived: Hysimine and Hysimines by Eustathios Makrembolites (written in prose), and Rodanthe and Dosikles by Theodore Prodromos and Drosilla and Charikles by Nicetas Eugenianos (both poetic). While the authors made extensive use of dreams for their narratives, they were subversive in their treatment of dreams, in that they rejected the then widely accepted belief in the prophetic and revelatory nature of dreams and instead relied on naturalistic explanations of dreams as postulated by Aristotle and other ancient philosophers. Eastern Greek Christian philosophers discussed dreams during the Byzantine Empire. Late Neoplatonists like Iamblichus (d. 325) and Synesios (d. 414) wrote treatises on dream and dream interpretation. Synesios even recommended that everyone should keep a daily journal of his dreams. All dreams are prophetic in nature, but are idiosyncratic to each dreamer and so can only be interpreted by the person who sees it. By decoding one’s own dreams, one can comprehend truths otherwise inaccessible during the waking state: during sleep the soul loosens itself from the shackles of the body and communicates with the higher spheres or mediate spirits. The Neoplatonists influenced those Christian theologian-philosophers who wished to accommodate dream theory within a Christian context, despite suspicion and occasional hostility from the church (see section IV below). Fourth-century theologian-philosophers in particular actively discussed the classification of dreams and their causation: Basil the Great (d. 379), Gregory of Nyssa (d. 394), and Evagrios of Pontos (d. 399). Subsequent authors like Anastasios of Sinai (d. ca. 700) and Symeon the New Theologian (d. 1022) followed up with their own contributions to dream theory, while Maximus Planoudes (d. 1305) translated the Commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, written by the fifth-century Roman Neoplatonist Macrobius, and Nicephorus Gregoras (d. 1360) wrote an important commentary on Synesios’ treatise on dreams. In later Byzantium, Aristotle’s treatises on dreams (On Sleep, On Dreams, and On Divination through Dreams) received much attention. The early Byzantine writer Themistios (d. 390) had commented on Aristotle’s works, but the most substantial commentary was written

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by Michael of Ephesos (fl. ca. 1150), working under the patronage of the Byzantine princess and scholar Anna Komnene; his extensive commentary on Aristotle’s dream theory has survived (Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, vol. 22, parts 1–3). Other commentaries on Aristotle’s works, dating to late Byzantium, are attributed to Sophonias (fl. ca. 1300), George Pachymeres (d. 1310), Michael Psellos (d. 1096), and Theodore Metochites (d. 1332). Dream-key manuals are perhaps the most well-known literary artifacts for dreams in the Eastern Christian Greek tradition. These manuals, which closely follow the dream texts of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon, were formatted specifically for quick consultation. On awakening someone could pick up a book, scan an alphabetical list of dreams, and then read the interpretation assigned to his specific dream. Dreams and their meanings were often stated as a simple equivalence: “x means y”; thus, “Walking on hot coals means your death.” Or the dream could be written as a protasis, with the interpretation given in the apodosis. For example, “If someone dreams that he lost one of his eyes or even both of them, he will be deprived of the friends and blood relatives he loves dearly.” The interpretation of a dream was often universal, that is, the predicted fate befell anyone, although sometimes different types of dreamers (sick or healthy, rich or poor, male or female, king or slave, etc.) might expect different outcomes. Both symbol and interpretation are succinctly described. No entry is longer than two lines, and the events of the dream are collapsed into a single word (a noun like “lightning” or a verbal form like “vomiting”) or a terse phrase (“blood trickling out of the mouth” or “receiving a kiss from a dead person”). The ancient Greeks and Romans wrote dream-key manuals. We have references to some 20 to 30 writers on dreams and dream interpretation, but only fragments of their work survive. Only one dream-key manual from antiquity has survived: the Oneirocriticon (Dreambook) of Artemidorus of Daldis of the second century CE. There are seven Christian Greek dream-key manuals. All but one of the attributed authorships are spurious, and their dates of composition can only be approximated. Very often material in one text is reproduced wholesale or with slight alterations in other texts; and since we cannot date precisely any of these manuals, the question of who borrowed from whom cannot be answered. Also complicating things is the fact that the same dreamkey text may be attributed to different persons in various codices. The dreambook of Nicephorus, for example, is claimed to have been written by one of four different church theologians, even though the content of each version is substantially the same. The format of the dream-key manuals differ: two are in verse, four in prose, and one in both verse and prose. Their dates, except for that of the Daniel dreambook, fall within the period of from the ninth through the fifteenth century. The texts were meant for an educated reading audience; after all, the fact that these texts are literary products presupposes a reading audience. Two dreambooks (the Oneirocriticon of Ibn Sīrīn and the dreambook of Manuel II Palaeologus) were intended for the emperor and his court. The Dreambook of Daniel the Prophet is the earliest Byzantine dream-key manual and may be the basic source text for all medieval dreambooks – both in the East and



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in the West. Its date, on the basis of textual markers, is likely the fourth century CE; certainly it predates the seventh century when the Greek text was translated into Latin in southern France. The dreambook’s popularity in Western Europe is clear from the over 70 surviving Latin manuscripts from the ninth and tenth centuries and from the hundreds of variants overall. Translations of the text appeared in the West in such languages as English, French, German, Gothic, Irish, and Italian. The Greek text of the Daniel dreambook is found in only two sixteenth-century codices: fol. 4v–10v of Codex Berolinensis Phillips 1479, and fol. 31r–48r of the Codex Vaticanus Palatinus Graecus 319. The dreambook became very popular in Eastern countries, as it was translated into Arabic, Aramaic, Armenian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Persian, Syrian, and Turkish. The contents of the Daniel text have little similarity with Artemidorus’ Oneirocriticon and probably derive from folk traditions. The Daniel dreambook was a primary source for a late ninth-century or early tenth-century text ascribed to “Nicephorus, patriarch of Constantinople” (exact identity unknown). The text is found in 16 manuscripts; the earliest is the Codex Parisinus Supplementus Graecus 690 (eleventh century), with the others dating from the eleventh through sixteenth centuries. Around the same time the Oneirocriticon of Achmet Ibn Sīrīn appeared. This lengthy work was based on several Arabic dream texts and on the Arabic translation of Artemidorus; the Arabic material was subjected to a Christian makeover for a Byzantine readership. The Achmet dreambook may have been commissioned by the Emperor Leo VI (866–912) to be used by him and members of the court. The Nicephorus dreambook was a primary source for two other dreambooks. One is ascribed to Astrampsychus, which was the name of a Persian Magian from the time of Alexander the Great; the name, like those given to the authors of other dreambooks, is spurious and was done in order to lend prestige and authority to the work. There is no manuscript of this text; instead, we have 108 assorted verses written into the margins of two thirteenth-century manuscripts of the Suda (a large encyclopedia of the tenth century): Codex Parisinus 2622 and Codex Parisinus 2625. The Nicephorus dreambook was also one of many sources used by the author of the Dreambook of Germanus, the Patriarch of Constantinople (identity not known). This work appears in only one manuscript: fol. 311r–319r of Codex Vindobonensis Theologicus Graecus 336 (dated to ca. 1300). An anonymous dream-key manual with 440 dreams and their interpretations appears on fol. 27r–36v of the Codex Parisinus Graecus 2511 (dated to ca. 1400). The final extant Byzantine dreambook was written by, or was written for (the Greek is unclear), Manuel II Palaeologus, emperor of Byzantium from 1391 to 1425. The text is found on fol. 315v–319r of the fifteenth-century Codex Parisinus Graecus 2419, with a few fragments on the final folium of Codex Leidensis Vossianus 49 (late fifteenth century). There is a specialized form of dreambook called “lunar.” Here the interpretation of the dream depends on the cycle of the moon during a given lunar month. Thus, a dream seen when the moon is in its third phase predicts one thing, but another during

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a new moon. Lunar dreambooks may be traced back to ancient medical practice (Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek), which viewed certain days in the course or progression of an illness or disease as critical; the Greeks even defined an illness as acute if it lasted less than a lunar month, but as chronic if longer than a lunar month. Medieval Greek medical writers listed best times for phlebotomy on the basis of the day of the lunar calendar when the operation would be performed, and prophetic texts predicted lucky or unlucky events on the same basis.

Techniques and Beliefs To understand the interpretation of dreams in the Christian East, one must look at the theories of Artemidorus, whose work on dreams influenced both Byzantine and Arabic writers, not to mention the Renaissance and early modern Europe. Artemidorus divided all dreams into the non-predictive enypnion and the predictive oneiros. The enypnion occurs when physiological and psychological forces impose themselves on the dreamer’s soul. For example, a lover will dream of the person she loves, while a thirsty man will dream of satisfying his thirst. The enypnion has no predictive value. The oneiros, on the other hand, is significant since it reveals messages regarding the future. Artemidorus wrote his treatise to explain the symbols of allegorical dreams and the principles by which how they are to be interpreted. As stated above, the Byzantines did not consistently use a standardized vocabulary in distinguishing types of dreams and how a dreamer receives them, but they did follow many of the basic principles of Artemidorus and other classical dream theorists in how to interpret dreams. Some dreams have no predictive value and may be explained by natural causes, while other dreams are significant and are sent by supernatural entities or arise from the dreamer’s innate ability to foresee the future. The significant dream is fulfilled in a time and way in accordance with God’s purposes. The certainty that they do come true is denoted through verbs like dēloō (“indicate”) and sēmainō (“signify”; e.  g., “Drinking milk signifies a happy life”); future indicatives for the outcome of the dream (e.  g., someone will be killed, not someone may be killed); imperatives like prosdoka (“expect”; e.  g., “Being anointed with olive oil: expect a good opportunity”); causative verbs like poieō (“cause”; e.  g., “Seeing wild animals and associating with them will cause friendship with enemies”) as well as pherō eis (“bring about,” “result in”); and the verb mellō (“I am about to”; e.  g., “If someone dreams that a snake was slithering towards him, he is about to experience harm at the hands of enemies”). These verbs demonstrate the confidence that whatever events are portrayed in a significant dream will in fact happen. As for when a dream will come true, the Byzantine writers are generally silent; they seem to have accepted the eventual inevitability of a dream’s fulfillment in accordance with God’s will. There are a few exceptions, however. For example, “Large bread



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rolls are judged as a trek that will last one year and turn out to be profitable because of the fineness [of the flour]; coarse bread, as distress and a trip that will last one year; small bread rolls, as a journey lasting one month; the small wrapped roll as a trip lasting a week.” Other dreams are significant if they are seen during the day or on a particular day of the week. Thus, “A dream on Saturday results in temporal power” and “[A dream on] the first day of the week is a true dream.” The fact that a symbolic dream has an idiosyncratic value was the leading principle of Artemidorus ’ dreambook. But for the Eastern Christian dreambook writers, interpretations are usually applicable to anyone, irrespective of factors like gender, economic means, political rank, and state of health. This reflects a reductivism of a rich tradition of dream interpretation into a simple key-code approach. Only occasionally do we see dreams interpreted in several ways, and then in simple contrastive pairs, for example, if the dreamer is rich or poor, free or slave, sick or in good health. The interpretation of dreams in lunar texts is universal, that is, the same outcome will happen for any dreamer. The interpretations, though, are of almost no value except in most general ways. For example, the Codex Bibliotheque Nationale 1350, fol. 105r: “If someone sees a dream during the first evening of the lunar cycle, this signifies joy and success,” and fol. 107r: “If someone sees a dream on the 25th night of the lunar cycle, this is a [dream] of pain that brings terror for up to seven days.”

Developments, Contexts, and Discussions The views of most Greek Christians regarding dreams came from Jewish and paleo-Christian culture and beliefs. Dreams frequently appear in the Hebrew Bible and, along with visions, constitute one of God’s primary means of revealing his word and will. While prophecy through dreams does occur (1 Sam. 28:6, 15; Jer. 23:25–32; Joel  2:28), such revelation was considered inferior to direct communication from God. The visions that the great patriarchs and Moses experienced were clear and non-symbolic in content, while other people, depending on their familiarity with God (e.  g., Samuel, Isaiah, Nathan, Zechariah), received more or less obscure dreams and visions. Both symbolic and non-symbolic dreams appear in the Hebrew Scriptures, although the former were typically received by non-Israelites (Pharaoh, Egyptian royal ministers, Babylonian kings). Dreams could be interpreted only by divine favor, Joseph being a prime example. Dreams were also viewed with mistrust in Jewish sacred texts: since pagans practiced divination through dreams, dream interpretation was distrusted unless performed by the greatest of Israelite heroes (e.  g., Joseph and Daniel). The prophetic tradition most strongly attacked dreams because of their potential for deceiving true prophets and since false prophets could manipulate dreams for their evil purposes. Parts of the Old Testament Apocrypha reflect this hostility. The wisdom literature like Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Sirach is especially harsh in

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criticizing dreams. Other books, however, like Second Maccabees, show a strong belief in the reality of dreams, while the apocalypses, most notably the Book of Enoch and the Book of Esdras, are filled with visions and ecstatic dreams. In the writings of the canonical Christian New Testament, little distinction is made between dream and vision. Equal importance is assigned to Paul’s visions (e.  g., Acts 18:9) and to his dream at Troas (Acts 16:9–10). The gospels themselves contain only a few references to dreams and visions. Matthew records five dreams, four of which involve Jesus’ birth and early life (Matt. 1:20  ff.; 2:12; 2:13  ff.; 2:22), with the fifth being the troubled dream of Pilate’s wife (Matt. 27:19). In his gospel Luke mentions only visions, which are direct revelations from angels and God and which are connected with Jesus’ birth (Luke 1:5  ff.; 1:26  ff.; 2:8  ff.). The only other dreams in the canonical New Testament (beyond Revelation) appear in Acts and involve Paul: his call to evangelize Macedonia (Acts 16:9–10); God’s command for him to preach at Corinth fearlessly (Acts 18:9  ff.); Jesus’ words of encouragement and his prediction of Paul’s journey to Rome (Acts 23:11); and an angel’s appearance to Paul during the voyage to Rome (Acts 27:23  ff.). There is no example of dream interpretation in the New Testament. Dreams and visions are predictive and unambiguous in meaning. The Greek Orthodox Church began with a distrust of dreams for several reasons. First, in the centuries following the establishment of the apostolic church, heresies and splinter groups claimed authority and primacy because of special visions and dreams. Moreover, it was believed that Satan and demons could use night visions to deceive believers. The church was also troubled by the lack of reliable criteria for distinguishing between God-sent dreams and demon-inspired dreams, as well as between prophetic dreams and non-significant dreams. Some church fathers did acknowledge that dreams could arise from a multiplicity of causes. Gregory the Great, for example, wrote that dreams came from God, demons, or the body and were, accordingly, malevolent or benevolent. But the problem remained that no one could determine what kind of dream he had received (good, evil, God-sent, Satan-inspired, etc.) until after the fact. Nothing could assist a dreamer in knowing whether the dream’s imagery was inconsequential and portended harm. Was a dream of being burned alive a prediction of a martyr’s impending death, or a warning sent by God that the dreamer needed to repent and ask for forgiveness? Dreams were also mistrusted because through the erotic imagery some induced seminal emissions; ascetics, monastics, and the desert fathers were particularly horrified at the dangers erotic dreams and nightmares could pose. Finally, the church viewed divination through dreams as a mark of paganism, and so it officially condemned popular dream interpretation as early as 314 CE. Despite such mistrust and at times outright rejection, the church accepted the validity of dreams if they were connected with conversion and martyrdom. Many of the great spiritual leaders of the Eastern church – Gregory of Nyssa, Evagrios of Pontus, and Basilides, to name but a few – were said to have been converted through dreams, while the parents of Gregory of Nazianzus foresaw in dreams his conversion. Because of their spiritual excellence, martyrs were deemed most susceptible to receiv-



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ing visions of God and messages about their destiny. This helps to explain why dreams and visions pervade hagiographic texts. Dreams always were part of the daily belief-systems of the people in the Christian East. We cannot rely exclusively on official ecclesiastical or governmental edicts to recover the practices of everyday people. For example, even as the church condemned divination and sympathetic magic, the scriptures contradicted this stance; there are many examples of celestial phenomena influencing events (e.  g., Joshua and the sun standing still) or predicting future events (the Magi and the Bethlehem star). Vestiges of older, pre-Christian religions survived in Eastern town festivals (e.  g., the ancient pagan ritual of the Thargelia, still practiced in the twelfth century), as well as in rites for summoning rain clouds, rituals for crop fertility, and spells and incantations. Even Eastern Greek medical treatises contain magical formulae for driving out disease, phylacteries and amulets, exorcisms of demons afflicting patients, and horoscopy. The faithful believed that holy objects like relics, icons, and liturgical objects had special power, and that dead saints and living holy men and women possessed supernatural abilities. Shrines contained relics that could heal; an oil oozed from the relics of Saint Demetrios in Thessalonica, for example, and healed if applied to a suppliant’s body. The boundaries between pagan and Christian behavior and practices were very blurred in our church sources, but not so ambiguous among everyday people who accommodated older practices into the new religion or simply put a new face on them through syncretism. This was true of the pagan practice of incubation, or the healing of dreamers in a holy place, which became a mainstay of healing throughout the East (and still survives in parts of Greece today). Places of incubation were of course now not pagan temples or sites like Epidauros, but churches, shrines of martyrs and saints, and those pagan centers that had been converted into Christian holy sites (for example, the Asclepian healing temple and complex on the south slope of the Acropolis in Athens was turned into the healing sanctuary of the saints Cosmas and Damianos). The Christian saints healed in the same way as the pagan gods had: they came to a suppliant in a dream and either cured the suppliant with unguents and medical instruments, or gave instructions for a cure or regimen. Incubation centers could be found throughout the Byzantine Empire, from Egypt to Constantinople. In Egypt at the tomb of the Coptic saint Abū Mena, pilgrims came from all over. Artefacts with the saint’s image have been found as distant as France, Germany, Russia, and the Sudan. The church of Cosmas and Damian in Constantinople was the site of dream cures for the faithful who slept in its porticoes and atrium; even the Emperor Justinian the Great was cured through a dream vision at this church. A famous healing pair of saints, Kyros and John, healed worshippers through personal touch or by prescribing remedies in dreams. Their cult originally was based in Egypt, moving only to the capital of Byzantium after the Arabs conquered the country in the seventh century; the Greek writer Sophronios alone records 70 miracle cures performed by the two saints. At the shrine of Saint Artemios male patients came specifically to have genital ailments cured. Overall the hundred or so incubation centers

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in the East demonstrate how healing through dreams was pervasive throughout society. As dream healing was transpiring from Libya to the Black Sea during the sixth century, there was an outbreak of hostility towards dreams in ascetic and theological literature. Eastern Church fathers now came to view dreams as being primarily demon-inspired torments. Even images of Jesus, angels, and the saints could not be trusted, since Satan or a demon could represent them. Dreams and visions disappear in the historical record when iconoclasm, or the destruction of images (or at the very least the hostility to the representation of religious figures) by both church and state, broke out in the next century (two waves of attack, one in 726–787, the other in 812– 842). The iconoclasts’ attacks on cult images translated into a rejection of all types of imagery, and because of its images the dream was attacked too. It should be noted that iconoclasm was championed by the emperor and the top of the church hierarchy, but it was opposed by the lower ranks of the clergy and by the laity. The people continued to support veneration of icons and the use of imagery, and so they doubtlessly held to their beliefs in the importance of dreams despite imperial and ecclesiastical edicts. After the demise of iconoclasm in 842, dreams became an acceptable topic of discussion and they appear in literature of all genres. The second half of the ninth century is the time when dream-key manuals began to become popular, hagiographic authors once again record the visions of saints, and historiographers use dreams to boost the claims of imperial dynasties. The Emperor Leo VI removed dream interpretation from the list of evil practices during his reign of 886–912. Leo even mentions in his Tactics that dream interpretation is an art that field commanders should master. He advises a general to inform his troops on the eve of a battle that he had received a dream predicting success. The dream could even be “fabricated,” since the purpose of the speech is to convince the rank and file that victory will be theirs: “Thinking that the dream that you narrate is a portent from God, they will attack the enemy courageously and steadily, and their bravery will be doubled by their eagerness.” In the treatise On the Order of the Palace, commissioned by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (r. 913–959), the author lists the books that an emperor should carry with him while conducting military campaigns. Among manuals on such topics as siege machines, meteorology, historical texts, nautical treatises, and production of missiles and other weapons, an “oneirocritical book” is prominently mentioned. The ideas of pagan Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle, on dreams influenced Greek Christian writers. Aristotle considered the process of dreaming to be the process of imagining. When sleep occurs, most of the blood descends to the heart and carries with it the impressions of former perceptions; there, in the center of the heart, the impressions occur as images. During sleep the master faculty, that is, the faculty of judgment, cannot distinguish between these sensations and true perceptions, and therefore accepts all indiscriminately. For Aristotle, a dream then is an image that occurs during sleep and arises from the movement of sensations. Church fathers like



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Anastasios of Sinai (d. 701) and philosophers like Michael Psellos (d. 1096) held to this Aristotelian concept that the mind dreams of what it habitually thinks of during the waking state. Also influencing Eastern Christian thinkers were the theories of the Early Stoa of the third and second centuries BCE. The Stoics formulated a threefold classification: dreams sent from God, dreams caused by supernatural spirits called daimones, or dreams originating in the soul itself. In the latter case, the soul may prognosticate the future through its connection with the Soul of the universe: while the senses are at rest, the soul contemplates the coherence of all things and is able thereby to know the future. This tripartite system is found throughout Eastern Christian literature, except that the daimones of pagan philosophy have been replaced by Satan and evil demons. The theories of ancient Greek medical authors on the origin, classification, and interpretation of dreams also continued down into the late Middle Ages. Book 4 of the Regimen, attributed to Hippocrates and dating to ca. 400 BCE, contains a twofold typology of dreams: divine dreams that prognosticate the future, and non-divine dreams, some of which are able to describe the physical state of the body. By interpreting dreams that concern the dreamer’s physiological state, a skilled doctor can determine the proper regimen for the patient to follow. The second-century CE Greek physician Galen correlated the dream images to the various mixtures of the humors (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm) and elements (air, earth, water, and fire). Thus, if someone dreams of snow or ice, he is ill from an excess of phlegm, since this humor is cold and wet. A dream of deep darkness means disease from black bile, for this humor is dry and cold. Byzantine scholars like Michael Psellos held similar views. The Emperor Manuel Palaeologus (r. 1391–1425), in his theoretical work on dreams (Letter to Andreas Asanes), writes that dreams may reflect a dreamer’s physical state, and so an excess of warm humor results in a dream of cool waters, while the lack of it causes images of fire.

Selected Bibliography Abrahamse, Dorothy. “Magic and Sorcery in Hagiography of the Middle Byzantine Period.” Byzantinische Forschungen 8 (1982): 3–17. Angelidi, Christine, and George Calofonos (eds.). Dreaming in Byzantium and Beyond. Farnham, 2014. Bitton-Ashkelony, Brouria. “Demons and Prayers: Spiritual Exercises in the Monastic Community of Gaza in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries.” Vigiliae Christianae 57 (2003): 200–221. Brackertz, Karl. Die Volks-Traumbücher des byzantinischen Mittelalters. Munich, 1993. Brakke, David. “The Problematization of Nocturnal Emissions in Early Christian Syria, Egypt, and Gaul.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3/4 (1996): 419–460. Bulkeley, Kelly, Kate Adams, and Patricia M. Davis. Dreaming in Christianity and Islam: Culture, Conversion and Creativity. Piscataway, 2009. Calofonos, George T. “Dream Interpretation: A Byzantine Superstition?” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 9 (1984–1985): 215–220.

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Calofonos, George T. “Manuel II Palaeologus: Interpreter of Dreams?” Byzantinische Forschungen 16 (1990): 447–455. Calofonos, George T. “Byzantine Oneiromancy.” M.A. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1994. Calofonos, George T. “Dream Narratives in Historical Writing: Making Sense of History in Theophanes’ Chronographia.” History as Literature in Byzantium. Ed. Ruth Macrides. Farnham, 2010. 133–144. Calofonos, George T. “Dream Narratives in the Continuation of Theophanes.” Dreaming in Byzantium and Beyond. Eds. Christine Angelidi and George T. Calofonos. Farnham, 2014. 95–123. Constantinou, Stavroula. “The Morphology of Healing Dreams: Dream and Therapy in Byzantine Collections of Miracle Stories.” Dreaming in Byzantium and Beyond. Eds. Christine Angelidi and George T. Calofonos. Farnham, 2014. 21–34. Constas, Nicholas. “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream: The Middle State of Souls in Patristic and Byzantine Literature.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 (2001): 91–124. Cappozzo, Valerio. Dizionario dei sogni nel medioevo: Il Somniale Danielis in manoscritti letterari. Florence, 2018. Csepregi, Ildikό. The Compositional History of Greek Christian Incubation Miracle Collections: Saint Thecla, Saints Cosmas and Damian, Saints Cyrus and John, Saint Artemios. Ph.D. Diss. Central European University Budapest, 2007. Csepregi, Ildikό. “Who Is behind Incubation Stories? The Hagiographers of Byzantine Dream Healing Miracles.” Dreams, Healing, and Medicine in Greece: From Antiquity to the Present. Ed. Steven M. Oberhelman. Farnham, 2013. 161–187. Dagron, Gilbert. Vie et Miracles de S. Thiècle. Brussels, 1978. Dagron, Gilbert. “Rêver de dieu et parler de soi: Le rêve et son interprétation d’après les sources byzantines.” I sogni nel medioevo, seminario internazionale Roma, 2–4 ottobre 1983. Ed. Timothy Gregory. Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, 35. Rome, 1985. 37–55. Del Corno, Dario. “Richerche sull’onirocritica greca.” Rendiconti dell’Istituto Lombardo, Classe di Lettere, Scienza morali e storiche 96 (1962): 334–366. DiTommaso, Lorenzo. The Book of Daniel and the Apocryphal Daniel Literature (= Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha, 20). Leiden, 2005. Drexl, Franz. “Das Traumbuch des Patriarchen Germanos.” Laographia 7 (1923): 428–448. Drexl, Franz. “Das Anonyme Traumbuch des cod. Paris. gr. 2511.” Laographia 8 (1925): 347–375. Drexl, Franz (ed.). Achmetis Oneirocriticon. Leipzig, 1925. Ehrlich, Ernst L. Der Traum im Alten Testament (= Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 73). Berlin, 1953. Gigli, Gulio. “Gli onirocritici del cod. Paris. Suppl. Gr. 690.” Prometheus 4 (1978): 65–86 and 173–188. Graf, Fritz. “Dangerous Dreaming: The Christian Transformation of Dream Incubation.” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 15 (2014): 117–144. Gregory, Timothy (ed.). I sogni nel medioevo, seminario internazionale Roma, 2–4 ottobre 1983. Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, 35. Rome, 1985. Hanson, John S. “Dreams and Visions in the Graeco-Roman World and Early Christianity.” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, II: Principat 23, 2 (1980): 1395–1427. Kenny, Margaret H. Dreams and Visions in the Thought-World of the Byzantines from the Ninth to the Fifteenth Century. Diss. Queen’s University Belfast, 2001. Krönung, Bettina. “Ekstasen und andere Formen von Visionserfahrungen in der frühbyzantinischen monastischen Literatur.” Traum und Vision in der Vormoderne: Traditionen, Diskussionen, Perspektiven. Eds. Annette Gerok-Reiter and Christine Walde. Berlin, 2012. 65–90.



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Le Goff, Jacques. “Le christianisme et les rêves (IIe–VIIe siècles).” I Sogni nel Medioevo. Seminario internazionale Roma, 2–4 ottobre 1983. Ed. Timothy Gregory. Lessico intellectuale Europeo 35. Rome, 1985. 171–218. MacAlister, Suzanne. Dreams and Suicides: The Greek Novel from Antiquity to the Byzantine Empire. London and New York, 1996. Magdalino, Paul. “The Historiography of Dreaming in Medieval Byzantium.” Dreaming in Byzantium and Beyond. Eds. Christine Angelidi and George T. Calofonos. Farnham, 2014. 125–144. Magdalino, Paul, and Maria Mavroudi (eds.). The Occult Sciences in Byzantium. Geneva, 2006. Mavroudi, Maria. A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon of Achmet and Its Arabic Sources. The Medieval Mediterranean: Peoples, Economics, and Cultures, 400– 1453, 36. Leiden, Boston and Cologne, 2002. Mavroudi, Maria. “Ta‘bīr al-Ru’yā and Aḥkām al-Nujūm References to Women in Dream Interpretation and Astrology Transferred from Graeco-Roman Antiquity and Medieval Islam to Byzantium: Some Problems and Considerations.” Classical Arabic Humanities in Their Own Terms: Festschrift für Wolfhart Heinrichs on His 65. Birthday from His Students and Colleagues. Eds. Beatrice Gruendler and Michael Cooperson. Leiden, 2007. 47–67. Miller, Patricia Cox. Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture. Princeton, 1994. Miller, Timothy S. “Hospital Dreams in Byzantium.” Dreams, Healing, and Medicine in Greece: From Antiquity to the Present. Ed. Steven M. Oberhelman. Farnham, 2013. 199–215. Mullett, Margaret. “Dreaming in the Life of Cyril Phileotes.” Dreaming in Byzantium and Beyond. Eds. Christine Angelidi and George T. Calofonos. Farnham, 2014. 1–19. Neil, Bronwen, and Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides. Dreams, Memory and Imagination in Byzantium. Leiden, 2018. Neil, Bronwen, Doru Costache, and Kevin Wagner (eds.). Dreams, Virtue and Divine Knowledge in Early Christian Egypt. Cambridge, 2019. Oberhelman, Steven M. The Oneirocriticon of Achmet: A Medieval Greek and Arabic Treatise on the Interpretation of Dreams. Lubbock, TX, 1991. Oberhelman, Steven M. “Dreams in Graeco-Roman Medicine.” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, II: Principat 37.2 (1993): 121–156. Oberhelman, Steven M. Dreambooks in Byzantium: Six Oneirocritica in Translation, with Commentary and Introduction. Variorum Series (History). Farnham, 2008. Oberhelman, Steven M. “How Popular Were the Byzantine Dreambooks? Divination and Byzantine Dreamers.” Théories de la divination dans l’Antiquité tardive et à Byzance. Eds. Andrei Timotin and Paul Magdalino. Geneva, 2019. 403–439. Pizzone, Aglae. “Christliche und heidnische Träume: Versteckte Polemik in Synesios, De insomniis.” Synesios von Kyrene: Politik–Literatur–Philosophie. Eds. Aglae Pizzone and Lars Hoffmann. Byzantios: Studies in Byzantine History and Civilisation. Turnhout, 2012. 247–275. Renberg, Gil H. Where Dreams May Come: Incubation Sanctuaries in the Greco-Roman World. Leiden, 2017. Semeraro, Martino. Il ‘Libro dei sogni di Daniele’: Storia di un testo ‘proibito’ nel Medioevo. Rome, 2002. Timotin, Andrei. Visions, prophéties et pouvoir à Byzance. Étude sur l’hagiographie méso- byzantine (IXe–XIe siècles). Étude sur l’hagiographie méso-Byzantine (IX–XI siècles). Paris, 2010. Walde, Christine. 2001. Antike Traumdeutung und moderne Traumforschung. Düsseldorf, 2001. Weber, Gregor. Artemidor von Daldis und die antike Traumdeutung: Texte – Kontexte – Lektüren. Berlin, 2015.

Annelies Kuyt

Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World Definitions and Terminology In medieval works discussing the topic of dreams, the terminology essentially corresponds with that found in the Hebrew Bible (Bar 2001). There, the verb directly denoting a dream is ḥlm with the corresponding noun ḥalom, plural ḥalomot, sometimes used in combination with a verb meaning “to see” (r’h, ḥzh). Alternatively, a combination of such a verb or a corresponding noun (mar’eh, ḥizzayon) with an indication of the event taking place during sleep or at night (a dream by night, ḥalom laylah, or a vision of the night, ḥezyon laylah) occurs. Such a combination is found in Job 33:14–16: For God speaks in one way, and in two, though people do not perceive it. In a dream (ḥalom), in a vision of the night (ḥezyon laylah), when deep sleep (tardemah) falls on mortals, while they slumber on their beds, then he opens their ears and terrifies them with warnings […]

It may be noted that not all dreams are visual; some are auditory or both and at times it is difficult to assess whether an auditory or visionary message is received through a dream or in a waking state. A definition of the dream is not found in the Hebrew Bible, but it may be supposed that even by that time it was already perceived as a phenomenon taking place during sleep in which messages may be seen or heard before the dreamer awakes. As to contents, in the Hebrew Bible, the dream often contains a divine message for the future, although it is placed in line with “empty words” in Eccles. 5:6. In 1 Kings 3 and its parallel 2 Chron. 1, Solomon’s dream at Gibeon has a connotation of an incubation dream, since it involves him sleeping near an altar and making offerings. Thereupon God appeared (nir’ah) to him at night (balaylah) or in a dream by night (ḥalom laylah). The term ḥalom, as such, fails to provide any indication regarding which type of dream is meant, a prophetic dream, an ordinary dream or even a dream of false prophets if these are not characterized as false or lying dreams (ḥalomot shav, ḥalomot sheqer). Thus, it is written in Zech. 10:2: “For the teraphim utter nonsense, and the diviners see lies; the dreamers tell false dreams.” Another aspect of the dream in the context of a message about the future is the dream’s interpretation: if the dream does not constitute an explicit message (message dream), it is symbolic, the symbols of which need deciphering. In the Hebrew Bible, for interpreting dreams, the Hebrew verb ptr and its corresponding noun pitron are found. In addition, the Aramaic verb pshr as well as its corresponding noun peshar occur, terms that later play a role in biblical exegesis as well, thus suggesting the idea that the dream forms a literary text, which can be deciphered through exegesis https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-019



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(Niehoff 1992). In the Hebrew Bible, Joseph is the ultimate dream interpreter (ptr) to the Pharaoh’s chief cupbearer and chief baker and then to the Pharaoh himself, but he stresses that God is the source of these interpretations. The same terminology is used for the rabbinical dream exegesis, regarding which the Rabbis claim expertise.

Written Sources and Artifacts In Judaism, the topic of dreams usually appears as one of many themes within a wider literary context, often as part of religious works with a far wider thematic scope, as was already the case in the Hebrew Bible. In apocalyptic works, dreams are found in the context of heavenly visions as, for instance, in 1 Enoch. The first medieval source which may be called a “dreambook” was probably inserted from an independent source into the Babylonian Talmud (Berakhot 55a–57b) (Alexander 1995; Kalmin 1994, 61–80; Zellentin 2011, 95–136). It contributes a small but highly influential part of the Talmud’s approximately 6,000 folios; the dating of the dreambook, as such, cannot be ascertained with any certainty, since between 500 CE and the eighth century, material was still being inserted into the Talmudic text. Although the Talmud sometimes describes dreams as a result of an individual’s thoughts during the day, often dreams are perceived as a prediction of the future, and retrospective instances occur as well. Predictions as well as retrospective descriptions often concern mundane matters, such as seeing myrtle in a dream means having good luck with one’s property in the future, or seeing one’s nose falling off in a dream means that anger has been removed from the dreamer (with a pun on the double meaning of the Hebrew af, both nose and anger). In a more serious vein, the dream is occasionally called a small prophecy (nevu’ah qeṭanah) or one sixtieth part of a prophecy, indicating that the boundaries between dreams and prophecy are perceived as fluid. This dreambook contains, among others, lists of dream symbols (omina), theoretical ideas concerning dreams as well as their interpretation, and a long story about a professional dream interpreter and the Rabbis. Exceptional is the idea of the dependence of the dream’s fulfillment on its interpretation. Many of the topics from the dreambook occur more dispersed throughout other rabbinic texts of Palestinian and Babylonian provenance, too (Kristianpoller 1923/2006; Niehoff 1992; Stemberger 1976; Ulmer 2001). The first independent book on dreams, called Pitron Ḥalomot (“Dream Interpretation”), consists of a small booklet in Hebrew of approximately 30 printed pages, ascribed to the Babylonian scholar Hai Gaon (tenth/eleventh century, mostly known for his work on religious law), although it is doubtful whether he was, in fact, the author of the work. The main part of this work provides the meaning of a collection of omina; additionally, it refers to rabbinical elements regarding dreams and contains a few astrological references.

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In the context of Jewish mysticism and magic, the topic of dreams is a recurring phenomenon. Dreams are mentioned several times in magical adjuration bowls from Babylonia, written in Hebrew and Aramaic, from the fifth to seventh centuries. These bowls, usually made of fired clay, contain an adjuration, written on the inside, often in concentric circles. They are placed under the threshold of houses or in the corners of living quarters and are intended to protect the inhabitants from demons. By means of these bowls, demons are prevented from entering the house while those demons already dwelling in the corners become trapped (Harari 2017). One of the demons’ multifarious deeds, which needs to be prevented, is to give bad dreams to the sleeper, the prognostic character of which is apparently taken for granted (Naveh-Shaked 1987, 1993). In literary magical or mystical texts in Hebrew and Aramaic, dreams often play a role, albeit not always a prominent one. One of the most elaborate descriptions is found in the so-called Sefer ha-Razim (“Book of Secrets”) of which two versions are transmitted, edited and translated from Hebrew with a commentary by Rebiger and Schäfer (2009). They date it to the seventh-eighth centuries in Palestine or Egypt, with the second version, which contains the most dream material, emerging some centuries later. In this second version, a description of a method for making angels appear in visions and dreams in order to explain the future is included. This is joined by an astrological component, since different angels reign in the different months of the year. In the first version of Sefer ha-Razim, a dream request (she’elat ḥalom) is found. In such requests, an angel is conjured by magical means in order to answer the dreamer’s questions (Lesses 1998). A detailed description of the practice of the dream request is also present in the so-called Hekhalot literature from Byzantine Palestine and Sasanian or early Islamic Babylonia (trans. into English Davila 2013), that mainly consists of textual material regarding a variety of magical and mystical themes. The relation of the she’elat ḥalom with the surrounding literary material is tenuous, however, although its purpose of acquiring concealed knowledge and thereby gaining power does fit in with the messages within the broader text (Harari 2011; Kuyt 2016/2017; Lesses 1998). Additionally, the dream request is found in later texts from the realm of the German Pietists, Ḥaside Ashkenaz (with works mainly from the thirteenth century, especially from Germany), although their discussion on dreams are far more varied than that. It is present, for instance, in Sefer Ḥasidim, of which Judah he-Ḥasid (ca. 1150–1217, Regensburg) is often considered the main author. The book takes the form of a guide on how to be a pious Ḥasid and the practice of the dream request is referred to several times, sometimes deemed forbidden. Accounts of dreams feature revelatory visits from the dead, usually intended to give direction to the dreamer regarding suitable behavior as a pious Ḥasid and not always as a prognostic phenomenon. The proper prognostic value in connection with sleep is associated with a light slumber in which the sleeper is half awake and the individual’s thoughts play a major role, although an angel may be involved in the process as well (Alexander 2002; Dan 1971;



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Harris 1994, 15–38). Eleazar of Worms (ca. 1165–ca. 1230), a disciple of Judah he-Ḥasid , mainly known for his work on halakhah (Jewish religious law) and on mysticism, also formulates ideas on dreams. In his lengthy mystical work Sode Razayya (“Secrets of Secrets”), for instance, in the context of his discussion of the soul (ḥokhmat hanefesh), complete chapters as well as single statements are dedicated to sleep, dreams and their interpretation. Although for Eleazar, what kind of dream the dreamer has and its prognostic value are largely dependent on the dreamer’s soul and thoughts, prophetic dreams are considered possible; in his construction of the dream, heavenly powers are apparently more involved in the determination of its contents than in Judah’s ideas (Kuyt 2005). Another work in the context of mystical literature that discusses dreams is the Zohar, the classical work of the Kabbalah (late thirteenth century Spain, translation and commentary by Matt 2004–2017). Dreams form the lowest level on the scale of prophecy, vision and dreams. In the Book Zohar, an individual’s behavior is considered a vital conduit for the reception of truth in revelatory dreams. This is related to the idea that, while asleep, an individual’s soul rises heavenward, which is dependent on his righteousness. It may ascend to the world of the angels, who may, by means of the angel of dreams, Gabriel as dream interpreter, reveal the dreamer’s future. However, the soul of all dreamers must pass by the lower realm, populated by demons who insert both truths and falsehoods in the dream, and the souls of the wicked become stuck in this realm. Contemporary to the Ḥaside Ashkenaz, the practice of the dream request is used by the Tosafot in France and Germany, well-known for their commentaries on the Talmud, often employing the earlier commentary by Rashi as a starting point. Interestingly, they use the technique of the dream request for the determination or rectification of earlier halakhic decisions insofar as they have engaged in mysticism, but those who have not done so restrict this to non-halakhic information. Spanish kabbalists at the time use the technique as one method for dispersing their traditions (Kanarfogel 2012). Similar in content to those mystically inclined Tosafot is the independent work on dream requests She’elot u-Teshuvot me-ha-Shamayim (“Responsa from Heaven”) by Jacob of Marvège (twelfth/thirteenth century). By means of this technique, he receives information about a decision on a disputed halakhah. In the realm of philosophy at that time, Maimonides (1135/1138–1204, Spain, Morocco and Egypt) can be mentioned. In his Moreh Nevukhim (“Guide for the Perplexed”), he envisages veridical dreams as one of several stages in the direction toward prophecy for which intellectual perfection is needed. The imaginative faculty retains sense-data. While asleep, the senses rest and therefore the imagination is able to receive an overflow from the agent intellect – which is also the cause of prophecy – and this is the cause of true dreams. The dream’s contents are not supernatural and, therefore, cannot be counterfactual or conflict with logical knowledge (Brill 2000; Kreisel 2001).

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As an outlook on the literary sources on dreams, the only theoretical and most comprehensive dreambook by Shlomo Almoli (ca. 1485, probably Spain – after 1542, Constantinople) should be mentioned. In the editio princeps (Salonica 1515), it is called Mefashar Ḥelmin (“Dream Interpreter”, after Dan. 5:12) but, in the numerous later editions, it is reprinted as Pitron Ḥalomot (“Dream Interpretation”; abridged translation into English by Elman 1998, trans. into French by Frajerman 2001; discussion by Harris 1994, 39–63). The work contains approximately 100 printed pages and is of an encyclopaedic nature, which is why Almoli sought to include all of the sources on which he could lay his hands. It is meant as a guide for prospective dream interpreters, providing those with a theoretical framework needed for the understanding of the dream’s various purposes. This part, the largest in the book, is followed by a listing of omina, into which Hai’s collection is integrated, thus placing his work at risk of being used by lay interpreters. The third and smallest part presents practical halakhic remedies for inauspicious dreams.

Techniques and Manifestations Before describing the various techniques used in connection with the dream and its interpretation, the dream’s possible sources should be mentioned briefly. In the Hebrew Bible, the dream usually stems from an external source, from God; even in those cases in which human thoughts may be involved, the dream remains prognostic in nature. In rabbinic literature, however, the idea of dreams stemming from the dreamer’s own daily thoughts without any prognostic value is introduced. An illustration, taken from the talmudic dreambook, is that the Rabbis managed to cause the Sasanian king Shapur to experience a specific dream. The latter challenged the Rabbis to tell him what he would dream about, a request they willingly fulfilled by telling him a frightening story. It goes without saying that the king pondered on this all day long and was therefore predestined to dream about what he had been told. It is even stated boldly more than once in the rabbinic literature that dreams do not have to be taken seriously, since they lack any effect whatsoever. On the other hand, in the rabbinic literature, the dream is also conceived as a divine message. In this case, it is portrayed as a small prophecy or one sixtieth part of a prophecy and therefore it is taken as a bad sign if one does not experience a dream for a whole week, as this apparently indicates that the dreamer is not ready or worthy to receive the divine message. How to acquire a divinatory dream? One technique, though not described in the classic rabbinic literature, is the dream request (she’elat ḥalom). More often than not, merely the information gained by means of this technique is addressed, but sometimes the technique itself is specified. It usually consists of various preparatory rituals, such as fasting, purification, and sleeping in a specific place, in a specific posture and wearing specific clothing. An angel should be conjured by means of certain names,



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adjurations, biblical verses and prayers, so that he may appear in the dream to inform the dreamer about the information sought without causing him any harm. In the case of the description of the dream request as found in the Hekhalot literature, the information gained during the dream is clearly transmitted orally, since the dreamer is said to fear that he will forget it upon awakening. In the case of the procedure envisaged by Jacob of Marvège, however, the questions posed and the answers received during the dream are apparently in written form, as Harris proposes. He conceives the form of the dream request as a question which is written down prior to falling asleep and the written answer is found upon waking, via automatic writing (Harris 1994, 129). Another technique for producing a divinatory dream is necromancy. Although strictly forbidden in the Hebrew Bible (Deut. 18:11), in Sefer Ḥasidim (§ 1556), a story is told about a ḥasid prostrating himself on the grave of his teacher so that the latter could inform him about the reward or punishment he had received after death. The teacher thereupon showed his disciple around in the afterworld to affirm that all was well with him. It goes without saying that this need not reflect a real performed practice. On the other hand, Maimonides, in his halakhic work Mishneh Torah (ʻAvodah Zarah 11:13), when asked about a necromant (doresh el ha-metim), answers that such a person goes out late in the evening, prostrates himself in the cemetery and spends the night there, so that a dead person may visit him in a dream to answer his question. Others, so continues Maimonides, don special clothing, recite words, burn incense and sleep alone for the above mentioned purpose. How may one avoid bad dreams? Usually, in prayer books, as part of the prayer to be uttered before going to bed, we find an appeal that negative thoughts and bad dreams will not disturb the sleeper. In the Babylonian Talmud, the study of the Torah is said to help the dreamer as well and some say even that behaving properly in the privy forms a protection against disturbing dreams (Berakhot 62a). What should one do if one has dreamed, recalls having done so, but forgot the dream’s contents and is therefore disturbed, fearing that its message may have been portentous? The talmudic dreambook describes a fixed point in liturgy, during the priestly blessing in the context of a synagogue service, in which the dreamer may utter a short prayer, requesting reinforcement if the dream was good or remedy in the case of an unfavorable dream (Harris 1994, 95–105). How can one ensure that a dream is auspicious or at least not inauspicious? A quick do-it-yourself remedy described in the talmudic dreambook is to recite, upon waking, a positive biblical verse that is appropriate for the symbols envisaged in the dream, before one inadvertently thinks of an appropriate biblical verse with a negative connotation. On a practical level, such a practice could only work, to my mind, if one has learned potentially suitable verses by heart beforehand. Another technique to unburden the worried dreamer after wakening is the so-called dream amelioration (haṭavat ḥalom). We learn from the talmudic dreambook that the procedure consists of bringing together three persons and the dreamer should say to them “I’ve had a good dream”, whereupon they confirm this and plead to God that it will be decreed

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thus in heaven. They should recite three biblical verses containing the verb “to turn”, “redeem” and “peace”, respectively. This apparently serves to ameliorate the dream’s contents (Harris 1994, 95–105). An alternative way to prevent inauspicious dreams coming true is the dream fast (ta’anit ḥalom), mentioned elsewhere in the rabbinic literature (for instance, in the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 11a and its parallel in Taʻanit 12b), which is considered of the utmost importance, since one must keep it at once (probably out of a fear of the dream being fulfilled before the fast begins), even on the Sabbath, which is a day on which a fast is forbidden. In order to remedy the violation of the Sabbath, one must fast again. Is it useful to interpret a dream at all? The talmudic dreambook states that an uninterpreted dream is like an unread letter, which is taken, admittedly fairly illogically, as a statement that nothing will happen regarding its message. An uninterpreted dream will not be fulfilled in this line of thought. In a similar vein, it is said that a certain Samuel quoted Zech. 10:2 creatively for his dreams: “dreams speak falsely” after a bad dream and “do dreams speak falsely?” in the case of a good dream. The underlying idea here is that the dream’s fulfillment is triggered by its interpretation. The interpretation of the dream, therefore, possesses a performative character. If it is decided to have the dream interpreted, several techniques are available to the interpreter. The omina may be explained crudely in the form of “if one sees X in a dream, that means Y,” “seeing X in mode A, means Y; in mode B it means Z”, or “X is good in a dream, except […]” A special technique for arriving at these interpretations is not discernable. This changes when biblical verses are used as proof for the explanation of omina. In such cases, the verse takes up the dream symbol; for example (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 5b) “Our Rabbis taught: who sees a reed (qaneh) in a dream may expect wisdom, for it is said ‘get (qneh) wisdom’  ” (Prov. 4:5). Both language and biblical knowledge are preconditions for this interpretative technique. A knowledge of language also comes to the fore in the interpretation by Rabbis of a heretic’s dreams. In a story that is found in several versions in rabbinic literature, the heretic dreamed that his father had left him some money in Cappadocia. The Rabbi interpreting the dream asks him whether he has ever been there. Upon denying this, he interprets Cappadocia from the Greek kappa (twenty) and dokia (beams) and, upon counting the beams of his house, the dreamer found the money there (Palestinian Talmud, Maʻaser Sheni 55b). It is, of course, no coincidence that the heretic’s dream is not explained by the Hebrew language here, but another important feature of dream interpretation is additionally addressed: for a sound interpretation, the circumstances of the dreamer should be taken into account.



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Development, Historical and Social Contexts In the classical rabbinic literature, the interpretation of divinely-inspired dreams is envisaged as the interpretation of holy texts, an undertaking reserved for the Rabbis. Just as the Written Torah needs to be explained by the Oral Torah, which are both Godgiven, in order to unfold the former’s various meanings by means of hermeneutic rules, so it is the case with the dream as a divine message. Just as the written Torah may have more than one correct meaning, so it is with the dream. Therefore, the dreambook conveys that “all dreams follow the mouth”, which itself is introduced as if the dictum were a biblical verse. However, comparable to the restriction of the interpretation of the Torah, dream interpretation is also subject to the restriction that the interpretation should fit the dream and is not arbitrarily given. On the other hand, the power of the dream interpreter, first expressed in the Palestinian Talmud (Maʻaser Sheni 55c), is taken up ironically in a story in the Babylonian dreambook about a certain Bar Hedya, who is a professional dream interpreter who interprets dreams favorably if he receives money, and unfavorably otherwise. However, even paying money is no guarantee, since another paying client may undo the positive interpretation that the first received. Although the interpretation of this story is contentious – should Bar Hedya be considered a Rabbi at all? Should the story in the Babylonian Talmud be interpreted as a contest between earlier and later Rabbis, or rather geographically? – this does not prevent the story reflecting a struggle for power (Alexander 1995; Kalmin 1994; Zellentin 2011). Comparable to other instances of Rabbis interpreting dreams, it is they who have the power to do so and, through their interpretation, they portray themselves as assuring their social position within the surrounding culture. In several Palestinian rabbinic sources, we find polemics against non rabbinic professional dream interpreters, especially Samaritans, in which the rabbinic ability is even put to the test by a Samaritan, telling a fictitious dream, of which the Rabbi, naturally, is aware but he still provides an interpretation. Needless to say, even in this case, the interpretation is fulfilled, thus proving the rabbinic power. It is a moot question whether such literary instances could be a reflection of the surrounding Roman culture, in which dreams are only of minor significance in public religion; this stands in contrast to private religion, in which Romans turned to professional dream interpreters who accepted a fee – which greatly annoyed the Roman officials, of course (Cancik 1999). On the other hand, forbidden practices undermining the Rabbis’ position, performed by Jews and Gentiles, are described in the rabbinic literature. In the (Palestinian) Tosefta (Shabbat 6:7), mention is made of the practice of kissing a dead person’s coffin in order to make him appear at night, turning one’s garment inside out, or sitting on a broom in order to experience dreams in general. At any rate, the preoccupation of the Rabbis with the interpretation of dreams does not seem to have been followed up intensively in later sources. One type of dream interpretation that has its roots in the rabbinic literature and is continued in later sources is the dream manual. In the talmudic dreambook, several

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dream symbols are, to a certain extent, arranged under categories, such as animals, agricultural products, people, etc. These are partially similar, partially divergent in comparison with the symbols in the Greek dreambook of Artemidorus of Daldis from the second century CE. These similarities need not be the result of a direct influence, however, since there is no indication of the Rabbis having a knowledge of Artemidorus. At any rate, Artemidorus’ work on the symbols is far more sophisticated than the talmudic material. The use of the symbols in the next Jewish manual, the one ascribed to Hai Gaon, is stylistically comparable to the talmudic omina, albeit far more extensive in scope. If at least the dating and provenance suit the attribution to Hai, it is possible that this Hebrew manual was composed under the influence of the translation into Arabic of Artemidorus in the ninth century (Sviri 1999). Another possibility, that information regarding the increasingly popular Somnia Danielis has reached Hai or his environment, remains unproven. Almoli, in his dreambook, however, not only mentions Hai’s work in his introduction to his overview of omina but also in an interpretation of omina ascribed to the biblical Daniel, which he writes was said to be written in the time of Nebuchadnezzar in Babylonia, because people asked him to do so. Since the omina of the biblical Daniel are unattested, it may well be the case that Almoli has seen a Hebrew manuscript of the Somnia Danielis. One of the recurring themes in the context of the prognostic dream is communication with the dead. As mentioned above, using techniques to make the dead appear in a dream is an idolatrous praxis, strictly forbidden in the Hebrew Bible in order to set Israel apart from the surrounding people. A dreamer who involuntarily dreams about a dead person is another matter altogether, however. More than one instance of the latter occurs in the rabbinic literature, often with a practical cause, such as the dreamer wishing to find out where the dead left the money. In the Babylonian Talmud (Moʻed Qaṭan 28a), a case occurs concerning a Rabbi who asked his companion to appear to him after death, presumably in a dream, in order to tell him whether or not dying hurts. No technique for this to occur is mentioned, however (Hasan-Rokem 1999). A conspicuous augmentation of the topic of communication with the dead and with questions concerning life after death takes place in the twelfth century work Sefer Ḥasidim, where it is found in the form of dream requests and as part of its numerous folktales. One of the causes of the prominence of this topic may be the historical situation of the crusades and their consequences, with the pious depicting their precarious position. At the same time, in the Christian Western world, an increase in the appearance of the dead in dreams may be mentioned (Schmitt 1999), so the prominence in Sefer Ḥasidim may reflect a prevalent phenomenon as well. A completely different development regarding the handling of dreams and their potentially prognostic merit is found in the realm of Jewish philosophy, where Maimonides provides an outstanding example. The dreamer may still gain knowledge or a vision of the future in his dream but, due to the influence of the Arabic reception of Aristotle, the manner and scope of the dream have been subject to great changes. True dreams are perceived as a stage between the ordinary intellect on the lowest level on



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the way to intellectual perfection, needed for prophecy, on the highest level. In order to receive true dreams or prophecy, the faculty of the imagination is needed. It retains sense-data and is able to combine and imitate perceptions, but the senses must rest in order for the imagination to do its work, since the imagination cannot simultaneously receive fresh impulses from the senses and an overflow from the agent intellect, which is the cause of veridical dreams and prophecy. This limits the contents of the dream, however, for not everything is possible in the imagination. The dream is perceived as a continuity of the rational faculty and, therefore, its prognostic scope is constricted to practical knowledge that can be verified through subsequent analysis. The intellect, required as a source of knowledge, causes a hierarchy in the knowledge gained by dreams, with the intellectual elite receiving greater knowledge than the average person (Brill 2000).

Medieval Classifications and Discussions Medieval discussions as an apparent reaction to earlier sources or a reflection on the conflicting tendencies to approach the subject of dreams are rare. The only source in which many of the earlier sources and practices discussed above are dealt with is Almoli ’s dreambook. Therefore, I will take his work as a starting point here. On the one hand, Almoli maintains the talmudic idea of the dream being a small prophecy containing a divine kernel; on the other hand, he is a distinct Maimonidean, among others in his preoccupation with the human intellect. For the dream, this implies that, as humans, we wish to know what will happen in the future but, with our limited human understanding, are unable to apprehend this in a perfect manner. Therefore, God informs us about these happenings, by means of either a prophetic vision or a dream. Almoli ranks the dream according to three levels, the highest consisting of prophetic dreams, which are always completely true and always contain a message for the future. The level below contains ordinary dreams, which are true and convey a message for the future as well, but they are usually combined with remnants of our thoughts and activities and also of the food we have consumed during the day. To interpret the dream, the influences of thoughts and food on the dream should be removed in order to arrive at its core: the divine prognostic message. The third and lowest level are sorcerous dreams, which are induced by humans and, as such, are human products without a divine message. Almoli rejects these and thus refrains from describing practices such as dream requests, irrespective of their occurrence within the magical or halakhic literature, or communication with the dead by means of some form of incubation. Another question posed by Almoli is the nature and scope of the knowledge gained by means of the dream. Comparable to what is found in Eleazar of Worms’ Sode Razayya and in the Zohar, the dream’s contents depend on the personality of the dreamer, since his dreams resemble his actions while awake. Therefore, the righteous

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dream about heaven and earth because they strive to gain knowledge of divine matters and the whole truth, whereas the wicked, whose actions do not concern spiritual or physical “repair” (tiqqun, a term taken from Jewish mysticism) do not dream of these matters. Almoli also struggles with the question of whether it is possible to gain an understanding of matters such as philosophy or the sciences through dreams. On the one hand, the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic literature envisage a divine influx in the dream which would speak against a limitation of knowledge; on the other hand, as a Maimonidean, Almoli considers the human intellect a major source of knowledge in the dream – which would speak in favour of a limitation of knowledge. Therefore, he concludes cautiously that it is possible for individuals to obtain some wise words and cognitions in a dream, but this is truly little and seldom. A last point, generally neglected subsequent to the rabbinic literature, is the role of the dream interpreters in the fulfillment of the dream. Almoli has to deal with contradictory statements such as “all dreams follow the mouth” against “an uninterpreted dream is like an unread letter,” which remain unexplained in the rabbinic literature. How does this fit a divine prognostic message that, naturally, cannot be annulled by humans’ (lack of) interpretation? It turns out that God’s message is always safeguarded: the interpreters do not have the power to change that, but every dream has many implications of which the interpreter only offers a few elements. This, in turn, also explains a story in the talmudic dreambook, whereby a certain person went to 24 dream interpreters in Jerusalem, who all interpreted the same dream differently and all of these interpretations were fulfilled. Upon their fulfillment, the dreamer notices the correctness of the interpretation, but remains unaware of the fulfillment of the uninterpreted elements. The dream’s prognostic value thus remains intact. This is in line with Almoli ’s quotation of the Zohar, which states that nothing comes into the world without having been announced beforehand, in a dream or by way of a messenger (Kuyt 2007). In the Zohar, the angel Gabriel, who is in charge of dreams, is connected with speech and, as such, also with the dream’s interpretation (Tishby 1994).

Selected Bibliography Alexander, Philip S. “Bavli Berakhot 55a–57b. The Talmudic Dreambook in Context.” Journal of Jewish Studies 46 (1995): 230–248. Alexander, Tamar. “Dream Narratives in Sefer Hasidim.” Trumah 12 (2002): 65–78. Bar, Shaul. A Letter That Has Not Been Read. Dreams in the Hebrew Bible. Cincinnati, 2001. Bellusci, Alessia. The History of the ‘She’elat Ḥalom’ in the Middle East: From the Medieval Era Back to Late Antiquity. Ph.D. Diss. Tel Aviv University, 2016. Brill, Alan. “The Phenomenology of True Dreams in Maimonides.” Dreaming. Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams 10,1 (2000): 43–54. Cancik, Hubert. “Idolum and Imago. Roman Dreams and Dream Theories.” Dream Cultures. Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreams. Eds. David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa. New York and Oxford, 1999. 169–188.



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Dan, Joseph. “Le-Torat ha-Ḥalom shel Ḥaside Ashkenaz.” Sinai 68 (1971): 288–293 [Hebrew]. Davila, James R. Hekhalot Literature in Translation. Major Texts of Merkavah Mysticism. Leiden and Boston, 2013. Elman, Yaakov. Dream Interpretation From Classical Jewish Sources by Rabbi Shelomo Almoli. Hoboken, NJ, 1998. Frajerman, Reouven. La clef des rêves… Jerusalem, 2001. Harari, Yuval. “Metatron and the Treasure of Gold: Notes on a Dream Inquiry Text from the Cairo Genizah.” Continuity and Innovation in the Magical Tradition. Eds. Gideon Bohak, Yuval Harari, and Shaul Shaked. Leiden and Boston, 2011. 289–317. Harari, Yuval. Jewish Magic before the Rise of Kabbalah. Detroit, 2017. Harris, Monford. Studies in Jewish Dream Interpretation. Northvale, NJ, and London, 1994. Hasan-Rokem, Galit. “Communication with the Dead in Jewish Dream Culture.” Dream Cultures. Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreams. Eds. David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa. New York and Oxford, 1999. 213–232. Kalmin, Richard. Sages, Stories, Authors, and Editors in Rabbinic Babylonia. Atlanta, 1994. Kanarfogel, Ephraim. “Dreams as a Determinant of Jewish Law and Practice in Northern Europe During the High Middle Ages.” Studies in Medieval Jewish and Intellectual History. Festschrift in Honor of Robert Chazan. Eds. David Engel, Lawrence H. Schiffmann, and Elliot R. Wolfson. Leiden and Boston, 2012. Kreisel, Howard. Prophecy. The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Dordrecht, Boston, and London, 2001. Kristianpoller, Alexander. Traum und Traumdeutung im Talmud. Vienna and Berlin, 1923 [rev. ed. Wiesbaden, 2006]. Kuyt, Annelies. “Hasidut Ashkenaz on the Angel of Dreams: A Heavenly Messenger Reflecting or Exchanging Man’s Thoughts.” Creation and Re-Creation in Jewish Thought. Festschrift in Honor of Joseph Dan on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday. Eds. Rachel Elior and Peter Schäfer. Tübingen, 2005. 147–163. Kuyt, Annelies. “Die kabbalistische Traumdeutung des R. Shlomo Almoli.” Orient als Grenzbereich? Rabbinisches und außerrabbinisches Judentum. Eds. Annelies Kuyt and Gerold Necker. Wiesbaden, 2007. 183–191. Kuyt, Annelies. “Reflections on Dreams in Hekhalot Literature in Comparison with Apocalyptic and Magical Literature.” Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 41 (2016/2017): 1–18. Lesses, Rebecca M. Ritual Practices to Gain Power. Angels, Incantations, and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism. Harrisburg, PA, 1998. Matt, Daniel. The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, 12 vols. Trans. and comm. Daniel C. Matt. Stanford, 2004–2017. Naveh, Joseph, and Shaul Shaked. Amulets and Magic Bowls. Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity. Jerusalem, 19872. Naveh, Joseph, and Shaul Shaked. Magic Spells and Formulae. Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity. Jerusalem, 1993. Niehoff, Maren. “A Dream which is not Interpreted is like a Letter which is not Read.” Journal of Jewish Studies 43 (1992): 58–84. Rebiger, Bill, and Peter Schäfer. Sefer ha-Razim I und II. Das Buch der Geheimnisse I und II. 2 vols. Tübingen, 2009. English: Sefer HaRazim: The Book of the Mysteries. Trans. Michael A. Morgan. Chicago, 1983. Schmitt, Jean-Claude. “The Liminality and Centrality of Dreams in the Medieval West.” Dream Cultures. Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreams. Eds. David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa. New York and Oxford, 1999. 274–287.

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Stemberger, Brigitte. “Der Traum in der rabbinischen Literatur.” Kairos 18 (1976): 1–42. Sviri, Sara. “Dreaming Analyzed and Recorded. Dreams in the World of Medieval Islam.” Dream Cultures. Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreams. Eds. David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa. New York and Oxford, 1999. 252–273. Tishby, Isaiah. The Wisdom of the Zohar. An Anthology of Texts. Vol. II. London and Washington, D.C., 1994 [repr.]. Ulmer, Rivka. “The Semiotic of the Dream Sequence in Talmud Yerushalmi Maʻaser Sheni.” Henoch 23 (2001): 305–323. Zellentin, Holger. Rabbinic Parodies of Jewish and Christian Literature. Tübingen, 2011.

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Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World Definitions and Terminology An Arabic expression commonly used by Muslims worldwide captures the cautiousness shown towards any intimation of predicting the future: in shā’ Allāh (God willing). Islam favours the view of a future where every human action and event in the universe has already been mapped out by God. While God is believed to retain full control of this knowledge, it is nevertheless part of human nature to want to have an insight into what the future might hold. In Islam, belief in true dreams plays an important part in conceiving the possibility that God might partly fulfil such aspiration. In the Quran several terms are used that refer to true dreams. The most recurrent Arabic term, ru’yā, occurs six times. Only on three occasions however, ru’yā refers to a dream having predictive power: in the story of the Prophet Joseph (Q. 12:1–100); when Abraham is shown to receive in a dream instruction to sacrifice of his son (Q. 37:83– 113); when Muḥammad is predicted success in Mecca (Q. 48:27). The Quran alludes to a miraculous journey undertaken by the Prophet Muḥammad (Q. 17:1). Known as mi‘rāj, it refers to Muḥammad’s one-night ascension to heaven. During this journey, isrā’, the prophet is described as being transferred from Mecca to the “farther mosque” which exegetes came to identify with Jerusalem. However, in another verse in the same chapter ru’yā is explained as isrā’ thus leading to the interpretation that this night journey should be understood as something that Muḥammad experienced in a dream. Beyond the Quran, ru’yā is the most widely used term in Arabic texts often to mean both dream and waking vision. The second Quranic word for dream is manām, occurring twice with the meaning of dream and twice intended as sleep. Unlike, nawm, sleep, which in the Quran typically carries a somewhat negative connotation, manām is understood as a sign of divine direction for prophets and believers. The Quranic term bushrā (also occurring in other forms), “glad tidings”, was interpreted by many Muslim exegetes to mean “true dream”. Finally the Quran refers to aḥlām, (sing. ḥulm) as dreams that are qualified as aḍghāth, meaningless, confused, that is, false dreams caused by physical indisposition or induced by Satan. In the medieval Islamic mystical tradition, Sufism, a distinction is typically drawn between waking vision and dream, with greater importance given to the former. In mystical meaning, ru’yā and manām describe the dream as a means to transmit fictitious observation or at best knowledge which conveys a higher reality. According to some medieval Sufis, dreams do not differ from other forms of the psychic “occurrences” or “episodes”, wāqi‘āt, such as those experienced by the Sufi when immersed https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-020

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in recitation of God’s name. Dreams and wāqi‘āt occur when the person, asleep or awake, is “absent” from the sensible world. By contrast mukāshafa refers to episodes that occur when the person is present in the sensible world. Perceptions in a waking state are generally called wāqi‘a, visionary episodes. When instead they are of an auditory or intellectual nature they are called inspiration, ilhām. Before the seventh century, in pre-Islamic Arabia the kāhin – a priest-like figure – conducted sacrifices, protected sanctuaries, interpreted omens and performed divination through dreams, among other devices. Pre-Islamic mythological figures identified as interpreters of dreams included Saṭīḥ, a flat bodied creature with the face attached to the chest that had to be rolled out to be moved from one spot to the next who would only respond if addressed in verse. Another legendary diviner of dreams associated to him was Shiqq, described as a person parted in two. With the advent of Islam, interpretation of dreams became separated from other forms of divination and became elevated by association to prophecy. The Quran only mentions once the interpretation of dreams in relation to the Prophet Joseph (Q. 12:3–5). Instead, the endorsement of oneiromancy is more firmly rooted in the traditions recording the doings and sayings of Muḥammad, the ḥadīths. In Arabic, dream interpretation is ta‘bīr (occasionally tafsīr, “exegesis”) and is typically described as a science. The dream interpreter is the mu‘abbir. According to some, ta‘bīr conveys the meaning of transferring the dream from symbol to meaning, from sign to signified. In this context the interpreter is a “translator” of dreams and the manual is his dictionary (Lamoreaux, 2002, 86). Others have noted how ta‘bīr relates to i‘tibār, drawing a moral lesson from events. Both expressions are in turn linked to ‘ibāra, sentence, phrase, mode of expression. The quranic expression ta’wīl al-aḥādīth or aḥādīth (lit. “interpretation of events” or simply “events”) was also understood to mean “interpretation of dreams” by some medieval Muslim exegetes, relating dream to prophecy. It eventually acquired the meaning of “predictions” (Fahd, 1987, 272). In the Quran the future is primarily conceived in eschatological terms and, linguistically, future events are announced through the use of verbs in the future tense. In Quranic terms we can say that what the future might hold that humans do not yet know is conveyed in the use of the term al-ghayb, the unseen, the occult. In the Quran al-ghayb occurs many times to indicate what is only known to God. This includes the knowledge of things that God keeps exclusively for himself and things that God may choose to reveal at his discretion, through waḥy, revelation, nubuwwa, prophecy and, indeed, dreams (↗ Cortese, Prophecy Islamic World). Waḥy is a type of revelation that could be experienced respectively by the prophet, the diviner and the poet through different intermediaries: the angel for the prophet, the spirit – jinn – for the kāhin and the demon for the poet. While dreams play an important part in the Prophet Muḥammad’s experience as recipient of the revelation, they are not nevertheless an exclusive prerogative of prophethood. Dreaming is a faculty available to all humans who, through oneiric visions can have an insight into the realm of the unseen. Dream interpretation is not so much a divinatory device to foretell the future in a strict sense



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since that is only revealed at God’s discretion, but rather a guidance to disclose the signs and symbols hidden in dreams as a way to make sense of whatever glimpse God may allow humans to have of the unknown. Medieval Muslim scholars described the occurrence of dreams as an event taking place in the space between sleep and waking. Medieval Muslim mystics interpreted this space as an intermediate world between that of concrete phenomenal reality and the realm of pure intellectual abstraction. Possessing form but not substance, this intermediate world is described as the world of likenesses or images (‘ālam al-mithāl), also often identified with the Quranic barzakh, a liminal place, a barrier between two worlds or partition. The Sufi tradition conceived this imaginal world as a discernible realm outside that of sensibility and intelligibility. This imaginal world is defined as a “world of autonomous forms and images” that is apprehended directly by imaginative consciousness, through visions and dreams particularly and is held to validate super-sensible perception. Symbols in dreams and visions are mystically perceived through the inner heart (sirr) as an organ of spiritual and symbolic perception and engagement. There are two broad categories of dreams: those which have predictive qualities and those that provide explanations or interpretations for states of affairs in the real world. In order to provide access to the unknown the harnessing of the occurrence of dreams became an established, though not always condoned, popular practice in Islam. In pre-Islamic times in order to prompt dreams people would undertake a period of dream incubation by retreating to sleep in sanctuaries, caves or near shrines. With the advent of Islam dream incubation came to be replaced with istikhāra, the practice of praying God for guidance. Istikhāra is not mentioned in the Quran but endorsed in prophetic traditions. According to popular belief dreams occur thanks to the intermediation of an angel variously called Ṣidūq or Ṣidiqūn or Ṣiddiqūn occasionally also known as Ruḥā’il. Ṣiddiqūn is described as being so massive that it would take 700 years to journey from the earlobes to the shoulder. Ṣiddiqūn shows the sleepers the future by allowing them to glimpse the lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ, “the well-preserved tablet” or God’s eternal record. Instead, the philosopher al-Fārābī (d. 950) attributed the happening of dreams to the imaginative faculty that is responsible for sleep visions, being an intermediate between the faculties of sense and reason. To this explanation the theologian al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) added a mystical element by claiming that these images would then be reflected in the mirror of the dreamer’s heart, not only in sleep but in waking vision too (Katz, 2012, 187).

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Written Sources and Artifacts In early and medieval Islam a vast literature was produced that deals directly and indirectly with dreams. To the indirect category belong works where dream narratives feature prominently as anecdotal material. In this instance dream accounts typically serve authors as literary devices or topos to (de)legitimise people’s claims and rulings; to make a posteriori sense of events; to provide “rational” explanations for the occurrence of worldly affairs when lacking facts; to entertain the reader by adding colour to stories and to convey a sense human history being ultimately controlled by a God-prescribed destiny. These narratives occur regularly in biographical dictionaries, biographies and autobiographies. The eighth century biography of the Prophet Muḥammad, the Sīra by Ibn Isḥāq (d. 760s) is full of stories of a posteriori predictive dreams and visions foretelling the birth of Muḥammad and the Prophet’s ascent to heaven. In sīra literature dreams are often related to major events in Muḥammad’s life and are narrated along with accounts of the dream-life of his Companions. In works on medieval Muslim mystics, accounts of dreams have primarily a hagiographical function. One example of many in this genre is Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār’s (d. ca. 1221) biographical work Tadhkirat al-awliyā (“Memoires of the Saints”). In a Sufi context, the predictive quality of waking visions and dreams generally serves to elucidate on actual reality rather than being a devise to foretell a yet-to-be-realised future. In mystical and philosophical works, hypothetical dreams feed into dream theory in order to enlighten on broader theological disquisitions. In chronicles and historiographical works dream narratives often function as historical gap fillers or to convey a particular mind-set or worldview. Examples of this use of dream narratives can be seen in the works of the historian al-Ṭabarī (d. 923). Stories based on dreams can be also found as having entertainment value in belle lettres works mostly reflecting the interests of court life in ‘Abbasid Baghdad (750–1258) where dream interpretation became a fashionable pursuit among the social élites. Many allegorical, premonitory and explanatory dream narratives are incorporated in the Arabian Nights. (Fahd, 1987, 308) As for books directly concerned with dreams, canonical and non-canonical ḥadīth collections represent the earliest extant works featuring sections specifically dedicated to the dreams and their interpretations. The most comprehensive collection of dream traditions is found in al-Bukhārī’s (d. 870) Ṣaḥīḥ (“The Authentic”). In these traditions Muḥammad emerges as both the pre-eminent dreamer and the ultimate master of ta‘bīr as interpreter of his own dreams and those of his Companions. With dreams being endorsed by the Prophet, the ḥadīths served to consolidate Muslim public belief in the truthfulness of God’s sent visions. Dreams are true because Muḥammad is reported to have said that dreams constitute one forty-sixth part of prophecy, thus confirming the Muslim belief that the Quran was partly revealed through dreams. It is noteworthy that this fractional calculation of prophecy echoes somewhat the statement “a dream is one-sixtieth of prophecy” in the rabbinic dream book of Babylonian Talmud (↗ Kuyt, Dream Interpretation Jewish Traditions). Another tradition that lent



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perpetuity to the belief in the truthfulness of dreams is the one where Muḥammad is said to have claimed that after him what would be left would be dreams, thus implying an ongoing line of communication between God and his community through oneiric visions. The ḥadīths moreover, presenting the Prophet as mu‘abbir, provided the precedent to validate the practice of interpreting dreams as both legal and authoritative. Though prophetic oneiric accounts came to be systematically arranged in compilations that served as a resource for the redaction of dream manuals, dedicated chapters on dreams in ḥadīths corpuses do not constitute dream books for divination. Instead, some 250 dream manuals, predominantly in Arabic, are known to have been produced in the early and medieval Islamic world, with this number likely to increase as Islamic manuscript collections become more accessible. This genre enjoyed a popularity comparable to that of Quranic commentaries, tafsīrs, which were also composed in large numbers over the same period. Early Muslim dream manuals were ultimately written as practical tools for interpretation so that readers might decode occult knowledge. An indication of the popularity of this pursuit is shown in al-Ḥasan al-Khallāl’s (tenth century) no longer extant biographical dictionary of dream interpreters, Ṭabaqāt al-mu‘abbirīn (“The Classes of the Interpreters”) featuring 7,500 entries, of which 600 referred to the most important figures. One of the earliest authorities on dreams was Ibn al-Musayyab, who lived during the Caliphate of ʻUmar (r. 634–644). The early Muslim biographer, Ibn Sa‘d (d. 845), collected 13 of his dream interpretations. However, Ibn Sīrīn (d. 728) is consistently named as the most famous Muslim dream interpreter, the eponymous founder of the discipline and author of a vast body of treatises on the subject. The earliest text ascribed to Ibn Sīrīn is Ta‘bīr al-ru’yā (“The Interpretation of Dream”). By the tenth century numerous treatises had been posthumously ascribed to him and by the fifteenth century the number had escalated further to include also books in Turkish, Persian, Greek and Latin. While there is evidence supporting Ibn Sīrīn’s reputation as an early authoritative dream interpreter, his role as an author of manuals is questionable. Most modern scholars doubt that the 12 known manuals attributed to Ibn Sīrīn are actually his, going as far as claiming that he probably never wrote a manual. Nevertheless, already within the generation of Ibn Sīrīn’s death, his student and son ‘Abd Allāh transmitted a body of lore concerning his interpretation. Also, Ibn Sīrīn’s name featured in the earliest known Arabic work of dream interpretation, the Dustūr fī ’l-ta‘bīr (“The Rules of Interpretation”) by al-Kirmānī (fl. 775–785), the dream interpreter of the ‘Abbasid Caliph al-Mahdī (d. 785). A systematic way of presenting material in dream manuals began to take shape in the ninth century and was formalised in the tenth. By the eleventh century little variation took place in the format of these books since preserving what handed down from predecessors took priority over presenting fresh ideas. Up until the ninth century compilers uniformly relied only on prophetic authoritativeness as their source. Al-Kirmānī claimed to have received the power of interpretation directly from Prophet Joseph and listed among his sources Abraham and Daniel. Also in this category is Ibn Qutaybah (d. 889), attributed a Ta‘bīr al-ru’yā, being the earliest known extant Muslim dream

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book. Al-Kirmānī was Ibn Qutayba’s main source and is the only author he mentioned by name. Ibn Qutayba provided a collection of some 100 anecdotes of interpretation of particular dreams, drawing them from previous compilations. From the tenth century onwards authors started to give relevance to non-prophetic authorities. In fact, they displayed open use of Greek, Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Zoroastrian sources available in Arabic following the fervid translation activity that took place under ‘Abbasid patronage. The bibliographer Ibn al-Nadīm (d. ca. 998) in his Fihrist recorded some 10 dream manuals that were available in Baghdad, having been translated into Arabic at the request of the Caliph al-Ma’mūn (d. 833). The reception of Greek thought on the subject of dreams was already a feature in the works of al-Kindī (d. ca. 870) but his interest in dreams was more theoretical and scientific rather than practical and divinatory in character. Al-Kindī relied on a highly Islamicised adaptation into Arabic of Aristotle’s Parva Naturalia which included his work on divination through sleep. However, the most influential Greek source available to Muslim dream interpreters was the Arabic re-elaboration of Artemidorus’s Oneirocritica (mid-second century) – the most famous dream manual of the Hellenic antiquity – by the Christian physician to the ‘Abbasid court, Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (d. ca. 873). Many Muslim authors, while clearly relying on Artemidorus, did not openly acknowledge him as their source. For example, the Sufi al-Kharkūshī (d. 1015) made ample use in his dream manual of non-Muslim sources but in disguise. It was with Abū Sa‘īd al-Dīnawarī (d. ca. 1009) and Ibn Sīnā/Avicenna (d. 1037) that the indebtedness to pre-Islamic Greek and non-Muslim sources became fully manifest. In his al-Qādirī, completed in 1006 for the ‘Abbasid Caliph al-Qādir (d. 1031) al-Dīnawarī describes himself as a compiler who transmits materials of earlier experts. Beside prophetic authorities, he relied among others on Aristotle, for his definition of sleep, he named Artemidorus as source for the typology of dreams, the legendary Zoroastrian Jāmāsb and Brahmins for dream interpretation. Based mainly on Artemidorus and Greek thought, Ibn Sīnā included a philosophical discussion on sleep and dreams in his Kitāb al-Shifā’ (“The Book of Healing”). With the exception of a number of dream manuals produced in Umayyad al-Andalus, most books on dream interpretation were produced within the context of a Sunni, ‘Abbasid-centred socio-cultural environment. Shi‘is had access to this literature, as presence of dreams books is attested in the library collections of prominent Shi‘i scholars, like for example Ibn Ṭāwūs (d. 1266). However, Shi‘is did not produce dream literature as extensive as their Sunni counterparts. Of the treatises on the interpretation of dreams known to belong to the Shi‘a tradition, the most famous is a work attributed to the sixth Shi‘i Imam, Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq (d. 765). To facilitate the consultation of the dream manuals compilers experimented with various styles and formats. Presumably to help memorisation, the last Saffarid amīr of Sijistan (d. 1009) wrote the earliest known dream manual in verse, with table of contents and page numeration. Ibn Ghannām (d. 1275 or 1294) produced possibly the earliest alphabetically arranged work on dream symbols. As for specialism, Ibn Abi



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’l-Dunyā’s (d. 894) K. al-Manām is the only known book fully dedicated to the dead as vehicles of true dreams and their interpretations. Eventually Ibn Abi ’l-Dunyā’s dream anecdotes became quoted by scholars such as al-Ghazālī, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350) and al-Suyūṭī (d. 1505). The Ḥanbalī jurist Ibn al-Bannā’ (d. 1079) composed a personal diary that provides insight into the concrete realities of dream interpretation in the scholarly class of his time. He narrates 25 dreams by him or by friends and family. Al-Damīrī (d. 1405) wrote a manual about seeing animals or legendary creatures in dreams. Finally, al-Zubayrī (d. 929) is said to have written an entire book on the subject of istikhāra. In any event, until the thirteenth century, the internal organisation of the material in these books was thematic. Subsequently the encyclopaedia model became standard. After dream manuals, Sufi dream autobiographies constitute the largest body of works in medieval Islamic dream literature. Al-Tirmidhī’s (d. ca. 908) Bad’ sha’n (“The Starting Point”) provided the earliest known example of the Sufı autobiographical dream narration. Other contributors of Sufi autobiographical dream narratives include al-Tawḥīdī (d. 1023), Rūzbihān Baqlī (d. 1209) and al-Zawāwī (d. 1477). Sufi dream theory was elaborated by the Andalusian Ibn ʻArabī (d.  1240) who devoted considerable attention to the subject of dreams in his Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (“The Bezels of Wisdom”) and the Persian Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī (d.  1191) in his K. Ḥikmat al-ishrāq (“The Wisdom of Illumination”) where he schematised the realm of vision into a proper world of its own that could be accessed through a distinctive form of “enlightening” wisdom (Green, 2003, 295). The medieval Near-Middle eastern world was neither uniformly nor exclusively Muslim. Intellectual, political, cultural and social interactions between Jews, Christians and Muslims as well as representatives of other religions are well documented. Arab Christians in particular played a significant direct role in shaping Muslim scholarship around dreams. Al-Khallāl was a Christian and so was Artemidorous’ translator, Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq. Al-Dīnawarī included in his work, among others, dreams interpreted by Christians. In turn, Christians took interest in Muslim dream interpretation techniques. Two Christian dream manuals produced within an Islamic-informed context have survived. The first, written in Greek, is of Byzantine provenance and is known with the sobriquet Pseudo-Achmet, composed between the ninth and the eleventh centuries by an anonymous compiler who presents himself as a dream interpreter working for his master (↗ Oberhelman, Dream Interpretation Eastern Christian World; ↗ Falcone, Dream Books Western Christian World). The other work is in Arabic, written by Ḥasan ibn al-Bahlūl, a Nestorian Christian in Baghdad, who used Ibn Qutaybah among his sources. These were the first Christian dream manuals known to have ever been written and both made use of terminology and structures typical of Muslim dream manuals. As far as the Jews are concerned, documentary evidence from the Cairo Geniza (↗ Saar, Divination in the Cairo Genizah) shows that a number of Muslim dream manuals in Arabic had been copied in Hebrew script, thus showing some degree of Muslims influence on Jewish tradition of dream interpretation. It is

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however among non-Muslim in the Latin west that we find the strongest echo yet of the Muslim oneirocritical tradition. As far as early studies of dreams are concerned, the historian al-Mas‘ūdī (d. 956) in al-Murūj al-dhahab (“The Gold Meadows”) has an explanation of dreams and their causes in a chapter about Arab divination and soothsaying. However it is to the polymath Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406) that we owe the earliest comprehensive critique of the divinatory power of dreams. In his Muqaddima (“Prolegomena”) he deals with various aspects of the occult and divinatory practices, dedicating an entire chapter to dreams. He based himself on al-Qayrawānī’s (fl. eleventh century) Mumatti‘ (“The Pleasant”) believed to be the largest extant compilation on dreams so far.

Techniques and Beliefs Following the categorisation of dreams typical of Greek antiquity, medieval Muslim oneirocritics divided true dreams in two types: those predictive of future events and those disclosing affairs relating to the dreamer’s current state that might have been otherwise left hidden. In this section techniques and beliefs relating mainly to the first group will be explored. Dreams that would be predictive of the future were deemed a rare occurrence and are therefore less discussed in dream literature where the focus is mainly on revealing the occult. In addition to that, disclosure of future events should be understood here as a form of foreknowledge of occurrences that might affect the dreamers, over which they would have no control or chance to change fate. For this reason, even when projected into the future, Muslim oneirocritics understood the contents of a dream to be rooted in the experiential past of the dreamer. Predictive oneiric visions were divided into: dreams where what is revealed to the dreamer does not need interpretation; dreams that are literal in that their contents and as such could be self-interpreted by their recipients; and those whose message would be communicated in symbolic form. The decoding of symbols in dreams would need the recourse to authoritative interpretation that would have to be carried out by professional dream interpreters or via the consultation of the dream manuals by those who were not inspired interpreters of dreams. However, signs in dreams could have multiple meanings that would be baffling for the amateur to decode. This meant that in practice these books could only be trusted as valuable tools when handled by trained scholars. For the Sufis, oneiromancy served mainly to confirm the mystic dreamer’s spiritual status. Also, to impart knowledge of biographical accounts of dreams experienced by “saints” was a means of teaching Sufı disciples about the nature of visions. This would enable the novice to interpret his own private dreams and visions as part of the Sufı obligation to engage in spiritual self-reckoning. However, outside the mystical tradition, the aim of dream interpretation and the manuals that were produced in its name was divination.



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The manuals typically consisted of lists of conditional sentences introducing the most common or basic dreams, occasionally supported by narratives of hypothetical night visions and examples of retrospectively interpreted dreams. A typical way of introducing a dream symbol and its decoding would be according to the formula “if someone sees something, this will happen”. This means that our knowledge of medieval Muslim prognostication through dreams, based as it is on extant literature that is essentially theoretical, places oneiromancy among the non-demonstrative divination techniques. This, in turn, only allows us to describe its practices in the way that they would be reported with no means to verify the extent to which or how most of these practices formed part of people’s real life experience. The level of reliability in predictive dreams was hierarchical with some figures and symbols appearing in dreams being regarded as more authoritative than others in delivering a true message. The most truthful dreams of all would be those featuring the vision of the Prophet Muḥammad. Medieval Muslims feared the possibility of non-genuine dream figures whose plot was to mislead the dreamer. This could not be the case if seeing Muḥammmad in a dream since he was reported saying that if he appeared in dreams it could only be him because it was impossible for Satan to be his impostor. Eventually the belief spread that in dreams Satan also could not resemble God, the Quran, the sun, the moon, the heavens, the earth and the clouds. By seeing Muḥammad during sleep, the dreamer was therefore guaranteed that whatever message was received from the Prophet, that message was authentic. In practice, claims of having dreamt Muḥammad came to be used as a waterproof way to legitimise all kinds of arguments, persons or policies in the mundane life. Among Shi‘is, to see the Imams in dreams had a similar status and level of importance attached to the Prophet. The dead were the second most valued oneiric interlocutors, typically as conveyors of dreams of eschatological nature. By the ninth century there was growing interest in moral messages that the dead wished to communicate to the living through dreams, often believed to be acting out of their own initiative. This belief is reflected in the fact that many dream anecdotes involving the dead are introduced by the formulaic sentence “Somebody (dead) came to me in my dream”. In this instance it was understood that the deceased came back to this world to interact with the living. Alternatively the dreamer’s soul could ascend to the other world to interact with the souls of the dead. In these oneiric encounters the dead would either emphasise the rewards bestowed upon the pious in the afterlife or guide the dreamer towards the most rewarding deeds. Rewards would include material and spiritual pleasures such as magnificent palaces, beautiful women, closeness to God, a state of ease and luxury, protection from torture and suffering. The best earthly deeds that would condition a future state in the next world were varied and the dream served as a reminder of the consequences of earthly actions. Through dreams, the realms of the living and the dead are shown as interdependent and mutually reliant. Powerful dead could enter the dreams of people irrespective of location to provide their spiritual guidance. It was not uncommon to sleep by a tomb in order to converse with the dead. There the dead could also advise visitors

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on their conduct but also rebuke people for neglecting shrines or enjoin that new shrines should be built. To this day many ancient pilgrimage shrines throughout the Islamic world have their foundational stories rooted in dreams. Dead parents would always communicate true words in to their children. A woman would be a credible bearer of truth if that had come to her in a dream of her dead father. Another privileged category of people that would be trusted oneiric informants, particularly among Sufis, were saints and shaykhs, whether dead or alive. By taking upon themselves the responsibility of interpreting what de facto amounts to a form of divine revelation, dream interpreters were not so much diviners but exegetes. As such they were expected to be endowed with high standards of religious scholarship as well as personal qualities. A trustworthy interpreter would be learned in Quran and ḥadīth; ancient proverbs; well know verses of poetry; etymology and dialect studies, the latter being a skill that was rebuked by Ibn Sīnā as it applied only to Arabic speakers. The interpreter’s personal qualities should include: piety, refinement of character, speed in learning, practical understanding of human beings and their character, knowledge in the use of analogy, excellence in memorising and insightfulness as well as power of deduction. In their conduct interpreters should never be hasty nor be afraid to admit inability to interpret. They should listen carefully to the dreamer’s accounts, analysing them according to established principles, while invoking God’s aid. A dream interpreter should never disclose an honest interpretation of dreams predicting that the dreamer would engage in grave sin as this could encourage the dreamer to act on what was revealed. The diary of the eleventh century jurist Ibn al-Bannā’ provides a rare glimpse into the practical realities of dream interpretation. Ibn al-Bannā’ mentions other scholars consulting him about their dreams by showing up at his house morning and or night or sharing their dreams at Ibn al-Bannā’’s study circles at the mosque. While female dream interpreters had a recognised status in the ancient Near East, they tended to be marginalised in Muslim society. Asmā’, a daughter of the first Caliph, Abū Bakr, is arguably the most prestigious among the very few named early Muslim women credited with being authoritative dream interpreters. Given the high emotional investment and trust placed in the content of dreams and the sensitivity involved in the decoding of their messages, it was paramount to vet the credentials of their interpreters. Effectiveness was also under scrutiny and prediction success rate would lead to fame and fortune. Such is the case of the thirteenth century Bībī Munajjima, a fortune-teller from Nishapur in Iran whose extraordinary gift of prognosticating enabled her to become a royal adviser and secure her son’s fortunes at court. However those found to be fraudsters would pay for their action. The fifteenth century Bībī Rūshanā’ī, who rose from the slums to become a highly rated dream interpreter in Herat, was eventually exposed as a fraud and publically hanged when the city rulers saw through her ventriloquist “trances” (Green, 2003, 302). The dreamer, on the other hand, could potentially invent dreams in order to derive personal gain or push agendas. While most dream manuals recommend honesty in



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recounting dreams, there was however no practical way to ascertain the dreamer’s good faith. In the face of this limitation, only emotional blackmail through the use of prophetic authority could persuade people to refrain from oneiric forgery. According to a ḥadīth “the worst lie is that of a person who claims to have had a dream which he has not had.” The consequence of this transgression, should it occur, would be punishment for the fraudster in the hereafter. All people were capable of receiving divinely sent dreams. However, in keeping with ancient Egyptians and Babylonians beliefs, medieval Muslims scholars concurred that dreams and their outcomes varied depending on the status of the dreamer. The dream of a Muslim would be truer than that of a non-Muslim; the oneiric vision experienced by a veiled woman would be more worthy than that of an unveiled one; the dream of the rich would be more trusted than that of the poor. Occupation, rank, religion, social class and gender lent variant meanings to the same dream. In the case of women, for example, true dreams that could be seen by both virtuous and sinful women were typically assumed to relate to domestic matters or to a male in the family. Menstruating woman would be low in the list of likely recipients of true dreams. Dreams by slaves, whether male or female, would be classed even lower, if to be considered at all. Also influencing interpretation was the variation in the nature of the oneiric vision or the situations in which the dream images were seen. An object or a figure dreamt to be on the right signalled something good while, if on the left, the omen was bad. Likewise dreams happening during the early morning in spring or summer were deemed positive and potent. By contrast, nightly winter dreams were most likely to be deceitful. Time, date and year as well as external natural occurrences could condition the content of the dream and its interpretation. The dreamer of a true vision would awake quickly while a long sleep after a vision could be indicative of its falsity. Also, the occurrence of a true dream would be promoted through a variety of personal strategies that included sleeping on the back or the right side; being truthful in speech; following hygiene rules like keeping one’s own fingernails short; reciting prayers intensively before going to sleep and fasting, were practices that both Muslims and Christians encouraged. Guidance was also available for those unfortunate who dreamt something sad or scary. In such instances the dreamer was advised, on waking up, to recite the Quranic Throne Verse (Q. 2:255), spit over the left shoulder three times and recite a special prayer since such dreams were believed to have come from Satan (Lamoreaux, 2002, 32). However, istikhāra was and still is by far the most potent and widely used practice trusted to stimulate true predictive dreams. Istikhāra consists of reciting a special prayer with the expectation of an answering dream. It is believed that Muḥammad himself encouraged the regular performance of this prayer. Istikhāra can take also the form of sleeping in mosques or shrines of “saints” to summon oneiric encounters with a holy man or ideally the Prophet. It conveys the idea of entrusting God with the choice between two or more possible options, through piety and submission to his will or

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through deferring the choice to God due to inability to make decisions for oneself. Ibn Khaldūn recorded his own experience of having practiced this technique with success. He refers of having obtained in a dream of “perfect nature”, ḥālūmat al-ṭibā‘ al-tāmm, a response to a question posed before going to sleep, after purifying one’s conscience, concentrating one’s intention, pronouncing the glossolalia tamāghīs baghdīsawād, waghdās, nufānāghadīs and formulating one’s wish. Beside the Ka‘ba perimeter in Mecca, a number of locations acquired a reputation for promoting visionary episodes during sleep. In Cairo particularly popular among Sufis was to sleep among the tombs in al-Qarāfa cemetery. In the fifteenth century a number of places in Damascus and surrounding areas acquired a reputation for istikhāra. They include: Maghārat al-Dam (“The Cave of the Blood”) on Mount Qāsiyūn, believed to have been a refuge of prophets; a cave in al-Nayrab, near Aleppo; the Mosque of Abraham in Barzeh and a number of mosques in Damascus itself, primarily the Umayyad Mosque. Among Shi‘is, most visions were reported by those who slept in the Iraqi city of Najaf at the mausoleum of Muḥammad’s cousin and son-in-law, ‘Alī (d.  661), fourth Caliph and first Shi‘i imam. Thursday, Friday and Saturday as well as death anniversaries were believed to be the best days to visit shrines to enable a visionary contact with those in the afterlife. The performance of the istikhāra prayer in association with specific places became more common in the Maghreb where it is highly observed to this day. The practice, performed at the shrines of the Imams, is also particularly popular among Shi‘is. The dream interested the authors of dream manuals for the specific elements in the night visions deemed to convey precise messages in symbolic form. From a dream narrative, exegetes would single out figures and objects that would serve as keys. In turn their interpretation would be progressively refined by situating them in hypothetical contextual subcategories. Having classified these keys, a variety of techniques would then be used to determine the connection between what was dreamt and its relevance to the dreamer’s life. Word-association between the dreamer’s name and the name of the dreamt symbolic figure was a widely used device to decode the oneiric vision. More common however was interpretation via meaning, which consisted on deduction based on the characteristics of objects seen in the dream. Also popular was the analogical method where a link would be established between what was dreamt and a Quranic verse, a prophetic tradition or a verse of Arabic poetry. Interpretation through opposites and inversion of meanings was another popular method as well as divination through animals appearing in dreams which were believed to represent the character of certain humans. Once the prediction was delivered the enquiring person was expected to wait any length of time for its outcome to materialise.



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Developments, Contexts and Discussions In pre-Islamic Arabia dream interpretation represented a small part of a vast system of divination, linked to other ways of telling the future. However it is hard to evidence the extent to which Arabian pre-Islamic traditions regarding dreams found continuity among the early Muslims. A diviner in ancient Arabia was known to cover himself with a cloak and, in the Quran, Muḥammad is called al-muddaththir and al-muzzammil, the one “covered with a cloak” (respectively Q. 74:1 and Q. 73:1). Could this be an example of continuity between Islam and what came before it? In a cultural milieu where transmission of knowledge relied heavily on oral transmission, where contextually proven written material is very limited and where, with the advent of Islam, Muslims deliberately sought to obliterate whatever belonged to an Arabian pre-Islamic past that could not be Islamicised, evidence of unbroken continuity from the past is inevitably lost, if it was there at all. Equally difficult is to re-trace how ideas about dreaming prevalent in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean regions might have informed Islamic dream culture. Similarities have been noted between patterns of deductive dream interpretation found in Islamic manuals and those known to belong to the ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian traditions, but it would be hazardous to postulate – in the absence of material and/or documentary evidence – that the latter directly influenced the former. With the advent of Islam divination through dream interpretation came into its own thanks to its association with prophecy. This link gave the impetus to the emergence of a distinctively Islamic science of dream divination. The eighth and ninth centuries are known as the formative period of Islamic thought. During these two centuries the four canonical Sunni legal schools – Mālikī, Shāfi‘ī, Ḥanafī and Ḥanbalī – took shape and the practice of systematically collecting prophetic traditions emerged. With it, a scientific method developed to ensure rigour in the process of collating ḥadīths. In this period fervid theological debates took place and Islamic philosophy was born; a distinctively Islamic mystical tradition took shape and grand Arabo-Islamic literature begun to circulate in various genres. It is at the confluence of these rival cultural orientations that the interest in dreams affirmed itself. Initially, the authors of dream books were solely reliant on prophetic authority but by the tenth century they resorted to a variety of non-religious sources drawn from a pool of disparate literary traditions. Once reported in narratives, dreams – seen as a form of true, divine prophecy – came to be used as interpretative tools to satisfy personal and collective needs. However, beyond divination, the very recording of dreams within specific narrative contexts served as powerful legitimising, validating and propagandistic source material in the fields of law, Sufism, philosophy and literature. The structure of dream manuals remained by and large the same across the ages from the ninth to the seventeenth century in line with the consolidated Islamic practice of taqlīd – strict adherence to tradition – applied in all fields of knowledge. An introduction on dream theory was followed by an extensive list of dream anecdotes centred on keys and sub-keys each matched to its respective interpretation. Until the

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thirteenth century, organisation of these anecdotes was mostly thematic, with matters relating to the divine upfront. Contrary to this order of importance Ibn Sīnā never mentions the Quran, Muḥammad and the prophetic traditions. Writing for a royal patron, it was on the king, not the prophet that the force of divine revelation through dreams would be lavished. The adherence to taqlīd applied also to the value assigned to the keys by which dream symbols were categorised and classified. Medieval dream interpreters displayed an almost total homogeneity in assigning meanings to symbols while allowing adaptations to fit their respective contingencies. When seen in a dream, a frog was ascribed a positive connotation whether it appeared in a night vision experienced by a man in ninth century Baghdad or by a twelfth century woman in North Africa. Men dreaming of urinating would find the dream a reassuring confirmation or promise of fecundity irrespective of social rank, age or location. However, in general we do not know what process led the interpreters to assign certain meanings to certain symbols. In most cases it is evident that authors simply repeated what was reported by their predecessors. In other cases, one can see the application of the deductive method at work but by and large the logic behind the associative process that led to link a type of divination to a type of dream escapes us. It is obviously impossible to know if dreams ever did come true for those who were blessed recipients of an advance divine disclosure of their future affairs. As narratives written a posteriori, accounts of dreams-come-true were written to produce an effect on their prospective readers who, in turn, would have, or been seen to have a specific personal or collective investment in the truthful realisation of the oneiric vision. In this respect predictive dreams had a special kind of agency that could be used to mobilise individuals and societies as well as shaping their worldviews. For today’s readers past stories of divination through dreams can offer valuable insights into the world as medieval Muslims imagined it and experienced it; into what mattered to them when it came to their anxieties and aspirations for their future; their projected fears but also their hopes that might be fulfilled one day…in shā’ Allāh.

Selected Bibliography Bulkeley, Kelly, Kate Adams, and Patricia M. Davis (eds.). Dreaming in Christianity and Islam: Culture, Conflict and Creativity. New Brunswick and London, 2009. Fahd, Toufic. La divination arabe: études religieuses, sociologiques et folkloriques sur le milieu natif de l’Islam. Paris, 1987. Felek, Özgen, and Alexander D. Knysh (eds.). Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies. Albany, GA, 2012. Green, Nile. “The Religious and Cultural Roles of Dreams and Visions in Islam.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 13.3 (2003): 287–313. Hughes, Aaron. “Imagining the Divine: Ghazāli on Imagination, Dreams, and Dreaming.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 70.1 (2002): 33–53.



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Katz, Jonathan G. Dreams, Sufism and Sainthood: The Visionary Career of Muhammad Al-Zawāwī. Leiden, 1996. [Ibn Abi al-Dunyā]. Morality in the Guise of Dreams: A Critical Edition of Kitāb al-Manām. Ed. and trans. Leah Kinberg. Leiden, 1994. Kinberg, Leah. “Interaction between This World and the Afterworld in Early Islamic Tradition.” Oriens 29/30 (1986): 285–308. Kinberg, Leah. “Literal Dreams and Prophetic hādīths in Classical Islam: A Comparison of Two Ways of Legitimation.” Der Islam 70 (1993): 279–300. Lamoreaux, John C. The Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation. New York, 2002. Marlow, Louise. (ed.). Dreaming Across Boundaries: The Interpretation of Dreams in Islamic Lands. Cambridge, MA, 2008. Moin, A. Azfar. “Partisan Dreams and Prophetic Visions: Shi‘i Critique in al-Ma‘ūdī’s History of the ‘Abbasids.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 127.4 (2007): 415–427. Savage-Smith, Emilie (ed.). Magic and Divination in Early Islam (The Formation of the Classical Islamic World, vol. 42). Aldershot, 2004. Schimmel, Annemarie. Die Träume des Kalifen: Träume und ihre Deutung in der islamischen Kultur. Munich, 1998. Sirriyeh, Elizabeth. Dreams and Visions in the World of Islam: A History of Muslim Dreaming and Foreknowing. London and New York, 2015. Pielow, Dorothee. “Sleepless in Paradise: Lying in State in this World and the Next.” Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam. Eds. Sebastian Günther and Todd Lawson. Leiden and Boston, 2017. 428–441. Von Grunebaum, Gustave Edmund, and Roger Caillois. The Dream and Human Societies. Berkeley, 1966.

Mantic Arts Stefano Rapisarda

Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World Definitions and Terminology Western Medieval culture inherits from Classical and Pre-Classical Antiquity many divination techniques and produces also some new, original ones of its own, that were unknown to Antiquity. The most important Classical source is Cicero’s De divinatione, a philosophical dialogue between Cicero and his brother, explicitly dedicated to a discussion of divination (45–44 BCE). In De divinatione, Cicero examines, rationally and critically, the meaning and utility of divination techniques (Wardle 2001; ↗ Engels and Nice, Divination in Antiquity). His brother is in favor of considering divination as an effective practice of knowledge of the future while, on the contrary, Cicero himself is opposed to this and ridicules this pretension. Nevertheless, the text is, at least formally, equally balanced between pro and contra, and no final or definite answer is given. Moreover, Cicero himself appears to have invented the term divination: “Divination which the Greeks call mantike that is presentment and knowledge of future things” / “Divinationem, quam Greci mantiken appellant, id est preasensionem et scienciam rerum futurarum” (1,1), and it appears that this is the first occasion on which this word is used specifically during a philosophical debate (Santangelo 2013, 48–49). The novelty within Cicero’s translation of mantike in divination is that, for the first time, an etymological connection is created between the future and the gods, a connection that, etymologically speaking, is alien to the Greek term mantike. Roman divinatory culture distinguished between divinatio naturalis and divinatio artificialis, with the former being a form of inspired, and then non-technical, non-teachable, non-transmissible divination (Sibylline and Delphian oracles), based on furor and practiced by diviners in direct contact with the gods; the latter, meanwhile, was based on the interpretation of signs (avimancy, extispicy, interpretations of omens, astrology), then technical, transmissible, and teachable. This distinction corresponds to the modern opposition between inspired and evidential divination (Vernant 1974; Ginzburg 1986). Magic lies outside Cicero’s consideration in De divinatione: in the Graeco-Roman world, magic and divination are conceptually very different practices from each other.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-021

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Techniques and Manifestations General Development This distinction between divinatio naturalis and divinatio artificialis was commonly recognized, and divinatory culture was widespread, widely accepted and acknowledged. So, from Roman North Africa in the second century CE, Augustine demonstrates an excellent knowledge of the practices that he learned as a pagan and that now, as a newly-converted Christian, he is determined to fight. Scattered across his works, we find numerous quotations relating to all of the major techniques, all inherited from classical Antiquity: haruspicina, interpretations of omina, the casting of lots, bibliomancy and especially astrology (Klingshirn 2005). Nevertheless, when speaking about the communication between God and humans, he states that there are many ways in which God speaks with us. At times […] He speaks through a heavenly body, as he spoke to the Magi through a star (per stellam). […] He speaks through a lot (per sortem), just as he spoke concerning the choice of Matthias in place of Judas. […] Finally God speaks directly to a person, not externally through the ears or eyes, but internally in the soul, and not in one way only, but in dreams (in somnis) […] or with a person’s spirit lifted up (spiritu hominis assumpto), which the Greeks call ecstasis, […] or in the mind itself (in ipsa mente), when each person understands his majesty and his will. (Augustine, Sermones 12.4 according to Klingshirn 2005, 114)

Then, as the stars are signs than can convey divine messages, dreams can be a channel of communication too. With regard to sortes and the casting of lots, Augustine condemns these as well, albeit admitting that it is still better to consult the Bible by lot than to resort to some other pagan divinatory method (Schlapbach 2013, 399). In his De doctrina christiana (c. 397 CE), Augustine dedicates to astrology a concise yet effective confutation, that was to prove highly influential. Moreover, he associates magic and divination in his condemnation, which proved so influential that, from this moment onward, this connection became commonplace (Schlapbach 2013, 399–401). As far as the Latin West is concerned, divination, frequently associated with magic, illustrates with impressive evidence the continuity of medieval culture in both time and space. We find the same basic techniques listed by Augustine in Roman North Africa in the fourth century CE also in the monumental Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville (d. 636) in Visigothic Spain from the seventh century CE (Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae VII, 9, 29), and in the ninth century Carolingian France by Hincmar of Reims and Paschaius Radbertus (Paschaius Radbertus, Vita Walae, ed. Pertz, 533–569). Five centuries after Isidore, and eight after Augustine, moreover, we find exactly the same techniques being mentioned by the jurist Gratian in his gigantic Digest that was compiled in Bologna around 1150 (Decretum Gatiani II, XXVI, q. III et IV, c. I) and also in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, written at the English Plantagenet court around 1159, both of whom reproduce Isidore’s list almost unchanged (Policraticus II, 27).



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This enduring list includes magi (magicians who employ evil arts), geomanti (those who interpret the movements and phenomena of the earth), aeromantici (those who attribute meaning to clouds), piromanti (those who foresee by gazing into fire), hydromantii (those who predict the future from movements or reflections in water), arioli (those who worship at the altars of idols), haruspices (those who investigate entrails and the hours of the day suitable for large enterprises), augures and auspices (who study birds and their flight), pythonissae (those who receive divine inspiration from Apollo), astrologi (those who observe the stars), genethliaci and horoscopi (those who study the times of birth and the conjunctions of the zodiac and planets), mathematici (those who study the constellations), sortilegi (those who cast lots, often using a Gospelbook and other sacred texts), and salissatores (those who interpret the involuntary movements of limbs). This long-term continuity of techniques is further confirmed by the Traité des divinacions of Nicole Oresme (c. 1356), an anti-divinatory text that critically discusses all of the new and old techniques in order to dissuade Charles V of France from wasting time and money in attempting to know the future (Nicole Oresme, Contra divinatores, ed. Rapisarda; ↗ Rapisarda, Doubts and Criticism on Astrology). This list of techniques is virtually identical to that provided six centuries earlier by Isidore of Seville, apart from the addition of chiromancy and scapulomancy, which appear almost simultaneously in the mid-twelfth century in Plantagenet England and in the Spain of the Reconquista (Rapisarda 2017, 27–28). Finally, the same techniques, minus scapulomancy which is perhaps included under necromancy, are listed in the Bull of Sixtus V, Terrae et Coeli Creator (1586), in which all of these techniques are once again condemned and identified for repression by the Inquisition (Bullarium 1747, 176–179). Only cartomancy and tarot joined this bulk of techniques in the Renaissance, after which the list remained constant into modernity (Urbini 2006). Several ancient mantic techniques survive today. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997) expressly mentions horoscopes, astrology, chiromancy, the casting of lots and omen interpretation, and indirectly everything that substantially derives from necromancy (III, 2.1. art. 2116). In contemporary popular culture, astrology remains the queen of divination, as many socio-enquiries demonstrate (see f. e. Adorno 1994 and Allum 2011). Also, chiromancy and tarot demonstrate a long history; necromancy, in the sense of speaking with the dead, excluding the use of blood, enjoyed a revival in the late nineteenth century in the form of mediums, spiritualism, and channeling (Gutierrez 2015), while the use of corpses and blood in black rituals, black magic, and Satanism is very similar to ancient necromancy, with or without a divinatory purpose (Faxneld-Aagaard Petersen 2013). Ancient dream interpretation deviated toward modern psychoanalysis; palmoscopy, or salissatio, survived in certain forms of popular culture, for example, in the itchy nose/hand superstition (Radford-Radford 2015); but scapulomancy, avimancy, extipicy, and geomancy have completed disappeared. In conclusion, from Augustine to the latest Catechismus Catholicae Ecclasiae, the corpus of divinatory knowledge can be considered close and stable in time and space,

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crossing the Western history of ideas over a long run of centuries. Each technique has its own individual story and fluctuations; and each one poses to secular and divine laws its individual problems related to licitness and illicitness. The wide range of ancient divinatorial techniques was transmitted, then, through the Middle Ages but, in many cases, it remains unknown whether or not the specific techniques mentioned in these enduring lists were part of actual lived Medieval practice. The following paragraphs describe the techniques, their historical evidence, and their development in the Middle Ages into some of the most widespread forms of divination besides the queen disciplines of astrology and dream divination, which will be treated in chapters on their own.

Geomancy Geomancy is perhaps the second most widely-practiced technique, after astrology (↗ Regourd, Mantic Arts Islamic World; ↗ Melvin-Koushki, Geomancy Islamic World; ↗ Cooper and Schmidl, Geomantic Artefacts). Also called divinatio arenalis (e.  g. in MS BL, Arundel 66, preserving an Alpharinus filio Abrahe judeo in Fronska 2014, 24), it consists in fact of the random tracking of four rows of signs on a surface, such as paper, sand, or earth, followed by the eliminating of pairs of points in such a way that only one or two remain for each staff, and finally the recognition of consequential figures. There are 16 figures, each having a name based mainly on its analogical aspect. This technique is easy to practice: unlike haruspicina, it is inexpensive; unlike astrology, it requires no special tools or specific knowledge. It was then widely acknowledged: its 16 basic figures had to be part of the general knowledge of a medieval clericus, considering, e.  g., Dante’s quotation in Purgatorio, XIX, where the figure named Fortuna maior is mentioned in a poetical metaphor, with the evident presumption that this is understood without further explanation. Learning the name of the figures is not particularly difficult, considering both the names and figures are relatively analogical, such as the case of via, four points in alignment; cauda draconis, represented by a figure in a two-tailed Scorpion tail; puella, with two points in the area of the breast; puer, with two points in the area of the testicles; carcer, a space enclosed between six points, and so on. In terms of practical applicability, in general, the treatises on geomancy are written in such a way that, with a few materials and any oral integration, one can learn the technique and practice it easily. This kind of geomancy is generally thought to have entered Europe from Arabic countries, Maghreb, or possibly the Iberian Peninsula, and should not be confused with the Latin geomancy mentioned by Varro: the Latin one is based on signs related to the Earth as a natural element, such as earthquakes, geological events, or volcanic eruptions. This kind of Latin geomancy does not appear to have consequences in Late Antique and Medieval Europe (Charmasson 1978, 121).



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Fig. 12: Geomantic basic figures (scheme based on the model of: Ebneter 1955, 15). Photo credits: Matthias Heiduk.

Geomantic texts in Greek have attracted little scholarly attention and the vast majority of studies are now a hundred years old. Nevertheless, although normally considered a science of Arabic derivation, there may have existed an original Greek geomancy, and even a Greek astro-geomancy or geomantic astrology (Calcagno and Rapisarda 2016). The variety of the texts contained in MS. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 86.14, challenges the current idea that Greek geomancies are exclusively translations from Arabic and that an original Classical Greek and/or Greek Byzantine geomancy never existed. Whether or not there was any direct connection between these Greek texts and the Western ones, what is clear is that, at a given point in time, in the Latin West, geomancy became linked with astrology, producing some form of astrological geomancy. All of those data that, if calculated using astronomical/astrological procedures and tables, would have required complicated calculations and superior technical knowledge, if determined by a geomantic procedure, appear far simpler to retrieve. This is explicitly noted by the author of the Occitan geomancy: Astronomia es de gran afar (“Astronomy is a difficult matter”: the determination of signs and planets throwing

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the points perfectly fits those who are unable to use armillary spheres, astrolabes, and quadrants, and also dispenses with the arduous reading of las taulas toletanas (like those of Alfonso X of Castile) and similar numerical complications. This simplified method allows, then, the possibility of casting horoscopes also by those who lack specific abilities in the highest divinatory science, i.  e. astrology (Contini 1940, 19–20). Editions of geomantic texts in Latin have been produced by Burnett 1977 (including an edition of the Experimentarius of Bernardus Silvestris, a handbook of sortes based on a combination of geomancy and astrology) and Charmasson 2001 (an edition of a late fifteenth-century text). There is also a vernacular astral-geomancy in Italian (Bertelli and Cappi 2012), an Anglo-Norman geomancy (Hunt 2013), and an Occitan astral geomancy (Contini 1940). A further Medieval Greek astrological geomancy has been recently edited by Nyström (2009, 218–223).

Sortes Under the name of sortes exist a plurality of divinatory techniques based on casuality, such as casting lots, throwing dice, spinning a wheel, or opening a book at random (↗ Heiles, Sortes). Several books of sortes are dedicated to authority figures, such as the Pope Boniface (Thormann 1890) or Socrates (Alonso Guardo 2014). A widespread modality when consulting the sortes is bibliomancy. This consists of randomly opening a book with a particular authority and reading a passage, interpreted as a prediction of the future of the questioner. The basic instrument may have been a book of Holy Scriptures, such as the Gospels or the acts of the Apostles (Chabaneau 1890; Brandin 1914), or even a fictional work, such as the Iliad or Aeneid, for the so-called sortes homericae and sortes vergiliane (Maltomini 1995). This book might be consulted in various ways: opening it randomly and pointing the finger at a single passage, opening it randomly and reading the first word or lines at the top of the page, pricking the page with pins or needles, or selecting one of several threads that had been previously been randomly among the pages. This was a widespread practice in the Middle Ages, even in unsuspected cases: e.  g., Augustine while meditating over his conversion, heard a mysterious voice reaching his ears from a nearby house which constantly repeated, in a singsong manner: “Take it and read it. Take it and read it.” To gain confirmation, Augustine consulted the book of the Apostle Paul. He opened it randomly and read in silence the passage upon which his eyes first fell: “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and in envying, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in concupiscence” (Confessions, 8.12). From this passage, he received confirmation that he should abandon his prior pagan life and convert to Christianity. A similar story is related about Saint Francis who, immediately prior to the capital episode of the stigmata, sought to find out what his final fate would be by randomly opening the Gospel (Legenda maior, XIII, 2).



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In relation to bibliomancy we should also mention the so-called mantic alphabets (↗ Chardonnens, Mantic Alphabets Western Christian World). These basically consist of an alphabet key, reporting a list of prognostics. The user retrieves a letter of the alphabet from a book, which is then decoded using the alphabet key. The key connects each letter with a specific prediction; e.  g., if the user retrieves the first letter of the first line of the right-hand page and this letter is a “C,”, in an Old French mantic alphabet, this means “the death of a prominent man” (la mort de haut home); if a “G,” it means that a bad event will occur (maveys eschevement); if an “L,” honour or joy (honur ou joye sygnefie), and so on (Chardonnens 2011, 113). The same applies to the so-called mantic dream alphabets, in which the content of the dream is irrelevant in itself but the purpose is to retrieve a letter of the alphabet, to be decoded using an alphabet key (Chardonnens 2013). A different modality operates within onomancy and/or in so-called Spheres of Life and Death (Wickersheimer 1914). Here, there is no casting of lots or taking of sortes but, rather, a trans-codification of data (e.  g. the name of the patient), as used in onomantical consultations (Juste 2015; ↗ Nothaft, Calendrical Calculations Western Christian World, 610–611 with Fig. 26). Numerous texts on the various kinds of sortes have been edited, in Greek (Maltomini 1995), Latin (Montero Cartelle 2013; Alonso Guardo 2013), and vernacular French, Italian and Spanish (Chabaneau 1880–1881, Thormann 1890, Brandin 1914, Kobbervig 1987). A medieval manuscript of sortes, written by the chronicler Matthew of Paris, is published in facsmile by Iafrate 2016. A rare onomantical chapter appears in the Llibre de Doctrina (or de Saviesa) of James I of Aragon, and can be read in SolaSolé 1977, 116–117. It is relatively similar to the one included in the Arabic version of Secretum secretorum (the so-called On the Victorious and the Defeated, Steele 1920, 250–252), and represents one of the few cases of onomancy in vernacular translations of the Secretum secretorum. Arabic onomancy results are, in fact, relatively difficult to adapt and translate into Latin (Juste 2011).

Chiromancy In the mid-twelfth century, the traditional core of divination techniques was subjected to certain innovations. As we saw above, two new techniques appear almost simultaneously in the West, chiromancy and scapulomancy, receiving their first mention in Gundissalinus’ book (Rapisarda 2017, 27–28). Chiromancy, at least in its written form, appears to be an original Western “invention”, springing from the combination and amplification of two Aristotelian biological passages dealing with the duration of the life in animals, as can be read from their extremities, and whose oldest written texts are the Latin ones attributed to Aristotle (Rapisarda 2005). The passages consist of the interpretation of the lines appearing in the hand of man, basically the three fundamental naturales, which form a trian-

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gle, and the naturales-accidentales, which are not in the palm of every man. These are basically interpreted in an analogical manner. The meaning differs according to the position in the palm but, in general, long signs are good prognostics and short ones are bad ones. This new technique is considered to be relatively close to a natural science such as physiognomy, as it reads natural signs. This is a very important point. It seems to be less forbidden than other divinatory sciences because it appears in relation to physiognomy and its ability to read natural signs and inclinations without entering the forbidden sphere of foreseeing human free will. So, the chapter dedicated to hands in Michael Scot’s physiognomy describes simply the character and attitude of the person, and his chapter is purely chirognomic in nature: “Manus mollis carnis macrae et longae significat hominem boni intellectus […] Cuius manus sunt pilosae […] significant hominem luxuriosum […] Cuius manus in digitis curvature sursum significant hominem liberalem” (Michael Scot, Liber physionomie, ed. 1477, cap. 82). Here, we are in the field of pure description of natural inclinations. It nevertheless attracted criticism; e.  g., John of Salisbury, in Policraticus, judged it absolutely senseless. He excludes the possibility that chiromancy may be considered a “natural science” and neglects its alleged illustrious Aristotelian origin, judging it so deprived of a rational basis as to be unworthy of a rational refutation: Chiromants pretend to be acquainted with the truths which are hidden into the lines of the hand. It is unnecessary to attack with reasons an error which has no foundation in reason, defeating with reason these people whom lack reason. (John of Salisbury, Policraticus II, 27, trans. Pike, 127). The target of the reprimand is not a conventionalized or impersonal reader, but a distinguished figure from the Plantagenet court, namely Thomas Becket, Henry II’s Chancellor and future Archbishop of Canterbury, and furthermore the dedicatee of the Policraticus. During the course of a military campaign waged by Henry II against the Welsh, Thomas Becket, at that time the king’s chancellor, on the eve of battle, consulted two soothsayers, a haruspex, and a chiromancer, in order to foresee the future, whether triumph or of death, like Saul before the battle with the Philistines in a famous biblical episode, to which we will return shortly, when dealing with necromancy. In fact, the line between licit and illicit activities is relatively thin. If Scot’ chapter on hands was substantially a chironomy rather than a chiromancy, the majority of chiromantic texts entered into the sphere of prediction, as they sought to foresee events related to individual behavior, including the outcomes of human will. At any rate, Becket was not the sole cleric to be attracted to chiromancy: the oldest chiromancy in the West appears in a liturgical book, MS Cambridge, Trinity College, R.17.1, the so-called Eadwine Psalter, dating approximately to the mid-twelfth century. We do not know which texts had been read by the chiromancer whom Becket consulted, but it seems likely that these were in Latin. Prior to the fifteenth century, manuals of divination are rare in the vernacular – as is true also of astrological and astronomical treatises, dream-books, geomancies, sortes, lists of fortunate or “perilous” days, and,



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Fig. 13: Scheme of chiromantic lines on the palm (Johannes Hartlieb. Chiromantie. [block book print:Joerg Schapf] Augsburg, 1485/95. Fol. 6v; Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Xylogr. 36). Photo credits: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek – Digitale Bibliothek.

rarest of all, scapulomancy. The exceptions are typically Anglo-Norman. The Plantagenet court appears to be the most precocious with regard to translating science into a “regional” language (Hunt 2013). All six of the vernacular chiromancies prior to the fifteenth century so far recorded are in the langue d’oïl and five of them come specifically from the Anglo-Norman domain. Anglo-Norman seems to have demonstrated a striking precocity here, as in many other areas of textual production. This leads us to acknowledge that the Anglo-Norman domains formed one of the principal crossroads between medieval divinatory practices. It is the same environment in which certain manuscripts, e.  g., London, British Library Ms. Add. 18210, reveal themselves as exceptional collections of divinatory texts (Rapisarda 2018). The golden age of chiromancy, however, occurred during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when it became joined with astrology, attributing each finger and part of the palm to the influence of a planet. Many texts were widely circulated: Martius Galeottus (with no date, but before 1494); Mattheus Cerdonis, Padua 1484; Antiochus Tibertus, Bologna 1494; Andreas Corvus, Venice 1500; and Bartolomeus Cocles, Bologna 1503. In particular, Martius Galeottus da Narni (1442–1494) was counsellor at the court of Matthias Corvinus in Hungary (see Frezza 1951 for the edition of the Chiromantia perfecta which makes this text of particular interest). The Eadwin Psalter, the earliest chiromancy in the West, has been published respectively by Burnett (Burnett 1987); it has been collected in corpus and translated into Italian in Rapisarda 2005. A Corpus of Anglo-Norman Chriomancies has been edited in Hunt/Rapisarda 2020. For

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the relatively surprising teaching of chiromancy as part of mathematics courses in Jesuit schools at the end of the seventeenth century, see Leitão 2006.

Scapulomancy The second technique that appeared in the West in the mid-twelfth century is scapulomancy (↗ Rapisarda, Shoulder-Bone as Mantic Object). It consists of the interpretation of the shoulder-blade of certain ruminants, especially sheep. Although it may appear bizarre nowadays, it contains an internal “rationality”. In a neo-platonic vision of the world, Truth resides in the upper world and is carried down in the inferior world by the rain, before being deposited on the grass and finally absorbed by the shoulder-blades of ruminants. In this peculiar form, scapulomancy is a technique unknown to Classical Antiquity, which preferred another type of divination concerning the body of a sacrificed animal; namely, the consultation of entrails, haruspicina. This latter is one of the oldest forms of divination, that was practiced in Babylonian and Graeco-Roman culture, and endured for a long time, until the beginning of the Middle Ages: a passage from a letter by Pope Gregory the Great to Gennaro, Bishop of Cagliari, dated 599, invites the recipient to a pastoral vigilance against practitioners of haruspicina and sortes players, which suggests a reference to an actual practice rather than simply providing a “traditional” list of techniques to be condemned. Nevertheless, despite the similarities, it cannot be concluded that scapulomancy replaced, directly and “traditionally,” haruspicina, as the interval between the latest evidence for a haruspicinal practice (fifth to sixth century CE) and the apparition of the Western scapulomancy of alleged Arabic origin (twelfth century) it too wide. It is likely, however, that such an association was evoked in the minds of the clerics involved in the early stages of transmission and that they perceived scapulomancy as a “softer”, less bloody form of the ancient haruspicina, that held such importance in the traditional Graeco-Roman religions. Chiromancy and scapulomancy shared a similar technical lexicon. Both describe, topographically, either the hand and the shoulder-blade, as a landscape crossed by viae and plicae, rimulae and notulae, mari and montes, puncta, fovea, cavatura, nodis and foramina, and sepultura and conturbatio (Rapisarda 2005). An Arab-Andalusian origin is highly probable, considering the chain of evidence, especially concerning the use of Arabic to denominate the parts of the shoulder-blade (algodrop, alloc, lalamud) in one surviving vernacular text. Unlike chiromancy, the shoulder-blade permits to see at distance. It has the sort of effect that in later divinations will be assumed by the crystal spheres. This method allows some degree of practical application, like that reported in the Itinerarium Cambria of Gerald of Wales (ca. 1191) regarding helping a man to confirm the adultery of his wife (Rapisarda 2017). Strangely, there are no quotations on scapulomancy in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus (ca. 1159), but it is possible that John erroneously referred to this practice under the name of haruspicina, as he



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wrote that, on the eve of a battle against the Welsh, Thomas Becket consulted a chiromant and an aruspex. As a bloody animal sacrifice taking place at the Plantagenet court is difficult to imagine, it seems preferable to assume that, by the term haruspex, John of Salisbury meant rather the practice of scapulomancy. After a final, unpredictable, resurgence of scapulomancy in the mid-fifteenth century at one of the most sophisticated courts in Europe, the Medicis of Florence (Burnett 1995), it definitely disappeared from the divinatory practices current in the West. Overly connected with a primitive agro-pastoral world and overly dangerously related to blood, it moreover failed to form a link with astrology, e.  g., attributing astral influences to certain areas of the shoulder-blade, as one Latin text suggests: “Naturale astronomicum multa mirabilia potest uidere in spatula” (Rapisarda 2017). Unlike chiromancy and geomancy, which, from the fifteenth century onward, developed on astrological grounds, scapulomancy was excluded from this and totally disappeared. For Greek-Byzantine, Arabic, and Latin texts, see Rapisarda 2017. An Anglo-Norman text, introduced and edited in Rapisarda 2017, 199–231, appears to be a unicum in the vernacular field.

Avimancy Thunder interpretation (a medieval heir of the old divinatio fulguralis) and piromancy (reading prognostications from fire), are very ancient techniques, but it is very rare to find written records about them (a rare exception respectively in Boudet 2003). One of the most ancient techniques is also avimancy (prognostications based on birds), which relies on aspects of the following data: the species of birds that one observes, the height of their flight, the direction from or toward which they are flying, whether they fly off when one approaches, whether they turn their heads, and so on. Avimancy was widely practiced by both Greek and Romans, and especially the latter developed a sophisticated science based on this technique, distinguishing between oscites (birds from which voice prognostics are derived) and alites (birds from which flight prognostics are derived) (↗ Bar-Asher, Ornithomancy in Jewish Literature). At any rate, to the best of my knowledge, no systematic written text on this topic survives from Classical Antiquity, if one ever existed. A Byzantine handbook on bird watching (Oinoscopica), attributed to Artemidorus of Daldi, is mentioned in the Suda lexicon and was probably a text on prognostication, considering the career of the author (Adler omicron-iota 163), but this is not extant either. Nevertheless, many omina, have been recorded in the literature, in Cicero’s De divinatione or collected in Valerius Maximus’ Factorum et dictorum memorabilia, a widely-circulated collection of anecdotes and episodes from Graeco-Roman history (first century CE). As far as the Middle Ages are concerned, a precious chapter of John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, De variis ominibus, reports a compilation of prognostics concerning birds (1, XIII) and, due to the lack of alternatives, can be considered a real short handbook

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on avimancy. This avimancy generally arises from the Roman tradition. In general, birds that prognosticate the future are those that have been metamorphosed by men, and here it is evident that John refers to the celebrated Ovid´s Metamorphoses, one of the most widely-read and influential Latin poems in the Middle Ages. Other birds are prophetic because they played a role in episodes of the Roman history. The most important of this is the eagle, about which various legends are reported; then, crows, ravens and swans have a remarkable meaning, but other birds can also manifest signs of the future, such as storks, cranes, vultures, and owls. Their positive or negative value is related, in some cases, with the pseudo-etymology of their names, in the typically Medieval linguistic logic of Isidore of Seville Etymologies: to give an example, the crane, in Latin grus, provides positive prognostics, not for natural reasons or by virtue of anecdotes connected with Roman history, but because its name is pseudo-etymologically connected with the archaic verb gruĕre, which is a propitious word that is linked with the idea of advantage, as from gruĕre derives the word congruĕre, meaning “to be advantageous.” A relatively exceptional popular knowledge of avimancy is to be found in medieval Occitania and considerable evidence also features in troubadour poetry. It is appropriate, then, that a Medieval Italian short story from the Il Novellino collection (XIII S.) locates a satire on avimancy in Provence, whereby a superstitious nobleman, setting out on a journey, interviews a woman working in the fields in order to receive data for a prognostication. “Have you seen some of these birds, such as ravens, crows, or grails?” he enquires, and the woman replies, “Certainly, m’lord, I saw a crow sitting on a willow tree.” “Tell me then, woman, in which direction did it hold its tail?” asks the nobleman. “In the direction of its ass,” answered she (Rapisarda 2017).

Fig. 14: Illustration of Avimancy in a manuscript of the Decretum Gratiani (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußi­ scher Kulturbesitz Ms. lat. fol. 4, fol. 249r; date: saec. XIV). Photo credits: ­Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - PK, Digitalisierte Sammlungen (http://resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin. de/SB0001E36D00000000).



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Necromancy Necromancy, from the Greek word necrós, “death”, is etymologically and originally divination through the evocation of the dead, and is the most execrated of the divinatory practices (Luck 2006, 210–212; ↗ Otto and Heiduk, Prognostication in Learned Magic). The prime example of this is that of King Saul and the witch of Endor, evocating the spirit of Samuel (1 Sam. 8–31). This biblical episode sparked intense theological debate among the Church Fathers. How was the witch of Endor, evil, vulgar necromant, able to evocate the soul of a prophet like Samuel, subduing him to her will? Several interpretations of this are provided by Origenes, Eustatius of Antioch and Gregory of Nyssa: according to some, it was a demon that had taken the place of the dead prophet, while, according to others, it was an illusion crafted by the witch (Simonetti 1989). Nevertheless, over the course of time, the term “necromancy” loses its original etymological Greek meaning and combines with the Latin word niger, “black”, to became more or less a synonym for “black divination”, not necessarily involving interviews with the dead or the exhumation of corpses and use of blood; e.  g., Oresme, in his Book of divinations, uses systematically the term nigromantie rather than necromancie. The former can encompass many different phenomena; e.  g., in Picatrix, probably the most important magic text in the Middle Ages, it is used to mean every action that has wonderful effects, substantially a synonym for natural magic. As Burnett 1996 has shown, necromancy is not always intended to be a dark, demonic practice as, in some cases, nigromantia must be understood as philosophical or scientific rather than diabolic in nature, producing inexplicable effects, as nigromantia was often used to translate siḥr, the Arabic word for “magic”. In this sense, e.  g., nigromantia in the procedure leading to the production of talismans is in an Occitan astral magic book, the Nigromancie astrale by Guillem de Perrisse (Calvet 2012).

Medieval Discussions about Licitness and Illicitness Nigromantia is, without doubt, the most forbidden of divinatory techniques. The debate about the licitness and illicitness of the individual techniques was crucial and intense. In short, we can say that, at one extreme of the continuum, stand astro-metereology (↗ Kocánová, Weather Forecasting Western Christian World) and medical prognosis (↗ Demaitre, Medical Prognostication Western Christian World), as the former is concerned with a non-human phenomenon (the weather) while the latter with the outcome of an illness in its natural progress without any connection to the human will. Physiognomy is also generally considered licit, as far as it reads natural inclinations and does not claim to foresee human behaviours that are deterministically compelled by facial configurations. Chiromancy is considered relatively close to physiognomy and then considered licit when it describes character, albeit paying due

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attention to avoiding postulating the determinism of the freedom of the human will. The same can be said of astrology/astronomy: the branches studying the physical and geometrical attributes of the celestial bodies are licit, while those detecting influxes are not. Interpreting the stars as signs of divine communication is debatable (Nicole Oresme – Contra divinatores, ed. Rapisarda). Sortes are made relatively licit by the fact that certain New and Old Testament passages contain references to the casting of lot and sortes. The way to save hazard “teologically” is by considering it as a channel through which the will of God manifests itself to men. We find episodes in Josh. 7, 14 where, in order to detect the guilty of sacrilegous theft, recourse is made to the casting of lots; through casting lots, Jonah is found guilty of having provoked the tempest (Jonah 1, 7–10) and even an Apostle is chosen by casting lots. According to the Acts of Apostles (Acts 1, 23–26), Matthias was chosen to replace Judas Iscariot following his betrayal of Jesus; his calling as an apostle is unique, since he was not appointed personally by Jesus, who had already ascended to Heaven by that time, but by casting lots to choose between two valid candidates, Matthias and Joseph Barsabbas. Bede writes that these are special cases, as individual privileges (Nicole Oresme, Contra divinatores, ed. Rapisarda, 284–285), but Augustine, although condemning lots, wrote that is still better to consult the Bible by lot than to use some other pagan divinatory method (Epist. 55.37 in Schlapbach 2013, 400). At the opposite end of the continuum from astro-metereology and medical prognosis stands necromancy, which was drastically condemned in whatever form it might be practiced. From this review of techniques emerges a picture of “divination and rationality”, as formulated by Vernant 1974 and corroborated by the “evidential paradigm” of Ginzburg 1986, which proposes to structure ancient and medieval divination according to the opposition between “evidential” (“indiziario” in Ginzburgs terms) versus “inspired” rather than that between “rational” versus “irrational.” This conceptual framework implies that the vast majority of Western divinatory techniques can be defined as rational in essence, because they are based on observation, study, the collection of data and their analysis (calculations, traces, clues, evidence, analogical extensions, etc.); even omens require an active analysis of the content of the message on the part of the user; only forms of divination such as oracles and (partially) sortes cannot be included under the category of rationality because they are not based on the analysis of data, but are simply a flow, or poly-semiotic message, sent from God or the gods to a medium and then to the receiver, with no logical analysis involved. Even a technique such as scapulomancy reveals an inner rationality: Truth stays beyond in upper spheres, but is brought down to earth by the rain, which then deposits it on the grass and, finally, it is transferred to the shoulder-blade of the animals that eat the grass. These premises are absurd, according to our contemporary cosmology, but the process is indeed explicit, transmissible through teaching, and internally logical.



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Selected Bibliography Adler, Ada (ed.). Suidae Lexicon, 4 vols. Leipzig, 1928–1938. Adorno, Theodor W. The Stars Down to Earth and Other Essays on the Irrational in Culture. Edited with an introduction by Stephen Crook. New York, 1994 [First edition “The Stars Down to Earth: ‘The Los Angeles Times Astrology Column’. A Study in Secondary Superstition.” Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien 2 (1957): 19–88]. Alcabitius [Al-Qabīsī]. The Introduction of Astrology. Editions of the Arabic and Latin Texts and an English Translation. Eds. Charles Burnett, Keiji Yamamoto, and Michio Yano. London and Turin, 2004. Allum, Nick. “What Makes Some People Think Astrology Is Scientific?”. Science Communication 33 (2011): 341–366. Alonso Guardo, Alberto. Les Prenostica Socratis Basilei, un livre des sorts médiévaux. Etude, édition critique et traduction. Paris, 2013. Bertelli, Sandro, and Davide Cappi. “Per l’edizione del «Libro di Geomanzia». (BNCF, Magliabechiano XX.60).” Studi di filologia italiana 70 (2012): 45–101. Boll, Franz, Carl Bezold, and Wilhelm Gundel. Sternglaube und Sterndeutung. Die Geschichte und das Wesen der Astrologie. Leipzig, 1917. Bouché-Leclercq, Auguste. Histoire de la divination dans l’antiquité. 4 vols. Paris, 1879–1882. Boudet, Jean-Patrice. “Deviner dans la lumière: note sur les conjurations pyromantiques dans un manuscrit anglais du XVe siècle.” Religion et mentalités au Moyen Âge. Mélanges Hervé Martin. Rennes, 2003. 523–530. Boudet, Jean-Patrice. Entre science et «nigromance». Astrologie, divination et magie dans l’Occident médiéval (XIIe–XVe siècle). Paris, 2006. Brandin, Louis. “Traduction française en vers des Sortes Apostolorum.” Romania 43 (1914): 481–494. Bullarium Privilegiorum ac Diplomatum romanorum Pontificum Amplissima Collectio, t. IV, p. IV, ab anno X. Gregorii XIII usque ad annum III. Sixti V, scilicet ab anno 1581 ad 1588. Rome, 1747. Burnett, Charles. “What is the Experimentarius of Bernardus Silvestris? A Preliminary Survey of the Material.” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen age 44 (1977): 79–125. Burnett, Charles. “The Earliest Chiromancy in the West.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987): 189–195. Burnett, Charles. “The Scapulimancy of Giorgio Anselmi’s Divinum opus de magia disciplina.” Euphrosyne 23 (1995): 63–79. Burnett, Charles. Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages. Aldershot, 1996. Calcagno, Agata, and Stefano Rapisarda. “Il Manoscritto Plut. 86.14 della Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana di Florence. Una miscellanea fiorentina di materia divinatoria.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 109 (2016): 151–178. Calvet, Antoine. “Les traductions françaises et occitanes de l’oeuvre alchimique du pseudo-Arnaud de Villeneuve (XIVe siècle – XVe siècle).” El saber i les llengües vernacles a l’època de Llull i Eiximenis / Knowledge and Vernacular Languages in the Age of Llull and Eiximenis. Eds. Anna Alberni et al. Barcelona, 2012. 57–69. Cicero, [Marcus Tullius]. De divinatione. Ed. David Wardle, vol. 1. Oxford and New York, 2006. Chabaneau, Camille. “Les sortes des apôtres, texte provençal du XIIIe siècle.” Revue des Langues Romanes 18 (1880): 157–178; 264–74 and 19 (1881): 63–64. Chardonnens, László Sándor. “Mantic Alphabets in Medieval Western Manuscripts and Early Printed Books.” Modern Philology 110 (2013): 340–366. Charmasson, Thérèse. Recherches sur une technique divinatoire: la géomancie dans l’Occident médiéval. Geneva and Paris, 1980.

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Charmasson, Thérèse (ed.). “Lectura geomantiae.” Hermes Trismegistus, Astrologica et divinatoria, Eds. Gerrit Bos et al. Turnhout, 2001. 349–399. Contini, Gianfranco. Un poemetto provenzale d’argomento geomantico. Fribourg, 1940. Deinmann, Wiebke, and David Juste (eds.). Astrologers and their Clients in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Cologne, 2015. Dominicus Gundissalinus. Über die Einteilung der Philosophie. Eds. Alexander Fidora and Dorothée Werner. Lateinisch–Deutsch. Freiburg, 2007. Ebneter, Theodor. Poème sur les signes géomantiques en ancien provençal, publié d’après le manuscrit unique de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris. Olten and Lausanne, 1955. Faxneld, Per, and Jesper Aagaard Petersen. The Devil’s Party: Satanism in Modernity. Oxford, 2013. Galeotto da Narni, Marzio. Chiromantia perfecta. Ed. Mario Frezza. Naples, 1951. Ginzburg, Carlo. ‟Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm”, Clues, Myths and the Historical Method, Eds. John and Anne C. Tedeschi, London, 1990 [orig. ital. ‟Spie. Radici di un paradigma indiziario.” Miti, emblemi, spie. Morfologia e storia. Turin, 1986. 57–106]. Gutierrez, Cathy (ed.). Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling. Leiden, 2015. Hunt, Tony. Writing the Future. Prognostic Texts of Medieval England. Paris, 2013. Iafrate, Allegra. Le Moine et le Hasard, facs. du ms. Oxford, Ashmole 304. Paris, 2016. Jaume d’Arago. El Llibre de Doctrina. Ed. Josep Sola-Solé. Barcelona, 1977. John of Salisbury. Frivolities of Courtiers and Footprints of Philosophers. Ed. Joseph B. Pike. Minneapolis, 1938. Juste, David. Les Alcheandrana primitifs. Etudes sur Les plus anciens traités astrologiques latins d’origine arabe (Xe siècle). Leiden, 2007. Juste, David. “Non-transferable Knowledge: Arabic and Hebrew Onomancy into Latin.” Annals of Science 68 (2011): 517–529. Hunt, Tony, and Stefano Rapisarda (eds.). Anglo-Norman Chiromancies. Paris, 2020. Klingshirn, William E. “Isidore of Seville’s Taxonomy of Magicians and Diviners.” Traditio 58 (2003): 59–90. Kobbervig, Karl I. (ed.). El Libro de las suertes: tratado de adivinación por el juego de azar. Madrid, 1987. Kruger, Steven F. Dreaming in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, 1992. Leitão, Enrique. “Entering Dangerous Grounds: Jesuits Teaching Astrology and Chiromancy in Lisbon.” The Jesuits II. Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773. Eds. John W. O’Malley et al. Toronto et al., 2006. 371–389. Luck, Georg (ed.). Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds. A Collection of Ancient Texts. Baltimore, MD, 2006. Maltomini, Franco. “P. Lond. 121 (=PGM VII), 1–221: Homeromanteion.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 106 (1995): 107–122. Montero Cartelle, Enrique. Les Sortes Sanctorum. Etude, édition critique et traduction. Paris, 2013. Nicole Oresme. Contro la divinazione. Consigli anti-astrologici al Re di Francia (1356). Ed. Stefano Rapisarda. Rome, 2010. Nyström, Eva. Containing multitudes: codex Upsaliensis Graecus in perspective. Uppsala, 2009. Paschasius Radbertus. Vita Walae abbatis Corbeiensis (MGH SS.2). Ed. Georg H. Pertz. Hanover, 1828. 533–569. Rapisarda, Stefano (ed.). Manuali medievali di chiromanzia. Rome, 2005. Rapisarda, Stefano (ed.). Textes médiévaux de scapulomancie. Textes latins edités par Charles Burnett. Paris, 2017. Rapisarda, Stefano. “Chiromanzia e scapulomanzia in anglo-normanno nel ms. Londra, British Library Add. 18210.” Geomancy and Other Forms of Divination (Micrologus Library 87). Eds. Alessandro Palazzo and Irene Zavattero. Florence, 2018. 421–443.



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Rapisarda, Stefano. “Literary Texts and Divination Techniques in Medieval Occitania: A Short Survey, ‘Medioevo’ 42 (2017).” L’agire morale e i suoi limiti: Fato, Determinismo e Libero Arbitrio nel Medioevo = Moral Agency and its Constraints: Fate, Determinism and Free Will in the Middle Ages. Eds. Alessandra Beccarisi and Fiorella Retucci. Padova, 2017. 99–123. Radford Mona A. and Edwin Radford. “Itching.” Encyclopedia of Superstition, 2015 (1st edit. 1949). Santangelo, Federico. Divination, Prediction and the End of the Roman Republic. Cambridge and New York, 2013. Schlapbach. Karin. “Divination”, Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, 2 vols. Eds. Karla Pollmann and Willemien Otten. Oxford, 2013, 2: 399–401. Semeraro, Martino. Il Libro dei Sogni di Daniele. Storia di un testo “proibito” nel Medioevo. Rome, 2002. Simonetti, Manlio (ed.). Origene, Eustazio, Gregorio di Nissa. La maga di Endor. Florence, 1989. Steele, Richard. Secretum secretorum, cum glossis et notulis (Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi, vol. V). Oxford, 1920. Thormann, Franz. “Uno livro de sorti de papa Bonifacio.” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 100 (1890): 77–102. Toomer, Gerald J. (ed.). Ptolemy’s Almagest. Princeton, NJ, 1998. Urbini, Silvia. Il libro delle sorti di Lorenzo Spirito Gualtieri. Modena, 2006. Vernant, Jean-Paul (ed.). Divination et rationalité. Paris, 1974. Wickersheimer, Ernest. “Figures médico-astrologiques des ixe, xe et xie siècles.” Janus 19 (1914): 157–177.

Michael Grünbart

Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World Definitions and Terminology Ancient mantic practices faced restrictions from two sides during Late Antiquity: on the one hand, the imperial government tried to gain control over certain techniques of prognostication, because the authority of the emperor might be damaged by rumours that were caused by incorrect predictions (Fögen 1993). On the other hand, ecclesiastical dignitaries had to offend the magic and techniques connected to the supernatural in order to discern holy and demonic connotations (Maguire 1995 and Maltese 1995). The term magic (mageia) was synonymous with sorcery (goeteia) in Byzantine texts; therefore it was instrumentalized to slander persons who had fallen out of favor (Otto 2011, especially 349–356). The problem of the differentiation between magic and miracle formed a standard topic in the Early Christian apologetic and theological literature, and even the distinction between good and bad miracles led to many conflicts. The main argument was that magicians performed their craft through demonic aid, whereas holy persons relied on support from God or the saints. However, magic and mantic arts were present at various levels in Byzantine society.

Techniques and Manifestations – Their Sources and Developments In general, the typical professionals connected to mantic practices, like augurs or dream interpreters, disappeared and were persecuted during the establishment of Christian monotheism (Fögen 1993 and Lotz 2005). Papyrological sources demonstrate that the mantic arts persisted in the Christianized society and were performed in all strata of society. The material evidence reflects various approaches to include and explain supernatural power in many areas of daily life. At times, it is difficult to distinct between pagan and Christian objects (e.  g. amulets depicting the holy rider, hystera[uterus]-amulets, the evil eye and other apotropaic devices). In Late Antiquity, the distinction between magician/sorcerer and holy person was intensively discussed. Magicians attempted to influence the future actions of persons through uttering incantations and casting spells addressing demons (e.  g. love spells, death spells), while holy men and women constantly prayed and performed their deeds due to divine inspiration. Mantic techniques were performed in order to obtain knowledge of future events or to find other solutions. Love magic was https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-022



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strictly forbidden in the Christian context. Persons convicted of magic were punished by death.

Geomancy The term geomancy was coined in Western Latin sources and refers to the Arabic practice of divination called ʻilm al-raml (lit. “the science of sand”), khaṭṭ al-raml (“the line of sand”) or ḍarb al-raml (“the striking of sand”) (Charmasson Savage-Smith and Smith 2004; ↗ Melvin-Koushki, Geomancy Islamic World; ↗ Rapisarda, Mantic Arts Western Christian World; ↗ Regourd, Mantic Arts Islamic World). In Byzantine Greek, this method is called rhamplion (ῥάμπλιον echoing the Arabic raml) or techne tu psammu (τέχνη τοῦ ψάμμου) and spodomanteia (σποδομαντεία), indicating the materials used to perfom the procedure (sand, dust, ashes). In Latin, it is referred to as ars punctuaria, which was translated as “Punktierbuch” in the late Middle Ages (see Heiles 2018). Evidence of the rhamplion can be found in late Byzantine texts (e.  g. in an oration of Manuel Holobolos addressed to Michael VIII Palaeologus and in the Journey of Mazaris to the Underworld). The method enabled the prectitioner to discover the future and past events important to an individual’s life. Sixteen patterns of dots, that were written on sand, paper or any other easily-describable materials, formed the basis of the interpretation and organization of solutions that were combined with a geomantic tableau. The method based on randomization was combined with astrological, medical and natural philosophical information (planets, the zodiac, body parts, the four elements) and can be classified as both sortilege and arithmetic cleromancy. It was used in order to gain information about future events and developments (Filimon, 2019). In comparison to Medieval Latin and Arabic studies, geomancy is almost a lacuna in Byzantine studies. Only a few documents have been investigated thoroughly to date (Delatte 1936 and Tannery 1920). Nicholas of Otranto (1155/1156–1235) composed a text on geomancy between 1175 and 1200. He translated a Latin text (from the Arabic) and relied also on Greek texts, as he mentioned in the prooimion of his treatise (Garzya 1982). The manual of al-Zanātī was translated by the monk Arsenios, commissioned by Theodora, the wife of Michael VIII (1266). Divinatory techniques like sortition or cleromancy almost disappeared during Late Antiquity, although the famous example of Augustine was known in the Middle Ages (see Grünbart 2018, 222–224; ↗ Rapisarda, Mantic Arts Western Christian World, 434–435).

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Bibliomancy Bibliomancy, i.  e. opening a codex at random and finding a passage, was used to find a proper solution or decision in various contexts. Emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641) was uncertain where his army should stay during the cold period (in 621/622): When winter had set in, he took counsel to decide where he should winter together with his army. Some said that he should winter together with his army. Some said that he should do so in Albania, others that they should push ahead against Chosroes himself. The emperor ordered that the army should purify itself for three days. He then opened the holy Gospel and found a passage that directed him to winter in Albania. (Theophanes, Chronographia 308, trans. Scott, 440)

There is no hint regarding which biblical quotation led him to this decision. However, such practices were harshly criticised if performed in a non-Christian context. Bibliomancy was also widespread in the Slavonic world (see Birkfellner 1985).

Cleromancy Since the early days of Greek culture, questions concerning all kind of problems related to daily life were addressed to the deities. One of the most famous examples of an oracle was Dodona in Epirus, where leaden tablets containing questions were given to the priests at the oak of Zeus in order to obtain an answer from heaven (see Naether 2010, 44–52). The tradition of communication with the supernatural did not fade away following the repression of pagan gods, and the papyri provide material evidence of this habit (Youtie 1975). In later centuries, so-called ticket-oracles could still support, for instance, military determinations. As already mentioned (in the survey), Emperor Alexios I (1081–1118) used such a technique twice in order to identify the right decision regarding whether he should campaign or not. Anna Komnene writes: Alexios, though, felt unable to trust his own judgement and was unwilling to rely on his own unaided calculations. So he referred the whole matter to God and asked Him to decide. All the churchmen and soldiers were summoned to an evening meeting in the Great Church [i.  e. Hagia Sophia of Constantinople]. The emperor himself attended and so did the Patriarch Nicholas […]. The emperor wrote a question out on two tablets: should he set out to attack the Cumans; or not. They were then sealed and the patriarch was commanded to place them on the Holy Table. After hymns had been sung all through the night, Nicholas went to the altar, picked up one of the papers and brought it out. In the presence of the whole company he broke it open and read aloud what was written on it. The emperor accepted the decision as though it derived from some divine oracle. All his energies were now concentrated on the expedition, with the army being summoned by letters from all parts of the empire. (Anna Komnene, Alexiad X 2, 4, trans. Frankopan, 264)

The ticket-oracle, following the simple scheme of a yes-no question, was performed in a sacred space. It was guided by the spiritual orthodox leader and the audience



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seemed to guarantee the objectivity of the procedure. The emperor requested supernatural support and advice, that he followed. The advantage for him lay in the fact that he could carry out his action, protected by the divine guidance of which his subordinates were aware. Since practices of cleromancy are mentioned in the Bible and were discussed by the church fathers (↗ Rapisarda, Mantic Arts Western Christian World, 434–435), it continued to play a decisive role in ecclesiastical contexts. The Patriarchs and heads of monasteries were selected by casting lots (including the invocation of God) (Grünbart 2018). Other influential signs from heaven were letters that fell from the sky (Himmelsbriefe) that are recorded in the Christian Middle Ages (see Speyer 1970, 23–42).

Avimancy Since the beginning of divinatory practices, the interpretation of birds’ flight has featured among the usual prognostic disciplines (↗ Engels and Nice, Divination in Anti­ quity). Birds have been called messengers of the gods since ancient times. In Homer’s work, bird signs play a decisive role in determining the actions of the heroes, while Hesiod’s “Works and Days” ends with the verses: “That man is happy and lucky in them who knows all these things and does his work without offending the deathless gods, who discerns the omens of birds and avoids transgressions” (see Evelyn-White 1914). Alexander the Great’s expedition is accompanied by a series of bird signs, interpreted by seers, which influences the actions of the commander. In the Roman Republic and the Imperial Era, mantic practices continued to play an important role, preparing and influencing political decisions. Birds appear also in the context of the founding of cities. The classic example of this is Rome. When it was time to decide where to locate the new city, Remus saw six vultures on the Aventine, which he wished to interpret as divine signs. Romulus observed twelve vultures that appeared on the Palatine shortly afterward; the population decided to proclaim both kings at first, since Remus had first seen the birds, but Romulus had seen more birds. The vulture was suitable for an augurium and, as an augural bird, it could have both positive and negative connotations in prognoses. Only unusual behaviour was used as a prodigium. The Roman augurium (with vultures) is still mentioned by Michael Psellos (eleventh century). In a legal dispute, the neighing of Darius’ horse and the Roman vulture’s flight are presented as unreliable elements in the process of decision-making compared to the miracle of the Mother of God which takes place regularly in the church of Blachernae (Constantinople). However, even in Byzantine times, birds are connected to the founding of cities. In a biography of Emperor Constantine dated to the eighth century, eagles also play a role. On arriving in Chalkedon in Bithynia, Constantine wished to take care of a town, but was undecided about where to start. Eagles took the measuring cords of the experts

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and dropped them in the region of Byzantium. When this happened several times and the emperor noticed the incident, he felt confused. An expert named Euphratas informed him that God would welcome his founding of a city there, dedicated to Our Lady (Halkin 1959, 83–84). The eagle is considered one of the most important animals, which on the one hand means that it is powerful and, on the other, that it can also intervene in a protective way. In the narratives of rulers, this animal often appears at various stages of the emperor’s life. The bird is often woven into the historiographical narratives in the context of the future exercise of power. A prime example is the story of Marcian (emperor 450–457) recorded by Procopius of Caesarea and repeated by Theophanes (ninth century), which has already been the subject of several scientific discourses. The simple soldier Marcian was sleeping when an eagle approached and cast a shadow over him. His soldier comrades woke him up and told him about the miracle. Then Marcian fell captive to the Vandal king, Geiserich; it was a hot summer’s day and Marcian was sleeping again, when the eagle darkened the sun. Geiserich understood the sign and interpreted it as meaning that Markian’s empire could not be avoided, so he did not let him kill him (see Procopii Caesariensis opera omnia. Leipzig 1964, 324–326; Theophanes, Chronographia, trans. Scott). Probably the most famous story of an eagle and a future emperor is related by Theophanes Continuatus. An eagle overshadows the small child Basileios three times. His parents and the people working alongside them in the field are horrified but, in the end, it is identified as a good sign. Basileios became emperor and reigned from 867 to 886. The representation of this event in the so-called Skylitzes Matritensis is well-known (Skylitzes, Synopsis historiarum, ed. Thurn, 118–119). Further techniques of prognostication were known in Byzantium: lecanomancy (gazing into a bowl filled with liquid in order to find letters or signs; ↗ Grünbart, Leka­ nomanteia Eastern Christian World) and onomancy or onomatomancy (divination based on a person’s name) (↗ Grünbart, Prognostication Eastern Christian World, 162–163).

The Licitness and Illicitness of Such Practices It becomes clear that the ancient mantic practices were known in Byzantium, but rarely used for prognostic purposes. However, the individual needs to make clear decisions and the wish to end the hopelessness of a situation allowed and encouraged the use of mantic techniques. Pagan forms of protection against bad or evil things were easily transformed into the Christian identity, the cross became the main apotropaion against the devil (for the transformation of the understanding of magic, see Otto 2011). The ecclesiastical courts strictly forbade magical practices, as several trials in the so-called patriarchal register of Constantinople from the fourteenth century demonstrate (see Cupane 1980).



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Scholars like Michael Psellos or John Tzetzes were still interested in describing and recording ancient mantic methods; emperors also showed an interest in this kind of knowledge (e.  g. Manuel I, Andronikos II), because they sought to obtain information and other opinions concerning their future (on political prognostication, see Magdalino 1993). Manuel I came into conflict with the church and had to renounce the practice of magic on his deathbed. In contrast to the mantic arts, the interpretation of dreams continued to be employed for questioning the future, finding solutions and influencing actions (↗ Oberhelman, Dream Interpretation Eastern Christian World).

Selected Bibliography Anna Komnene. The Alexiad. Ed. Peter Frankopan. London, 1999. Birkfellner, Gerhard. “Slavische Bibliomantie (Zur abergläubisch-prognostischen Literatur bei den Slaven).” Litterae slavicae medii aevi Francisco Venceslao Mareš sexagenario oblatae. Munich, 1985. 31–51. Charmason, Thérèse. Recherches sûr une technique divinatoire: la géomancie dans l’Occident médiéval. Paris and Geneva, 1980. Cupane, Carolina. “La magia a Bisanzio nel secolo XIV: Azione e Reazione. Dal Registro del Patriarcato costantinopolitano (1315–1402).” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 29 (1980): 237–262. Delatte, Armand, and Louis Delatte. “Un traité byzantin de Géomancie (Codex Parisinus 2419).” Université Libre de Brussels. Annuaire de l’Institut de Philologie et d’Histoire Orientales et Slaves. Tome 4, Mélanges Franz Cumont (1936). Brussels. 575–658. Filimon, Florin. “The Prediction Method by Means of the Holy Gospel and the Psalter: A Late Byzantine Case of a Reassigned Geomantic Text.” Savoirs prédictifs et techniques divinatoires de l’Antiquité tardive à Byzance. Eds. Paul Magdalino and Andrei Timotin. Seyssel, 2019. 235–301. Fögen, Marie Theres. Die Enteignung der Wahrsager. Studien zum kaiserlichen Wissensmonopol in der Spätantike. Frankfurt am Main, 1993. Garzya, Antonio. “Il Proemio di Nicola d’Otranto alla sua Arte dello scalpello.” Bisanzio e l’Italia. Raccolta di studi in memoria di Agostino Pertusi. Milan, 1982. 117–129. Grünbart, Michael. “Losen als Verfahren des Entscheidens im griechischen Mittelalter.” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 52 (2018): 217–252. Halkin, François. “Une nouvelle vie de Constantin dans un légendier de Patmos.” Analecta Bollandiana 77 (1959): 63–107. Heiles, Marco. Das Losbuch: Manuskriptologie einer Textsorte des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts. Vienna et al., 2018. Ioannis Skylitzis. Synopsis historiarum (= Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 5). Ed. Hans Thurn. Berlin et al., 1973. Johnston, Sarah, and Peter T. Iles-Struck (eds.). Mantikê. Studies in Ancient Divination. Leiden, 2005. Lotz, Almuth. Der Magiekonflikt in der Spätantike. Bonn, 2005. Magdalino, Paul. “The History of the Future and Its Uses: Prophecy, Policy and Propaganda.” The Making of Byzantine History. Studies Dedicated to Donald M. Nicol on His Seventieth Birthday. Eds. Roderick Beaton and Charlotte Roueché. Aldershot, 1993. 3–34.

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Maguire, Henry (ed.). Byzantine Magic. Washington, D.C., 1995. Maltese, Enrico. Dimensioni bizantine. Donne, angeli e demoni nel Medioevo greco. Turin, 1995. Mango, Cyril, and Roger Scott. The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor. Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284–813. Oxford, 1997. Naether, Franziska. Die Sortes Astrampsychi. Problemlösungsstrategien durch Orakel im römischen Ägypten. Tübingen, 2010. Otto, Bernd-Christian. Magie. Rezeptions- und diskursgeschichtliche Analysen von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit. Berlin, 2011. Savage-Smith, Emilie, and Marion B. Smith. “Islamic Geomancy and a thirteenth-century Divinatory Device: Another Look.” Magic and Divination in Early Islam. Ed. Emilie Savage-Smith. Aldershot, 2004. 211–276. Scott, Roger. “From Propaganda to History to Literature. The Byzantine Stories of Theodosius’ Apple and Marcian’s Eagles.” History as Literature in Byzantium. Ed. Ruth Macrides. Aldershot, 2010. 115–132. Speyer, Wolfgang. Bücherfunde in der Glaubenswerbung der Antike. Göttingen, 1970. Tannery, Paul. “Le Rabolion. Traité de géomancie Arabes, Grecs et Latins.” Mémoires scientifiques IV (1920): 299–411. Youtie, Herbert C. “Questions to a Christian Oracle.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 18 (1975): 253–257.

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Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World Judaism is a religion of revelation. Attempts at prognostication constitute a ubiquitous aspect of Jewish culture from its primordial beginnings until our present age. The most fruitful era for Jewish manticism was the late Medieval era, in which a confluence of circumstances provided a fertile, practical, ideological and cultural background for the proliferation of numerous techniques related to mantic practice. As Jewish culture is far from monolithic in nature, this article will trace a plethora of mantic techniques and attitudes that characterized Jewish activity during the Middle Ages and also analyze the major trends and processes of that period. Despite the important research that has been conducted in this field by past luminaries, the field of Jewish manticism remains in its infancy. These scholars have unearthed and analyzed examples of a wide range of Jewish mantic practices in the Medieval period, such as exegetical manticism, astral manticism (↗ Rodríguez-Arribas, Astral Sciences Jewish Traditions), mathematical manticism, dream interpretation (↗ Kuyt, Dream Interpretation Jewish Traditions), augury, the drawing of lots, ornithomancy (↗ Bar-Asher, Ornithomancy in Jewish Literature), physiognomy (↗ Dubrau, Physiognomy among Jews), scapulimancy (↗ Rapisarda, Shoulder-Bone as Mantic Object) and chiromancy (↗ Margolin, Physiognomy and Chiromancy in the Zohar), among other phenomena. Still, much material awaits study, research and a systematic and comprehensive discussion of the subject. At this stage, it is important to note that – in contradistinction to their surrounding Pagan, Christian and Muslim cultures – Jewish culture never developed mantic techniques as a “science”. For instance, while individual Jews indeed gained expertise in astrology (the mother of all Medieval manticism), it was rarely perceived as a specifically “Jewish” form of manticism. By the same token, various lesser mantic techniques have been largely ignored by Jewish scholars and the aggregate Jewish contribution to manticism historically has been relatively minor. Yet, it is the exploration of Jewish mantic development from an internal, intra-cultural perspective that proves fruitful. Inevitably, the question arises regarding what precisely constitutes “Jewish manticism”. To arrive at a clear conclusion, it is necessary to distinguish between “Jewish manticism” and the “manticism of the Jews”; the latter referring to mantic techniques that were in common usage among the Jews, whereas the former may be defined as mantic techniques whose essence and characteristics are inescapably Jewish in

Acknowledgement: I wish to thank Mr. J.J. Kimche and Gene Matanky for the translation from the Hebrew. The translations of the Hebrew sources – unless indicated otherwise – are the work of J.J. Kimche. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-023

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orientation (if not in origin). It is the contention of this essay that this distinction is of crucial importance, for the following reason: much of the extant source material relates to manticism as practiced by the Jews as illicit or even sinful, whereas Jewish manticism was regarded by its practitioners as legitimate and even an expression of religious devotion. This essay examines the different forms of mantic techniques that emerge throughout the Medieval Jewish literature. The manifold examples of these phenomena include evidence of the “manticism of the Jews” from the Byzantine Medieval period, that describes the existence of Jewish communities that did not acquiesce to the rabbinic dictates on the subject (as codified in the halakhic texts) as well as forms of “Jewish manticism” practiced by significant rabbinic figures themselves. Equally fascinating are the arguments concerning the efficacy both of prognostication in general and of popular mantic practices in particular. This essay shall concern itself with Jewish texts from numerous literary periods and genres, from both within and without the rabbinic canon. Non-Jewish sources may also be cautiously accepted as historically useful. In contrast with significant rabbinic and philosophical works, that were disseminated through manuscripts and reprinted numerous times, mantic sources  – despite existing in copious quantities in manuscript form  – have yet to attract attention from either printers or commentators.

Is Manticism Illicit? The Torah text constitutes the foundation and legal framework of Jewish culture. The general assumption is that the Torah forbids magic, as it states: There shall not be found amongst you […] who practices divination, or an observer of omens, or an enchanter, or engages in witchcraft / Or a caster of spells, or a consulter with spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. (Deut. 18:10–11)

From the verse “You shall be pure with the Lord your God” (Deut. 18:13), several rabbinic traditions derived a blanket prohibition regarding the practice of prognostication. All forms of manticism were deemed alien to the Jewish tradition and, therefore, intolerable. However, this same section of the Torah that prohibits foreign manticism also promises that God will send a prophet to lead the Israelites, who must respect and obey him. Conceived thus, the text does not repudiate manticism entirely but, rather, commands that all forms of prognostication must be consonant with loyalty to God. In other words, this section enjoins the practice of specifically Jewish manticism. For example, typical biblical mantic techniques include prophetic communication as well as the consultation of the Urim Ve’Thummim. However, the biblical texts reflect a strong ambivalence toward fortune telling, where condemnations of illicit prognostication exist alongside the official institutions of divination (Cryer 1994). With the sealing of the biblical canon, the classical institutions of Jewish divination declined,



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the Urim and Thummim disappeared, and prophecy faded. Such anti-magical tendencies increased in both quantity and intensity within the early rabbinic literature. However, Jewish manticism survived and enjoyed an unexpected renaissance during the Middle Ages – flourishing in unprecedented ways both as a manticism of the Jews and as Jewish manticism.

On the Manticism of the Jews A profusion of sources from the Byzantine and Medieval periods testify to extensive Jewish usage of magical and mantic techniques. A prime example of such tendencies is Sefer ha-Razim (“The Book of Secrets”), a work of early Jewish sorcery that reflects Jewish life in the Land of Israel during the Byzantine period. This work lists the variegated mantic and magical prescriptions designed to be used for a variety of purposes. Written in Hebrew, the book demonstrates a thorough familiarity with the magical practices of ancient Greece and Egypt, as well as elements of both the Jewish and Gnostic traditions; serving as a prime example of ancient magic data that amalgamated both Jewish and non-Jewish qualities. Sefer ha-Razim claims to be an ancient Jewish work, which was bequeathed by Adam to Noah. However, the technical jargon employed, the absence of Jewish symbolism, and the pervasive cultural norms all testify to the fact that this work constitutes a faithful representation of a group of Jews who were unconcerned with the legitimacy of their mantic practices. Thus, for instance, the author does not hesitate to recommend the consultation of a ‘Ba’al Ov’ (a soothsayer), in unabashed contravention of an explicit Biblical prohibition: If you wish to consult a soothsayer stand in front of a grave and mention names of ‘angels of the fifth encampment’, and hold in your hand a mixture of oil and honey in a glass container […] when you leave, you should lay before him the glass container, say your words, and grasp in your hands a stalk of myrtle. And if you requested to release him, strike three times with the myrtle, spill the oil and honey, break the glass, throw down the myrtle and return to your house in a different direction. (Sefer ha-Razim I, eds. Rebiger and Schäfer, § 225, 78–79)

The extent to which similar works of Hebrew magical prescription were widespread remains uncertain. However, many extant manuscripts from the Medieval period testify to a tremendous interest, among the Jews, regarding mantic activity. For those whose conception of Judaism relies heavily upon rabbinic texts, the sort of magic described in the book of Sefer ha-Razim would seem alien or even non-Jewish, as mainstream scholars of Halakhah (Jewish law) delegitimized such practices (↗ Kanarfogel, Prognostication in Jewish Law). However, their very objection attests to its ubiquity. A widespread Medieval mantic field was lecanomancy (↗ Grünbart, Lekanomanteia Eastern Christian World). This involved pouring oil over a smooth surface (such as a mirror, sword or fingernail) and having a child or youth gaze at the running liquid.

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Through a series of spells and incantations, various demons were enjoined to appear and reveal secrets to the young participant. This technique crossed cultural boundaries and was widespread among several Jewish communities during the late Medieval period. Contemporary research has demonstrated that such activity was quite common and that these burgeoning mantic practices were not anti-Jewish, but rather anti-Rabbinic, in nature.

The Judaization of External Manticism While numerous forms of manticism were rejected by major rabbinic authorities, there remained a sizable portion of mantic arts that were incorporated within mainstream Jewish practice. In certain cases, the mantic practice in question was lifted wholesale from the surrounding non-Jewish culture. A fascinating example of this is a mantic procedure concerning a mirror and a Torah scroll, as delineated in documents within the Cairo Genizah (ca. sixteenth century): To the hidden: take a mirror of glass and a youth to gaze / into it, or a virgin maiden, and say prior to anything / onto the head of the youth with your hands on his head: “O Angel, magnificent / and glorious, purify the mind and heart of this youth, that he may understand / what is being requested from the spirits.” And after that you should whisper into the right ear of the youth / and the left ear: “Hainoy, Partayatush, Kihdauel, / Handauel, Paarfinar, Hiyosh.” And after that place your hands upon / the head of the lad and speak this oath until the lad sees / the image of a man in the mirror: “I adjure you, O Apollis Rabbah D’Shaddai, in the name of your master’s master – that is God – and in the name of the Angel / [part missing]? That you shall send P[?] and One? / [That he shall s]peak the truth to me the truth from all that is asked from him, and that he should not induce fea[r unto me]? / nor confuse me, nor visit any harm or evil upon me whatsoever, not unto me / nor the youth nor to all the people dwelling here. “May haters shall see / and be ashamed, May my enemies gaze and be reviled, for you, O God, have supported me and consoled me.” / And when you come it shall be said to you and the lad: “Blessed he who comes.” And you shall tell him to prepare / a meal, and he should eat, drink and be merry, and after the meal, you shall say / to him, to bring a Torah scroll, to seek the passage of the Ten Commandments, and he should take an oath by the word / “I am” [the Lord your God] to say the truth in all that is asked of him, and after he places / his hands upon the Torah scroll, you shall place the scroll above his head and after that ask all that you wish. (Torah Scroll K 13 2a:9–2b:11; Schäfer and Shaked 1994, 92–93)

Upon inspection, it transpires that the source of this procedure is not Jewish. It combines various advanced mantic techniques and depicts a specific communication-oriented form of prognostication. The term “Torah scroll” usually signifies the scroll of the Pentateuch that is read aloud in the synagogue, which is far too large and heavy to place upon one’s head. However, even if this text refers to a bound book (the Hebrew word sefer denotes both “scroll” and “book”), the placing of it upon one’s head via a demon is certainly somewhat sacrilegious. This procedure is probably Christian in origin and the mantic rite was originally performed using a crucifix. That the crucifix



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was replaced by the holy book is indicative of the Judaization of this procedure. Other Judaization features are adjuring in the name of God, the placing of God on a superior level to that of angels and demons, the use of a verse from the Psalms, the swearing of an oath upon the Ten Commandments, and the use of the Torah scroll both to ensure the veracity of the words of the spirit and also to reveal the hidden. An even more intriguing example is the phenomenon of “mantic wisdom”, which was considered a genuine science during the Medieval period. The principal exemplar of this was astrology. I will briefly demonstrate the unique status that this form of manticism enjoyed among late Medieval Jewish communities, until rabbinic scholars dispensed with it. We find an interesting letter sent by R. Abraham bar R. Ḥiyya ha-Nasi (a twelfth-century rabbi, mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, who lived in Barcelona) to R. Judah of Barcelona. Little is known of R. Abraham’s life, although his works were well-received by the Jewish intelligentsia and thus preserved through the multitude of copies. R. Abraham was largely responsible for assimilating more sophisticated forms of manticism into Jewish culture. In his letter to R. Judah, it appears that he requested to postpone a marriage ceremony based upon his astrological calculations, thereby arousing the ire of Spanish Jewish legalists. This letter was designed to defend his proclivity toward astrological numerology. Writing in a defensive vein, R. Abraham describes his own intellectual trajectory that included the mastering of astronomy and astrology. It appears from his statements that the rabbinic opposition to learning astrology was relatively new. He describes this new reality in an ironic, self-deprecating tone toward the end of his letter: From my youth until this day I have been a student of the wisdom of the stars, have busied myself with this pursuit, delved into and expounded upon it, and was sure of myself that I had acquired wisdom, with no sin or guilt accrued through this. However, now that I’ve seen [the opinion of] those wise, sagely, humble ones, that are paragons of sagacity and insight […]. I have noticed that that in the days of my adolescence and youth I would have been judged favorably, due to the honor that I would have been bestowed upon me by the royalty and the aristocracy, but now in my old age this is a mark of shame upon me. (Abraham bar Ḥiyya ha-Nasi, Letter xiv, lines 8–13)

This source reflects the changing attitudes toward manticism within rabbinic circles, thus offering us a peep into the epicenter of the controversy concerning the legitimacy of mantic techniques. R. Abraham distinguished between legitimate astrology and forbidden mantic techniques, since the latter are not based upon solid astrological data. This distinction between wisdom manticism and popular manticism was designed to legitimize astrology. Wisdom prognostications were reserved for an elite class of practitioners. In Jewish Medieval circles, such abilities were considered a definite indication of superior intellect and would enhance one’s communal standing. Even when such practices were eventually proscribed, this was not due to the belief that they were ineffectual. Indeed, among growing circles of twelfth-century Spanish Jewry, following the titanic efforts of Maimonides, astrology became regarded as either foolish or iniqui-

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tous and was no longer considered a form of wisdom manticism – despite the impressive amount of genuine scientific knowledge required to practice it. However, the prevalence of Maimonidean rationalism, that repudiated astrology, proved to be short-lived. Due to the spread of Kabbalah – a Medieval strain of Jewish mysticism – during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a plethora of magical and prognosticatory practices enjoyed an unprecedented renaissance. Numerous noteworthy Kabbalists endorsed mantic traditions and advocated for both their practical efficacy and religious legitimacy. This Medieval rehabilitation was epitomized in Kabbalah’s most enduring contribution to Jewish literature, the Zohar. While the Zohar’s primary function is the provision of neither magical rites nor formulae, it nevertheless contains numerous segments that delineate both, assuming them to be an indissoluble element of Jewish culture. The appearance of the Zohar conferred an aura of mystique and prestige on various forms of manticism (such as astrology, physiognomy and chiromancy; ↗ Margolin, Physiognomy and Chiromancy in the Zohar) as well as numerous prophetic techniques. Kabbalistic circles constituted a sub-elite within Jewish society, whose mystical leadership was invested with a stature second only to the scholastic-rabbinic elite. Among this cadre arose salient individuals who gained a reputation for personal magnetism and paranormal power. Prophetic Kabbalists developed techniques that primed the adherent to receive prophetic communication, while other mystics mastered various mantic techniques and disseminated these to the public. Through this combination of scholarship and popularity, Jewish manticism enjoyed an era of unprecedented prosperity.

“A Sage is Superior to a Prophet”: The Rise of the New “Classic” Jewish Manticism in the Medieval Period We shall now focus our attention upon specifically “Jewish” strains of manticism. Jewish canonical texts, compiled in the early centuries of the Common Era in Babylonia and Israel, revolved primarily around the two Talmuds: the Palestinian Talmud (compiled in the Land of Israel ca. 400 CE) and the Babylonian Talmud (compiled in Babylonia ca. 600 CE). The two Talmuds were founded upon a culture of disputation, and there is evidence of rabbinic disagreement regarding mantic practice. It is important to note that the Talmud presumes that the era of prophecy ended with the onset of national exile, and that rabbinic scholars have inherited the political and religious authority once conferred upon prophets. Both Talmuds record numerous occasions on which the sages made predictions regarding the future. Despite this, it remains difficult to hypothesize about the extent to which the Talmudic sages utilize specific mantic practices. While certain Talmudic



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sources posit some form of divine revelation, usually called the “Holy Spirit” or a “Heavenly Voice”, others make it clear that there was no direct revelation at all. However, two abilities are unquestionably “given over” to the sages: absolute mastery of the Holy Scripture and the ability to interpret it. Talmudic sources declare that these abilities allowed such sages to foretell the future through exercising these abilities. In other words, in addition to inheriting the prophets’ political clout, the sages’ textual mastery also conferred the power of prophecy itself.

Interpretative Manticism: Prognostication via the Holy Scripture and its Interpretation A prominent strain of rabbinic thought postulates a perfect correspondence between the Torah text and the physical universe. According to this widely-accepted tradition, the Torah is to be identified with Divine Wisdom, or Logos. God – in this worldview – created the world through the contemplation and actualization of the Torah text. Thus, the sage’s honed textual skills lend him the ability to decode physical and historical events – including those in the future. In other circumstances, it appears that Jewish sages utilized those same skills of textual analysis to interpret dreams and riddles. Such sources display an early example of the belief that the Torah and the cosmos constitute two sources of divine emanation and revelation, and, therefore, the same hermeneutics may serve to decipher both. In summation, we have before us a bold ideology that characterized rabbinic thinking in the Medieval period – divinely-inspired Holy Scriptures supplant direct prophetic experience. Subsequently, the word of God would manifest itself through the holy texts and their rabbinic interpretation. Whilst prophets have disappeared from the stage of history, the sages who were sufficiently proficient in textual examination might still elicit divine knowledge from the textual clues of the Holy Scriptures. An even more radical rabbinic paradigm conceived of the Torah not only as the word of God, but as the divine presence per se. Accordingly, the deepest stratum of the Torah is contained not in the plain text of the narrative but, rather, in the divine names encoded within it. During the late Middle Ages, those who were proficient in the discipline of the “Kabbalah of the names” were able to decipher strands of biblical letters that constituted divine names. These were deduced by non-linear readings of the text, including skipping over letters and enjambered readings of phrases or verses. Through repetitive readings of the divine names, certain kabbalists believed that they could achieve spiritual ascendancy that culminated in prophecy. Famous kabbalists – such as Nachmanides and, in a more radical form, Abraham Abulafia and

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R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo (“the Prophet from Erfurt”) – were enthusiastic adherents of this approach toward ultimate spiritual attainment.

Messianic Predictions and Millenarianism Thus, the most advanced form of Wisdom Manticism was hermeneutic manticism, which sought to crack the hidden codes of the Bible. During the Medieval period, various forms of hermeneutic manticism were utilized for messianic prognostications, working from Biblical verses and phrases that proved amenable to eschatological interpretation (↗ Latteri, Eschatology Jewish Traditions). The temptation to deduce the date of the Messiah’s arrival has proved considerable, and rabbinic reaction has been unambiguous: “May the lives of those who attempt to deduce the end [of days] be blown away” (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 97b). Throughout this era, innumerable attempts were made to predict the date of the Messiah’s arrival, and the moment that one prediction was proved hollow, the calculations were immediately adjusted to provide another plausible date (Eshkoli 1987). Some of these hermeneutic techniques were formed during the Classical era, while others coalesced during the early Medieval period. During the period that Julianus allowed the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, new readings of Biblical texts came to the fore, as indicated by a textual interpretation found in the works of Jerome (Dan. 11:34). This Jewish interpretation – quoted by a Church Father and possibly corroborated by archeological findings – is a classic, traditional form of Midrash. Concomitantly, less traditional forms of interpretation developed throughout the Medieval period, including the analysis of the numerical values of divine names, gematria, and “Symmetrical Histories” (Cohen 1967, 189–222; ↗ Idel, Gematria and Prognostication). Such forms of expertise largely consisted of Biblical interpretation and expounding upon lines in the Talmud that included messianic hints. Hermeneutics combined with jarring historical events gave rise to an expertise in explaining past and future events through an eschatological lens. Millenarianism also formed an important strand of this tapestry. Both Jews and Christians were actively engaged in producing messianic calculations around 1240 CE (the year 5000 in the Jewish calendar) and the participants were aware of the tremendous repercussions of these calculations, regarding both internal Jewish activity as well as significant events that occurred between Jews and Christians (Yuval 2000, 267–306).

Bibliomancy The phenomenon of using the Torah text for prognostication precedes the Medieval period by several centuries (Van der Horst 1998 and 2019). However, it was during the



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Medieval period that the Torah text began to serve as the central prophetic medium for prognostication via a wide variety of techniques. Conceived against the ideological background described above, the Medievalists were merely adopting and extending a more ancient textual paradigm. The Talmud is replete with the utilization of Biblical verses to reveal concealed matters. One of the most prominent techniques, identified in several of the sources as bat kol (a heavenly voice), involves asking a child to recite the verse he happens to be studying; the child then quotes the verse, which is regarded as having preordained divinatory power. Divination by use of biblical verses need not be restricted by their original meanings; rather, it is intended to be applied to the circumstances in which the soothsayer finds himself.

Questions and Answers from Heaven At times, a Biblical book or verse appears in the rabbinic literature as a mantic omen within a different prophetic medium. This can take the form of a dream or a person’s immediate thoughts upon waking: “If one rises early and a Scriptural verse comes to his mouth, this is a form of minor prophecy” (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 55b). At other times, the verse does not appear in the dream itself but can be used to interpret the dream. It appears that some of the sages regarded these verses as literal prophecies, while others were inclined to denigrate them. Thus, for instance, the Babylonian Talmud reports – in a parodic vein – a story detailing the interpretation of dreams by two of the greatest Talmudic sages of Babylonia, Abaye and Rava, which included the very same verses. The interpreter, Bar Hedya, explicated one dream in a negative light and the other in a positive one, based on the amount he was paid (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 56a). People’s belief in the prophetic powers of verses appearing in dreams would continue to expand over the course of the Middle Ages (↗ Kuyt, Dream Interpretation Jewish Traditions). This can be seen, for instance, in the famous question sent to Rav Hai Gaon (939–1038), by a group of people who testify that biblical verses have served both to catalyze the prophecy of the dreamers and to answer their queries: So with respect to asking a query in a dream, there are among us several elders and pious men who know [the divine names] and [periodically] fast for several days, neither eating meat nor drinking wine; sleep in a pure place; pray; and recite specific verses and a certain number of letters. They then lie down and have wondrous dreams, akin to prophecy. Some of them are still alive and are known to us, and each has a specific, determined prophetic avatar: to this one appears an elder; to his fellow appears a lad. The avatar tells him and recites before him verses relating to the matter about which he had asked his query. (Teshuvot ha-Ge’onim ha-Ḥadashot, ed. Simcha Emanuel, 2nd ed., 126)

Most noteworthy here is that these teachers do not give direct answers to the queries but rather quote verses that suggest something about the future. One intriguing

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expression of this method of acquiring knowledge is the book Responsa from Heaven by R. Jacob of Marvège (twelfth/thirteenth centuries; Provence). Documented in this work are celestial visions that enabled R. Jacob to decide on contentious points of Jewish law. Here, too, there is frequent recourse to the explanatory power of biblical verses. As mentioned, the rabbinic legal authorities were opposed to various forms of augury, which were seen as violations of the biblical prohibition against sorcery. By contrast, the divinatory use of the Torah was given special status in Jewish legal works. So, for instance, in the book Sodei Razayya, attributed to R. Eleazar of Worms (Germany, ca. 1165–ca. 1230), the outstanding leader of the Ashkenazic Pietists, this means of soothsaying is ascribed even to the angels themselves. Commentators and legists with a sharply rationalistic orientation accorded bibliomancy an exceptional degree of acceptability. Even Maimonides (1138–1204), the most outspoken opponent of magic, astrology, and divination, ruled: “If one asks a child, ‘What verse are you learning?’ and he responds with a verse from the blessings, it is permitted for one to rejoice and say, ‘That is a lucky sign’  ” (Mishneh Torah, “Laws of Idolatry,” 11:5). Still, he limited the power of the omen to revealing information about events already in the past and to situations where receiving the said sign would not lead to any sort of practical course of action. We may deduce from Maimonides’ colossal legal responsa that bibliomancy was accorded much credence by the Jewish communities of his time, as we see from the following question and answer: Question: Please instruct us regarding the case of a person who opens Torah scrolls [for the sake of determining the future] by lottery – is doing so permissible or not? Especially since the man in question is a prayer leader, and he goes to the non-Jews and the uncircumcised to open the scrolls and cast [lots] for them and has achieved renown among them in this connection, and this has, at times, been beneficial. Is this behavior permissible? He himself is not ashamed, nor is the community displeased, and there is no desecration of God’s name. Should he be relieved of his position or not? Answer: He should be prevented from doing so for non-Jews, because this can result in the desecration of God’s name. But he should not be removed [from his position] and should not be punished. So writes Moses. (The Responsa of Maimonides, ed. J Blau, § 172)

The moderate response of Maimonides, who fought strenuously against all forms magic and manticism throughout his career, is initially surprising, and remains a testament to the widespread acceptance of hermeneutic manticism within Jewish culture. The process by which these practices were formally sanctioned reached its zenith upon their incorporation into the canonical works of Jewish law, and they received endorsement by foundational works such as the Arba’ah Ṭurim, Shulḥan Arukh, and Mappah. Rabbi Joseph Karo (1488–1575) writes, in his Shulḥan Arukh: “If one builds a house, sires a son, or marries [and is subsequently successful in business], though he may not treat this as a divinatory omen, it does nevertheless portend well for him.” Moshe Isserles, the Rem”a, adds: “Similarly, it is permissible to tell a child, ‘Recite for me the verse you are learning’ […] though one who maintains his innocence and



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simply trusts in God, mercy encompasses him (Ps. 32:10)” (Yoreh De‘ah 179:4). Such statements refer to divination by means of biblical verses recited orally, not necessarily to the use of books for mantic purposes. However, a contemporary of Karo and Isserles, Rabbi Jacob Castro (1525–1610), in commenting on the ruling of the Shulḥan Arukh that one should not inquire of astrologers and soothsayers, writes: “Nevertheless, we are not overly exacting with people about this.” He also proposes a loophole: “It is possible that asking someone who has consulted with astrologers or soothsayers is not so severe a violation.” Later, he adds: “It seems to me that everyone would agree that it is permissible to open the Torah to see which verse turns up, for it is our lifeblood” (Erekh Leḥem, § 179, f. 35a–b).

Goralot – Lot Divination Cleromancy, or lot divination, was one of the most prevalent and widely-accepted divination techniques throughout the Jewish tradition. The Biblical literature refers extensively to the use of lot divination, whereas the post-Biblical literature testifies to its use in wider, non-establishment circles. In ancient Jewish culture, cleromancy was utilized for numerous functions, including prognostication, the election of officials and adjudicating political decisions. In later Jewish culture, however, lot divination was generally limited to the personal sphere. Importantly, throughout the early phases of Jewish culture, cleromancy entailed the use of physical objects (pieces of wood, clay, arrows, etc.) whereas, during the later phases, it took on different forms, most prominently divination via texts, i.  e., sortes books (↗ Heiles, Sortes) and bibliomancy. Although lot divination has a trans-historical presence within Jewish culture, one can discern three major transformations along a diachronic axis between the Biblical era and the Medieval period: the transference of its usage from the societal elite to folk culture; from prognostication to a limited use for personal decision-making; and from simple physical lots to sophisticated substitutions. Whilst some objected to their divinatory function, lots were never attributed the same level of prohibition as other mantic forms. Indeed, some practitioners were members of the religious elite so potential religious problems were dispelled by discernible efforts to award religious and legal legitimacy to this type of divination. For this reason, lot divination was usually considered a legitimate Jewish institution and often classed as a kind of “pious manticism”. In the Bible, cleromancy was widespread and usually employed as a means of communicating with God in order to see into the past and gain direction regarding the future. It was most commonly signified by the word Goral (root: G-R-L). While the Deuteronomistic law codes (chapter 18) certainly prohibit many forms of divination and manticism, the overarching thrust of the Bible may be read as an endorsement of the legitimacy of such techniques. Cleromancy is absent from the main corpus of the

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classic rabbinic literature, but various forms of divination appear in other Jewish texts of the period (such as Sefer ha-Razim), and their ubiquity across the Medieval mystical and halakhic literature testifies to the common use of divination via lots. Concomitantly, a new form of drawing lots emerged, that of using holy books (bibliomancy) to provide answers, which was also referred to as Goral. The rabbinic literature offers only hints at the mantic employment of books, the most explicit and famous of these being the custom of the Amora Shmuel adduced in Babylonian Talmud (Hullin 95b): “Shmuel inquired in the book.” Such a book may have been the Pentateuch or sortes books, known as the goralot. These were practical divinatory works that instructed supplicants to undergo various – seemingly random – processes in order to extract an answer from their pages. Greco-Roman culture ascribed great significance to many such mantic techniques, and their subsequent dissemination within the surrounding cultures led to the intensification of rabbinic opposition to lot divination. These rulings, however, failed to eradicate cleromancy. On the contrary, throughout the Middle Ages, sortes books continued to develop. From the Geonic period (tenth century) onward, there exists detailed evidence of this form of divination throughout Jewish culture. According to Yael Okun, Director of the Department of Manuscripts at the National Library in Jerusalem, there are over 800 titles of sortes books catalogued in the department. Gideon Bohak (Bohak 2010) has located 128 fragments of sortes books as well as 22 geomantic books in the Cairo genizah collection (↗ Saar, Divination in the Cairo Genizah). These books were copied, disseminated and printed repeatedly throughout the centuries. In addition to the sortes books, another popular form of bibliomancy (mistakenly attributed to R. Elijah of Vilna) was opening the Bible at random and divining an answer from the first verse to appear.

Geomancy Another intriguing form of manticism that falls into this category is geomancy. Traditionally, geomancy involved the formation of a number of dots on the ground or on a designated chart, carried out by either the seeker himself or an intermediary (↗ Grünbart, Mantic Arts Eastern Christian World; ↗ Melvin-Koushki, Geomancy Islamic World; ↗ Rapisarda, Mantic Arts Western Christian World; ↗ Regourd, Mantic Arts Islamic World). The dots were subsequently connected into a discernible shape that the mantic practitioner would decipher and utilize for his prognostication. In Jewish circles during the Medieval period, not only was this technique immensely popular, but its substitute – the practice of drawing random dots on a page and decoding them via a ready-made chart of answers – was equally widespread. This development provides an excellent example of the gradual removal of the presuppositions from which manticism was born, and the investment of entirely new meanings in ancient prac-



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tices. In contradistinction to the Arabic terms (Alm al-Rimal – the science of the sand, or Darb al-Rimal – the beating of the sand), Jewish literature referred to this practice as Goralot ha-Hol–the lottery of the sand. This terminology is testament to the effort to transpose the tacit Jewish acceptance of drawing lots onto this parallel form of manticism. Many forms of divinatory practice were appropriated from the Islamic tradition but were “converted” and imbued with unique Jewish traits in order to prove their loyalty to the Jewish tradition. Many such practices were attributed to Biblical characters and leading sages, and their content abounds with Jewish symbology and textual references. Moreover, many include a preface which narrates the Jewish origins of the book and adduces historic or textual precedents legitimizing divination. We will include here just one example of how legitimacy was conferred upon mantic works of this kind. It is an introductory prayer for using book of lots which ascribes to them ancient roots and tremendous potency. The use of similar forms of divination continues unabated to this day, particularly among Jewish communities influenced by mystical works: And this is the prayer that you should pray: O God, Power of all Powers, Master of all Masters, King of all Kings, The Great, Mighty and Wondrous King, who sits upon the cherubs, I have come, before you, overwhelmed with fear, awe, trembling, nervousness and perspiration, to beseech, with prayer and supplication, before your throne of glory, with kneeling and prostration, with a humble, shattered heart, to appeal before your Majesty, that your attribute of mercy shall envelope me at this time and moment, to inform me of the secret [answer] to my question, that which I desire, through these lots that were performed by your adherents, your seers and prophets, that you revealed to them your secrets and your covenants, as the verse states “For God has done nothing but reveal his secrets to his prophets” and the verse writes “God’s secret to his adherents and his covenant to those he has informed.” Thus, it is known and clear before you, O Lord, My God and the God of our forefathers that when the temple stood, your prophets and seers would prophesy, and your priests would inquire of the Urim and Thumim, and they would be informed regarding future events, whether good or bad, but now, due to our many sins, the temple has been destroyed prophecy has ceased, and we have no priests, prophets or seers to inform us, of that which is necessary for us. Therefore, I have come before you, with a righteous heart and a prayerful soul, to inquire through these lots, advice, for we know not whether to turn right or left. Therefore, may it be your will, before your throne of Glory, that you straighten my heart, that you guide my hand over the letters of your Torah, and that you reveal the fundamentals of my question and the desire of my heart and fulfil my needs with your abundant mercy and bountiful kindness, for I do this through your adherents, and stand me upright regarding the correct order, that I not deviate through trusting [only] in my query, for I trust only in you, and in your kindness I lean, and in your salvation I hope, O Great and Almighty God, I will cast these lot. Desire in me, safeguard me, for you are my chalice and my sustenance, may my lot fall favorably upon me, even my inheritance Be tranquil for me… Amen (London, MS Wellcome Institute A30, 23a–24a)

Why did the Jewish tradition adopt the term goralot to describe a wide variety of divination techniques? I believe that, despite the sustained opposition to divination in

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general and to goralot in particular, the term goral did not develop an overarching negative connotation. On the contrary, the long history of lot divination within the Jewish tradition awarded it a de facto legitimacy. The adaptation of the sortes books (↗ Heiles, Sortes) and the use of the Pentateuch as a source of divinatory lottery enabled them to become, gradually and haltingly, an accepted Jewish tradition. Using Michael D. Swartz’s terminology, we can even see them as an example of “pietist mantics” (1995). Interestingly, in contrast to other mantic techniques from the Jewish tradition, the sortes books remained firmly within the sphere of divination and never invaded the sphere of halakhah. This example allows us to reconsider the validity of the accepted theories regarding the relation between magic and religion. In contrast to the classic theories of Robertson-Smith (1889, 90) and Durkheim (1995 [1912], 41–42), which understand magic as threatening the social order, the use of lot divination appears able to coexist harmoniously with religious and social orders. Although certain streams within the Jewish tradition frowned upon many mantic techniques, the use of textual lots, especially when revolving around the use of canonical Jewish texts, may be seen to have received tacit approval and to have been judged as being in consonance with the biblical exhortation to be “perfect with the Lord your God.”

Selected Bibliography Blau, Joshua (ed.). The Responsa of Maimonides, 4 vols. Jerusalem (Reuben Mas), 1957–1986 [Hebrew]. Bohak, Gideon. Ancient Jewish Magic: A History. Cambridge, 2008. Bohak, Gideon. “Towards a Catalogue of the Magical, Astrological, Divinatory and Alchemical Fragments from the Cambridge Genizah Collections.” “From a Sacred Source”: Genizah Studies in Honour of Professor Stefan C. Reif. Eds. Ben Outhwaite and Siam Bhayro. Leiden, 2010. 53–79. Cohen, Gerson D. Sefer ha-Qabalah: The Book of Tradition by Abraham ibn Daud. Philadelphia, 1967. Cryer, Frederick H. Divination in Ancient Israel and Its Near Eastern Environment: A Socio-Historical Investigation. Sheffield, 1994. Dan, Joseph. Ancient Jewish Mysticism. Trans. Shmuel Himelstein. Tel Aviv (Ministry of Defense Books), 1993. Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York, 1995 [1912]. Emanuel, Simcha (ed.). Teshuvot ha-Ge’onim ha-Ḥadashot. 2nd ed. Jerusalem 2019 [Hebrew]. Eshkoli, Aharon Ze’ev. The Jewish Messianic Movements. Jerusalem (Bialik Institute), 1987 [Hebrew]. Gaster, Moses. Studies and Texts in Folklore, Magic, and Medieval Romance, Hebrew Apocrypha, and Samaritan Archaeology. 3 vols. London, 1928. Gruenwald, Ithamar. Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism. Leiden, 2014. Harari, Juval. Jewish Magic Before the Rise of Kabbalah. Trans. Batya Stein. Detroit, 2017. Idel, Moshe. Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid. Albany, NY, 1990. Kanarfogel, Ephraim. Peering through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period. Detroit, 2000. Leicht, Reimund. “The Reception of Astrology in Medieval Ashkenazi Culture.” Aleph 13.2 (2013): 201–234.



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Liebes, Yehuda. Studies in Jewish Myth and Messianism. Trans. from the Hebrew Batya Stein. Albany, NY, 2012. Rebiger, Bill, Peter Schäfer, Shaul Shaked, and Reimund Leicht (eds., et al.). Magische Texte aus der Cairoer Geniza. Vol. 3. Tübingen, 1999. Robertson-Smith, William. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: First Series. The Fundamental Institutions. London (A. and C. Black) and New York (D. Appleton), 1889. Schäfer, Peter, and Shaul Shaked. Magische Texte aus der Cairoer Geniza, I–II. Tübingen, 1994 and 1997. Schäfer, Peter. The Origins of Jewish Mysticism. Tübingen, 2009. Schäfer, Peter, and Bill Rebiger (eds.). Sefer ha-Razim I und II. Das Buch der Geheimnisse I und II. Band 2: Einleitung, Übersetzung und Kommentar. Tübingen, 2009. Scholem, Gershom. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York, 1961. Schwartz, Dov. Studies on Astral Magic in Medieval Jewish Thought. Leiden, 2004. Schwartz, Michael D. “Magical Piety in Ancient and Medieval Judaism.” Ancient Magic and Ritual Power. Eds. Marvin W. Meyer and Paul Allan Mireki. Leiden, 1995. 167–183. Schwartz, Michael D. “Divination and Its Discontents: Finding and Questioning Meaning in Ancient and Medieval Judaism.” Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World. Eds. Scott B. Noegel, Joel Thomas Walker, and Brannon M. Wheeler. University Park, PA, 2003. 155–166. Schwartz, Michael D. Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism. Princeton, 2014. Schwarz, Zechariah, (ed.). “ʾIggeret R. Abraham b. Ḥiyya ha-Nasi še-katav le-R. Yehudah b. R. Barzillai.” Festschrift Adolf Schwarz zum siebzigsten Geburtstag. Eds. Samuel Krauss and Victor Aptowitzer. Vienna, 1917. i–xiv [Hebrew]. Sela, Shlomo. Abraham Ibn Ezra and the Rise of Medieval Hebrew Science. Leiden, 2003. Shaked, Shaul, and Joseph Naveh. Magical Spells and Formulae: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity. Jerusalem (Magnes Press), 1993. Van der Horst, Pieter Willem. “Sortes: Sacred Books as Instant Oracles in Late Antiquity.” The Use of Sacred Books in the Ancient World. Eds. Leonard Victor Rutgers et al. Louvain, 1998. 143–174. Van der Horst, Pieter Willem. “Sortes Biblicae Judaicae.” Sortilege and Its Practitioners in Late Antiquity: My Lots are in Thy Hands. Eds. AnneMarie Luijendijk and William E. Klingshirn. With the assistance of Lance Jenott. Leiden and Boston, 2019. 154–172. Wolfson, Elliot R. Through a Speculum that Shines: Visions and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism. Princeton, 1994. Yuval, Israel Jacob. Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Tel Aviv, 2000 [Hebrew], and Berkeley, CA, 2006 [English].*

Anne Regourd

Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World The mantic arts presented here have existed throughout history. They have been formed gradually and have evolved in their destinations as well as their processes. Astrology invaded the cleromantic arts at an early stage. Authors and practitioners were often versed in several practices reflected or recorded in many texts and treatises. What now represents the “nuclear” form of a science or art, allowing it to be clearly and distinctly identified, may actually result from combinations  – not to mention additions.

Definitions and Terminology In Arabic, munajjim and tanjīm derive, like nujūm, from the same root, which refers to stars. In some modern texts, munajjim is opposed to falakī, who is properly an astronomer. Today, however, at least in the Middle East, the words munajjim and tanjīm have gained wider acceptance, which covers various divinatory practices, some of which are completely unrelated to the stars and similar to “fortune-tellers” practices, like reading coffee dregs or chiromancy (Nallino 1944, 2; Shāmī 1994; Regourd 2003). As we lack a historical dictionary of the Arabic language, the only way to determine the evolution within the denomination of divinatory practices and that of their practitioners, is by resorting to historical sources. In many of the tales of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, which has been the vehicle that disseminated representations of diviners and their practices, munajjim appears to be a generic term, naming practitioners of different kinds of divination, and also of medicine. In three tales, however, Niʻma and Nuʻm, ʻAjīb and Gharīb, and Qamar al-Zamān and Budur, it covers the case of an astrologer who also practices geomancy (Regourd 1992, 143–148 and 150). As the tales are often composite and sometime result from the patching together of different versions, they are difficult to date. Starting from biographical sources or monographs, we find that one of the great codifiers of geomancy was ʻAbd Allāh ibn Maḥfūf al-Munajjim, who lived before 1265. Another interesting example is that of the late Mamluk astrologer, geomancer, and historian, Ibn Zunbul, author of al-Kitāb Naql min Kitāb al-Qānūn, i.  e. “The Book Based on (?) the ‘Book of Rules’,” which also incorporate a malḥama text (see below; KleinAcknowledgement: The author warmly thanks Antonella Ghersetti (Ca' Foscari) for providing her with very valuable information. She and the editors are also very grateful to Charles Burnett and Petra Schmidl for their collaboration in arranging this article. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-024



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Franke 1973). The proceedings of a trial conducted by the Roman Inquisition in 1605, that are now preserved in the Cathedral Archives in Mdina (Malta), record accusations of the practice of demonic magic raised by Christians against Sellem ibn al-Sheikh Manṣūr, a Muslim from Cairo, who was captured by the Knights of St John, by then established in Malta. Interestingly, he was an astrologer, as was his father, al-Sheikh Manṣūr, in Cairo. During his trial, however, he admitted having taught geomancy to an architect, Vittorio Cassar, a Knight of Malta (see the Magic in Malta, 1605 project). The close association between astrological and geomantic practices is exemplified by a painted textile in the Nasser D. Khalili collection in London (Maddison and Savage-Smith 1997, 152–153, no. 105), which is a product of the early eighteenth century, and bears a short astrological text in Persian with some of the 16 geomantic figures associated with the lunar nodes (the dragon’s head and tail related to eclipses; see also ↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World, 536). The idea that geomancy is linked to astrology remains extant in Yemen today, where geomancers underline that they are complementary: “Astrology deals with the heavens, geomancy with the earth.”

Historical Sources Extant written accounts of mantic arts have often arrived via much later copies that are not always dated and frequently anonymous. A whole variety of records, ranging from practitioners’ random assemblies of text excerpts and comments (scrapbooks) to encrypted books, are combined, producing another consequence: that of the heterogeneity of the texts, whether by the same author and under the same name or not. The transmission of specialized knowledge can also be oral and therefore absent from the records. One of the most obvious examples is divination by cowry-shells, regarding which our present knowledge derives from ethnographic records from the nineteenth century at the earliest, or anthropological studies. Although a highly popular practice, it is impossible to single out a book devoted to its technique. The existence of such arts is therefore difficult to estimate, but, given that traditions are long-lasting, it is possible that they were practiced as early as the medieval period. Moreover, it raises the issue of literate and non-literate divination and its social implications.

Techniques and Manifestations Mantic arts are subsumed here under three main categories, the distinction between which is based on their techniques: cleromantic practices, speculations on the numerical value of the letters of the alphabet, and physiognomonic divination.

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Cleromantic Practices Cleromantic practices concern casting lots in the widest sense of the word. Among those which have been transmitted to us in writing together with historical records of their practices and usages are geomancy (ʻilm al-raml) and zāʼirja. In the case of divination based on cowry shells, we will finally examine a cleromantic practice which has been transmitted orally.

Geomancy Geomancy, like other practices which were commonly classified as mantic sciences, such as al-zāʼirja [q.v.], and divination by cowry shells, usually addresses personal questions like queries about travel, marriage, childbirth, trade, business, etc., all related to daily life (↗ Melvin-Koushki, Geomancy Islamic World; ↗ Cooper and Schmidl, Geomantic Artefacts). Geomancy  – like divination by cowry shells  – is also used to detect lost or stolen objects, uncover hidden treasures or find one’s way (see, for instance, BnF Ar. 2631, 65r; Thesiger 1993, 379–380). It is noteworthy that, in Arabic, the expression for geomancy refers to sand (raml), at least since the ninth century (Fahd 1987, 196–197, and n. 3): it is commonly called ḍarb al-raml, ʻilm al-raml and khāṭṭ al-raml (lit. striking the sand, science of the sand, and drawing lines on the sand, respectively). Even in mid-twentieth century Damascus, geomancers would carry sand in a cloth to their customary place of practice. The story of the Knight of Malta at the end of the sixteenth century as well as the thirteenth century geomantic device described below show at least the interest of influential people and warriors in this type of divination. A thin brass plate in the Khalili Collection, estimated to be from the late Safavid period (early eighteenth century), may provide an example of a specific usage of geomancy: “to help the user decide on courses of action that might increase his stature in society or gain favour among the powerful” (Maddison and Savage-Smith 1997, 149 and also 158–159, no. 108). On the other hand, the question of requesting access to the ruler also appears in books of geomancy: e.  g. in the Kitāb al-muthallath of Ibn Maḥfūf. A column in a table of questions/answers, according to the results of drawing lots, is intended for this purpose (see Oxford, Bodl., Or. 505, 102v, dated 1872–1873). These tables, offering “ready-made” verdicts, are also indicative of the popularization of the practice. Some usages of geomantic signs remain mysterious, like their presence in the margins of a manuscript of Kalila and Dimna (BnF Ar. 3467), and on a small nineteenth-century drum from Morocco held at the Louvre (no. MD 2002–202). The acknowledged and historical master of geomancy is Abū ʻAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʻUthmān al-Zanātī. His nisba of al-Zanātī is usually seen as an indication of his affiliation to the North African Berber tribe of Zanāta. A possible Berber origin of geomancy is still under discussion, but other hypotheses are not excluded; for



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example, transmission from India via Yemen (Regourd 1997, 111 and n. 14, Ms. Sanaa 2797, ff. 53a–209b copied in the inland village of Turayba in Yemen in 1657–1658). In the chain of transmission (tasalsul) of geomancy, al-Zanātī follows Abū Saʻīd al-Ṭarābulsī, who was thus his master and is quoted as an author at intervals. It can be said with certainty that al-Zanātī lived before 1230, for he is cited as an authority on geomancy by ʻAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʻUmar ibn Abī Bakr al-Dimashqī, better known as al-Jawbarī (Savage-Smith and Smith 1980, 2). We possess little detailed information on his life but, in the Arab world, he remains considered until the present day the founder of geomancy and also its major authority. Numerous manuscripts have been attributed to him over the centuries not only in Arabic, but in Karshūnī, Hebrew and, lately, Turkish Ottoman, a posterity which granted him an extensive fame in space and in the course of time (BnF Ar. 2758, dated 1607, is the earliest dated manuscript in our hands). Abridged texts written for the purpose of transmission contributed to the dissemination of his work and manuscripts of didactic poetry for advanced scholars (urjūzas, like BnF Ar. 5014 and 2758 and Oxford, Bodleian, Or. 405, 1r–39v), show that geomancy was part of the transmitted sciences and confirm al-Zanātī as an authority. In view of the confused and relatively limited corpus of geomantic writings prior to the fourteenth century, the divinatory geomantic instrument of the British Museum, Department of Oriental Antiquities, signed by Muḥammad ibn Khutlukh al-Mawṣilī and dated 1241–1242, represents a system by which geomancy was practised at the time (Savage-Smith and Smith 1980). The technique of geomancy, as described in the manuscripts under the name of al-Zanātī, and embodied in the thirteenth century device is based on casting lines of dots arbitrarily onto sand. In a first step, each line is reduced to one dot, if the amount is odd, and to two – or a short stroke, if even (see Fig. 15). The resulting patterns form the basis of the four-line figures (shakl, pl. ashkāl) used in geomancy (see the equivalent in ↗ Rapisarda, Mantic Arts Western Christian World, Fig. 12). In this manner, four initial figures are created (I–IV; see Fig. 16, also for the following description), the mothers (al-ummahāt), from which are generated four others (V–VIII), the daughters (al-banāt), by re-grouping all of the first lines (I.1, II.1, III.1, IV.1) of the mothers to the first daughter (V), the second line (I.2, II.2, III.2, IV.2) to the second daughter (VI), and so on. These eight figures (I–VIII) form the first row of the geomantic tableau; by combining each pair of them (A–D), the four figures of the next row are generated (IX–XII), the grand-daughters (al-ḥafīdāt) or nieces (al-mutawallidāt, lit. “the born/generated ones”). The dots in each line of a couple are counted and reduced to one dot, if the amount is odd, and to two  – or a short stroke  –, if even. Accordingly the two figures of the next row (XIII and XIV), the two additionals (al-zawāʼid) or the first and second witness (al-shawāhid), are generated and out of these two a final figure (XV), the balance or judge (al-mīzān or al-qāḍī). In the same manner another figure (XVI) is generated by combining the judge (XV) and the first mother (I), the reconciler (al-ʻaqiba) – slightly different kinds of calculation are also used to produce these figures (also in Regourd 1997, 113).

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Fig. 15: Generating geomantic figures by casting lines of dots arbitrarily on sand (scheme based on the model of: Savage-Smith and Smith 2004, 222). Photo credits: Matthias Heiduk.

An interesting chapter from the treatises on geomancy is that on ikhrāj al-ḍamir (“The Extraction of the ḍamir”). A customer comes to the practitioner with a question, which is worrying him or occupying all his attention. He can conceal the question from the practitioner, or reveal it, but this is of no importance, as the geomancer can discover the subliminal question, which is the customer’s “real” and final question (ḍamir may be translated as “subconscious”) by using geomancy. This operation helps to demonstrate the skill of the practitioner and enhance his reputation among the audience, but can also unveil the customer’s true motivations to him. The determination of the real question, which is “floating” in the air during the casting of the dots and “conveys” (or: influences) the result, confirms that the tableau, answers a definite question, as it also does in divination by cowry shells (Regourd 1997, 117–118). Far from being a secondary science compared to astrology, both technically and by comparison with other divinatory practices, geomancy was appreciated for its excellence. An example is found in a short tract in defense of geomancy, originating in the Iranian world and written by Sharaf al-Dīn ʻAlī Yazdī (d. 1454), dynastic historian to the Timurids and occultist, entitled Faṣlī dar bāb-i raml. Resident in Cairo, Yazdī was a member of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʼ movement of Neo-Pythagorean, Neo-Platonic thinkers. He provided proof from the science of letters (ʻilm al-ḥurūf) of the validity of the pedigree of geomancy (Melvin-Koushki 2017, 30–31). Yemen, in view of its shared conception of geomancy, can be affiliated to the “philosophical” climate of the early modern Perso-Islamicate world (Regourd 1999; for Iran from the nineteenth century onward, see Doostdar 2018, under geomancy). Yazdī’s treatise brings to the discussion



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Fig. 16: A geomantic tableau (scheme based on the model of: ­Savage-Smith and Smith 2004, 222). Photo credits: Matthias Heiduk.

material about a critical and contextualized approach to Ibn Khaldūn’s views in his Muqaddima, which are often taken as a mediaeval historical source regarding the practice of occult sciences. Finally, it should be noted that, because of the paucity of historical narrative sources, researchers have been interested in geomancy for its documentary value as a marker of the penetration of Islam into Africa.

Zāyirja or zāʼirja (pl. -āt or zayārij) Zāyirja – or zāʼirja – an ambiguous term, in the context of mantic practices in general, means a picture, a diagrammatic representation of the universe (zāyirjat al-ʻālam) or the science underlying this representation (ʻilm al-zāyirja), whose invention is usually attributed to al-Sabtī (Ibn Khaldūn-Rosenthal, pl. I & II, vol. III, 204). With regard to the origin of the term, the encyclopedic dictionary Tāj al-ʻarūs of Murtaḍā­ al-Zabīdī (II, 55–56, repeated by Lane 1863–1893, vol. 1, 1274–1275), relates zīj, as a science of astronomy, or celestial spheres, to zāʾija, i.  e. the square or round figure used by astrologers (munajjimūn) to represent the horoscope, or the position of the stars at the moment of birth. To support his assumption, al-Zabīdī cites al-Ghalīl’s Kitāb al-shifāʼ, who borrows it from Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Mafātīḥ al-ʻulūm. Indeed, Abū Maʻshar, in his Kitāb al-Milal wa-l-duwal (mid-ninth century), uses the word zāʼirja for the horoscope itself (Burnett-Yamamoto, part 8, chapter 2), as do other astrologers. As for the contribution of Lane, he adds that zāʾija is an Arabization of the Persian

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zāyca (Moʻīn, 1992, vol. II, 1716–1717, zāyeja and zāy-ca). We note, in the same sense of a Persian origin of the term, the indifferent use of zāyija and zāyirja by the mathematician and astrologer Abū Saʻīd Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʻAbd al-Jalīl al-Sijzī (fl. late sixth century), Kitāb zāyirjāt fī al-haylāj wa-al-kadkhudāh (BnF Ar. 6686, f. 24v; Brockelmann, GAL S I, no.  21 (sub al-Sijāzī) 389; Sezgin, GAS, VII, 178). Zāyirja is usually derived from to the science of letters (ʻilm al-ḥurūf): according to Aḥmad ibn ʻAlī al-Būnī, it comes partly from jafr (al-Būnī, n.d., part 3, 345); for Ibn Khaldūn, it constitutes a branch of the sīmiyāʼ (mystic of letters; Muqaddima 1988, 401; McDonald 1997; Lory 1985). In addition, astrological data are taken into account, such as the ascendant (al-ṭāliʻ) of the moment when one begins to practice, the names of the signs of the zodiac, or the division by twelve. Finally, and this is the aspect by which the zāyirja has been most frequently described: it consists of a series of concentric circles enclosed by a square in most examples, crossed by twelve rays (awtār) at intervals of 30°. The concentric spheres represent, in principle, the spheres of the seven planets and, according to variables or imprecise descriptions and not exhaustively, the elements, natures, signs of the zodiac, sciences of men, and lunar mansions. Written on the rays, that recall the signs of the zodiac, are letters or numbers (abjad, zimām, ghubār). The verso of the zāyirja consists of a number of boxes, e.  g., of 54 × 131 cases in the pamphlet of the shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn ʻAbd al-Mālik ibn ʻAbd Allāh al-Marjānī, composed in 1371 (Reinaud 1943, 3–4 and 214); 55 × 131 cases in Ibn Khaldūn’s Muqaddima; 55 × 128 cases in an illustration of a Turkish translation of the Muqaddima according to the observations of de Slane (III, 206). These cases are sometimes empty, but usually contain numbers or letters. Ibn Khaldūn, in his description of the zāyirja, notes three systems: abjad, the use of Arabic letters as numbers, ghubār, to designate the nine digits of Indian origin, and zimām used in Maghribī administration (al-Muqaddima, 408; Colin 1933). Lemay notes tables of correspondence between abjad numbers, oriental indian numbers, and zimām in two astrological manuscripts, BnF Ar. 2582 (attributed to Abū Maʻshar), ca. eighteenth century, f. 2r, and 2584, f. 2r (Lemay, 1982, 386  ff). To arrive at an answer, the diviner performs a set of operations that can be so complex that it takes a whole day to complete them (Jean-Léon l’Africain 1956, vol. I, 218–220). Ibn Khaldūn’s first-hand account provides a sense of this. This mantic technique nevertheless had simplified forms (cf. Lane 1923, 266–267, or al-Ṭūkhī, al-Zāyirja al-handasiyya fī kashf al-asrār al-khafiyya 1948, 1–61). The questions asked at the mantic table concern, typically, the everyday and the utilitarian, but the Kitāb Uṣūl al-ʻuqūl, attributed to the famous Andalusian mystic Ibn ʻArabī (d. 1240) (Yahia 1964, II, no. 808, 519, and Fahd 1987, 244–245, n. 6), indicates that this device makes it possible to extract the names of angels and beings from beyond the seven spheres, as well as the names of God. If the question is formulated as an alternative, e.  g., will the sale be good or not?, the answer is not limited to being either positive or negative in a binary fashion, but takes the form of a well-rounded expression. Several authors insist that the answer is returned in the form of a verse, ḥawīl, which is limited to a certain number of letters, and thus requires the elimination of the excess.



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Sufi-inspired texts regard zāyirja as providing knowledge of the highest order that gives direct access to divine secrets, some of which, like the knowledge of the 99 names of God in their correct order, ensure entry into Paradise. It also reveals cosmological developments that emphasize the correspondence (rabṭ) existing between heaven and earth, which constitutes the bedrock on which the design of the diagram rests (Ibn ʻArabī, Kitāb Uṣūl al-ʻuqūl, among others mss 2684, ff. 91r, 98r or 2694, f. 2r, 12v, and the anonymous Kitāb Ṭuruq al-sālikīn wa-kunūz asrār al-ʻārifīn, BnF Ar. 2684, ff. 31–52, posterior to al-Sabtī, cited in f. 39v, cf. especially the beginning and 39r ff.). The paths of transmission (tasalsul) indicate that the zāyirja is an ancient science, dating back to the Prophet via Hudhayfa ibn Yamān (al-Marjānī, op. cit., 215), then to Idrīs, who is often invoked in connection with the divinatory sciences (e.  g. geomancy, astrology). When Ibn Khaldūn asks at the mantic table whether the zāyirja is a recent or ancient science, the table replied that Idrīs was the first to receive such knowledge. He, and also al-Būnī before him, attribute the invention to al-Sabtī (Ibn Khaldūn, al-Muqaddima, 402; al-Būnī, Shams al-maʻārif, 402). The first identifies him with the patron saint of Marrakech, Aḥmad ibn Jaʻfar al-Khazrajī Abū al-ʻAbbās (1205). But Vernet has shown that the poem presenting the divination technique in the Muqaddima was composed between 1253 and 1269, and cannot therefore be by the Moroccan Saint (Vernet 1969, fasc. 1, 245–246). Brockelmann, S I, mentions two pamphlets on zāyirja by Shams al-Dīn al-ʻAbbās Muḥammad Aḥmad ibn Masʻūd al-Khazrajī al-Sabtī, whom he proposes to have died in 1298. This date agrees with the conclusions of Vernet and the presumed year of composition of Shams al-maʻārif al-kubrā (post-1271 and prior to 1375–1379, a period given by Ibn Khaldūn for the composition of his Muqaddima). In the ms. BnF Ar. 2684, repeating the text of Ibn Khaldūn, is indeed the poem of al-Sabtī which incorporates a variant under the name of Shams al-Dīn (f. 26v). In addition, Brockelmann, ibid., no. 29, 804–806, cites an epistle on the science of the zayirja (ms. Āṣaf 11, 1682, 147, 2) under the name of the famous Sufi al-Shādhilī (1258). To this must be added the Kitāb uṣūl al-ʻuqūl already quoted, attributed to Ibn ʻArabī, the above-mentioned Kitāb zāyirjāt fī al-haylāǧ wa-al-kadkhudāh, of al-Sijzī (second half of the sixth century; GAL, “al-Siǧāzī”, S I, no. 21, 389; GAS, VII, 178), as well as the commentary on a zāyirja attributed to Ṭumṭum al-Hindī, a Kitāb al-zāyirjāt wa-l-intihāʾāt wa-l-mamarrāt attributed to Abū Maʻshar (886) by Ibn al-Nadīm, and finally a possible Kitāb al-zāyirjāt under the pen of Māshā’allāh (eighth century) (respectively GAS, IV, 119; VII, 151 and no. 17, 106). If, therefore, the assertion that al-Sabtī is the founding father of this technique seems questionable, the question of whether he is the author of the concentric circles and tables, remains open. For the text attributed to Ibn ʻArabī does not seem to mention this device and the definition it gives of this science contrasts with the beginning of al-Sabtī’s poem which immediately makes circles and diagrams as characteristic of zāʾyirja (BnF Ar. 2684, f. 95r, and 2694, f. 9r, compared to 2684, f. 24v). As for the works of al-Sizjī and Abū Maʻshar, as well as those of Māshāʾallāh, they are all treatises on horoscopes. Al-Sijzī uses the term zāyirja to designate a square table divided by the median and diagonal lines into

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twelve parts corresponding to the signs of the zodiac, in which one enters in the significant position and in the correct order the data concerning the subject (significateur) and the Lord of the horoscope. In the Kitāb al-Khulafāʾ of Māshāʾallāh, the same figure recapitulates the data of the horoscopes in these positions (Kennedy & Pingree, 1971, 2  ff). The two authors also point out that al-Qaṣrānī and Sahl ibn Bishr use the term zāʾyirja to refer precisely to the diagram of the horoscope (n. 33, 131). These treatises contribute various snippets to our knowledge of the zāyirja. The descriptions that they provide, however, differ somewhat; their definitions are, in some cases, contradictory; several treatises deal, despite their titles, with horoscopes. In modern research, much emphasis has been placed on the character of the zāyirja as a “calculating machine.” Does this indicate that intuition is not uninvolved? Indeed, al-Būnī indicates that he only communicates certain elements of the known methods; and for certain phases of operations, e.  g. the establishment of the ascendant which involves the incorporation of the letters on the radius “at the head” of the corresponding zodiac sign, several processes are proposed (Shams al-maʻārif al-kubrā, 347, 349). We can, therefore, wonder what impels the choice. Zāyirja has attracted the attention of Lullian studies and researchers working on the history of numbers. Urvoy establishes the use made by Lull, in the Ars Magna, of the zāyirja, albeit purified of its esoteric and divinatory elements (Urvoy 1980, 89–90, 111 and 162–164). It is in this indirect way that the philosopher Leibniz would have come into contact with the system of al-Sabtī. In regard to the practice, there are indications of its persistence in the fourteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as well as in the nineteenth century, in North Africa, e.  g. in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia (Dozy Supp., vol. I, 577 and Léon l’Africain 1956, 219). The region from Ceuta to Tangier was undoubtedly the setting of considerable use and development in the twelfth century. But Doutté does not share any observations at the beginning of the twentieth century, and refers to Ibn Khaldūn to describe the process (Doutté 1994, 381–383). Lane, as noted above, reports a simplified version for Egypt in the nineteenth century. Today, it is still practised in Yemen by a soothsayer of great regional renown, the shaykh Mahdī Amīn, in Tihāma (see al-Natīja, containing its annual predictions, where it is noted as z-y-r-j-h); in addition, al-Ṭūkhī’s treatise, as well as his Zāʼīrjat al-Ṭūkhī al-falakiyy wa-hiya Khulāṣat jamīʻ al-zayārij 1991, 139–187, have been published several times from the 1950s to the present day in Cairo and Beirut, with the aim of perpetuating the practice.

Divination by Cowry Shells The cleromantic sciences presented so far can be described as scholarly, in the sense that their transmission and practice have been through the written word and are thus supposed to be literate; but there are also sciences whose transmission has been exclusively oral and whose practice was neither transmitted nor elaborated in writing.



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A good example of this is divination by cowries (sing. wadʻ, refers to the practice by metonymy), which remains a widespread practice in the contemporary Muslim (Arab/African) world. It is indeed difficult to form an opinion on the antiquity and methods regarding divination by shells. The lexicographers have tended to note that the wadʻ is used as an adornment (necklaces), as decoration (ʻathākīl, pompoms), for smoothing paper or calendering painted manāqīf fabrics, and finally as an amulet, a protection (ḥirz) which is still employed today. In the medical tradition, which extends to the Middle Ages, the cowry is recognised as having medical virtues, mainly desiccative, against ulcers of the eye and dropsy, and is also applied as a detergent against impetigo, the corneal scars. It is not until the nineteenth century that the mantic practice is mentioned, generally in the writings of Europeans (Regourd 2000–2002, 135– 136). What happened during the interval? Sudanese practiced divination by shells, as well as geomancy and bibliomancy, in Cairo in the early twentieth century (Dols 1992, 303, perhaps Burckhardt 1819, 465). The chain of transmission (tasalsul), mainly feminine, when it was found in the Middle East and Arabia, attributes its origin to a nomadic community which followed the shifting tribes of the Syrian desert, perhaps from the East, i.  e. Gypsy, for Syria, or to the sedentary farming tribes in the region of Maʻrib, called “Bedouins” in eastern Yemen. These elements do not exclude an earlier context for the practice, nor do they necessarily indicate an African origin for the practice or contact with Africa. The practice in the Islamic world, as reported by ethnographic descriptions that are still rare and often imprecise, consists of successive throws of varying numbers of not only cowry shells, but sometimes with the addition of organic or inanimate objects, and the interpretation of the result using a specific vocabulary or syntax. It involves answering a question about the consultant’s daily life (journeys, births, quarrels, etc.) or making a diagnosis. The “answers” relate to the more immediate future. It is not just a matter of formulating or periodizing an answer, but the practitioners may attempt, during the consultation, to act directly on the throw for the benefit of the consultants, i.  e. to present their situation positively, release them, “open” them, and, more broadly, generate good and harmony between people (detailed ethnographic account on 1998–1999 Sanaa, Yemen, practice in Regourd 2013).

Prediction Based on Speculations on the Numerical Value of the Letters The science of jafr (ʻilm al-jafr) covers many varied writings concerning methods of divination mainly based on the letters of the alphabet and their numerical value (ʻilm al-ḥurūf). It has been steeped in esotericism, occultism and elitism from its origin (↗ Idel, Gematria and Prognostication). The chain of transmission (tasalsul) is characterised by the Shiite environment in which it developed, so it begins with ʻAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (d.  661) and was inherited by the imams who succeeded him (Fahd 1987,

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221–222). Jaʻfar al-Ṣādiq (d.  763), the illustrious Shiite esoterist, who appears in the paths of transmission of a variety of divinatory practices, follows in the chain of transmission. Among the channels of inspiration of Jaʻfar al-Ṣādiq are Byzantine, Jewish and Syriac references, but also pseudo-Plato, and an Indian, ʻUṭāriḍ ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥāsib (ninth century), who would have translated the Kitāb al-Jafr al-Hindī. The subsequent development of jafr, therefore, has paralleled the theurgic and talismanic developments, but also divinatory ones. It is the apocalyptic tendencies derived from jafr, called malāḥīm, that will interest us here (on the origin and typology, see: Fahd 1987, 221–224 and 247; Chalyan-Daffner 2018, 136–137, and 138 on Assyrian-Babylonian omina portents). Attempts to reconstruct the history of the Arabic term malḥama (plur. malāḥim) through its successive meanings related it to flesh or meat, laḥm, at least in the mediaeval period: the famous lexicographer, Ibn Manẓūr (d. 1311–1312), defines it as “a great slaughter, battle, war” and, thus shows its derivation from the Arabic root l-ḥ-m. (Chalyan-Daffner 2018; see also Dozy Supp., vol. 2, 530a, entry malḥama: campus mortuorum, “boucherie”, “des batailles meurtrières”). Interestingly enough, the nineteenth century Arabic-French dictionary by Kazimirski adds to the semantic field of the plural, malāḥim, the meaning of “sagesse politique” (Kazimirski 1860, vol. 2, 978b).

Malḥama and malāḥim The singular, malḥama, becomes a term labelling a genre of texts that include predictions of natural disasters, treating natural disasters on earth and natural events that precipitate them (↗ Burnett, Weather Forecasting Islamic World). Both disastrous and non-disastrous events are presented as being dependent upon three types of phenomena, geophysical (e.  g. earthquakes), hydrological (irregularities, related in particular to the Nile and its annual flow) and astro-meteorological (appearance of certain stars and comets observed in relation to the zodiacal signs and planets, in particular the heliacal rising of Sirius/Sothis/al-Shiʻrā or the Dog Star; the occurrence of solar and lunar eclipses as well as lightning, winds and storms, and halos), all were perceived as signs (āyāt) or portents (dalāʼil/dalāla/aʻlāma) of things to come (Fahd 1987, 225; Chalyan-Daffner 2018). Some of them were observed in relation to the zodiacal signs and planets; for instance, the heliacal rising of the Pleiades predicting rain or of Sirius related particularly to the Nile and its annual flow. Among the predicted events are floods, droughts, famines, epidemics, wars, and non-disastrous ones like prosperity, good harvests, merchant’s profit. The related body of literature, entitled Malḥamat Dāniyāl, Hermes (or Enoch, respectively), Hūshank and Idrīs for the Islamic tradition, is vast and almost completely unexplored to date (Fodor 1974, 95; Sezgin, 1970, vol. 7, 50–58). These books are shaped as handbooks: the formula for prognostication is expressed in a conditional type of sentence, where the interconnection of signs is incorporated in an if clause and the consequent earthly events are inserted in a then clause.



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The ahistoric character of these texts, i.  e. their failure to reflect the historical reality of a definite time and space, their disconnection from this reality and their failure to express the author’s view of it, has been discussed and disputed (Cook 2002, 313). One could well believe that the predictions about the height of the Nile were seen as crucial by Egyptians, as reflected in Mamlūk sources (for instance, al-Maqrīzī, al-Khiṭaṭ, vol. 1, 180–181, 155). These predictions were transmitted within an environment of shared popular beliefs, although it is difficult to connect the production and social function of these texts. Along with predictions about the maximum height of the Nile, some astro-meteorological malḥama went so far as to use the Nile’s height to make predictions for the year (Chalyan-Daffner 2018, 144). In the plural, malāḥim, the term denotes apocalyptic predictions of the duration of the world and Islam, as well as of the fate of nations and kings, dynasties, religions and individuals. This pronounced eschatological tendency leads to speculation on the question of the advent of the Mahdī, who himself bore the fate of nations, dynasties, and so on. It was a simple step from this to the political use of the malāḥim, a phenomenon which Ibn Khaldūn witnessed from a distance in the Maghreb of his time: observing that their production was being encouraged by the sovereigns engaged in dynastic struggles and attracting popular interest, he insists on the obscure and polysemous nature of these texts that recourse to the poetic form could accentuate (Ibn Khaldūn, end of chap. 3; Casanova 1911, 151–152). Among the apocalyptic works that proved highly successful are the Risālat al-shajara al-nuʻmāniyya fī al-dawla al-ʻuthmānniyya, also called the Risāla jafriyya, by Pseudo-Ibn ʻArabī. It is not the only book of jafr attributed to this mystic, but it was the object of extensive commentary especially within the Mughal and Ottoman empires, and from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries by the Akbarians, his disciples, Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qunawī (d. 1263), Khalīl ibn Aibak ibn ʻAlī al-Ṣafadī (d. 1297 or 1363?) and Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Maqqarī al-Maghribī (d. 1632), but also by a man named Muṣṭafä Efandī ibn Sahrāb and a certain al-Shahrāfī (Yahya, 1964, no. 665, 456–457; also Fahd, 1987, 226, n. 3). According to Fahd, it probably originated as a Fatimid treatise dealing with the Mahdī, and would have been extended to predictions concerning Egypt, and subsequently the Ottoman Empire, having been reworked and placed under the authority of Ibn ʻArabī by al-Qunawī (Fahd 1987, 227–228).

Physiognomonic Divination In the pre-modern Arab world, physiognomy (firāsa) was often, but not systematically, perceived as a form of divination (↗ Dubrau, Physiognomy among Jews; ↗ Rapisarda, Mantic Arts Western Christian World). In the early sources, e.g. the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm (d. 995), it includes khīlān (the interpretation of beauty spots), ikhtilāj (the interpretation of involuntary muscular contractions), faʼl (omens), zajr (auguring from the flight of birds; Ibn al-Nadīm, 1988, 376). In the later encyclopedic sources, such as the

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treatises by al-Nuwayrī (d. 1332) and al-Ibshīhī (d. ca. 1446), firāsa (physiognomy) is mentioned together with kihāna (divination, fortune-telling), zajr, ṭīra (prediction), faʼl, and other phenomena (al-Nuwayrī 1924, 149–151; al-Ibshīhī 1986, 191–192). Here, physiognomic signs properly pertaining to firāsa in the sense of “physiognomy” and anecdotes referring to firāsa in the sense of “intuition, acute perception (of what is hidden)” are lumped together. In all cases, the idea is for the expert to make inductions about the character of an individual based on thorough observation of their appearance, which can help one to take decisions in the future, such as whom to marry, which slave to buy, and so on. In the classifications of the sciences of the Sunni world up until the mid-seventeenth century (see Ḥājjī Khalīfa (d.  1657) 1964, vol. 1, 34–35), chiromancy (ʻilm al-asārīr), scapulomancy (ʻilm al-aktāf), and other disciplines are related to physiognomy by analogy or as a subsection of physiognomony because of their common method. Among scholars, another point under discussion is the “natural” evolution of the typically Arab qiyāfa into physiognomy, as a consequence of the impact of Greek cultural heritage on the Arab encyclopaedia. Qiyāfa is a form of divination based on observation and intuition, which involves at least two branches, qiyāfat al-bashar, a morphoscopic inspection used for recognizing genealogy and parentage in particular, and qiyāfat al-athar, the examination of footprints (Fahd 1987, 371–374). Not only has qiyāfa itself been practised until the present day by nomads of the Arabian Peninsula, there is also a “scientific” firāsa (or al-firāsa al-ḥikmiyya) that is opposed to the “intuitive” firāsa (or al-firāsa al-sharʻiyya), aiming at inferring moral traits from physical features, one which largely stemmed from the introduction of the Classical tradition into the Arab world, and cannot be counted among the divinatory sciences (Ghersetti 2018, 83–84). The shift from firāsa to ʻilm al-firāsa occurred as early as the ninth century, when it became part of the field of medicine and based its semiotics on the latter’s experimental practice and inductive method, starting from visible signs to hypothesize illness or character (Thomann 1997, 102–106), and was eventually classified among natural sciences. The physician and philosopher Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), in his Risāla fī taqsīm al-ʻulūm al-ʻaqliyya, includes firāsa among “subaltern natural sciences” along with medicine, astrology, oneirocritic, sciences of talismans, theurgy, and alchemy (Anawati 1977, 328; for the “syllogistic” nature of physiognomony, see Thomann, 1996). Arab sources testify to a broad range of applications of physiognomy to social life: kings and rulers use firāsa to select their subjects, like their courtiers, boon companions and advisers; men have recourse to it when choosing their wives or concubines; and masters employ when buying slaves. Scrutiny is used to choose associates, be they servants, husbands or political advisers or successors. Physiognomy, being a “means of classifying people so as to gain knowledge of their internal ideas and motives,” as Abū Bakr al-Rāzī describes it in his al-Manṣūrī fī al-ṭibb, 2d maqāla, 95–99, was deemed a powerful tool for predicting people’s behavior and making it possible to purchase the best slaves (ed. and trans. Mourad 1939). From his treatise, the famous



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Ad Almansorem, the Latin world retained in particular the passages on physiognomy (Fahd 1987, 387–388). Practical application of firāsa as a technique for picking out the best slaves flourished: one of the most popular of these guides to slave purchase is Risāla Jāmiʻa li-funūn nāfiʻa fī shirāʼ al-raqīq wa-taqlīb al-ʻabīd, by the Christian physician, Ibn Buṭlān (d. 1066) (see also Barker 2016, 18–23). Hence, firāsa is regarded as a way to access the psychology of individuals. Scholars have also shown interest in a branch of physiognomy which specialized in women (firāsat al-nisā’). This “sex-orientated” approach appears to be an addition of the Arab-Islamic physiognomic tradition, which was not exported further. al-Rāzī is apparently the first to have proposed an autonomous method based on sexual anatomy as an addition to the methods derived from the Classical world: expressive (based on expressions of the face), zoological and ethnic. A treatise allegedly by Ibn ʻArabī may be considered a kind of “deviant” culmination, as it restricts the scope of physiognomic judgment to the sexual sphere and physical signs are interpreted exclusively as clues to the form and dimensions of sexual organs, without assessment of intellectual or psychological features (Pseudo-al-Jāḥiẓ, 1907–1908, trans. 162–232; Ghersetti, 1996, 200–201; collective vol. dedicated to Polemon of Laodicea (ca. 88–144) by Swain 2017, and its trans. into Arabic, especially 392–395; Pseudo-Ibn ʻArabī, in: Ghersetti 1994). Here, too, a “practical” literature came to light, intended to direct the choice and purchase of the best concubine or, more prosaically, to identify an appropriate wife and her aptitude to give birth; generally speaking, the sphere of interpersonal relations. The power imbalance, which “thus encompasses political relationships (kings and courtiers), social relationships (husbands and wives/concubines) and economic relationships (masters and slaves),” depends on the position of the subject conducting the examination – or ordering it from the man of the art – or the object of the examination (Ghersetti 2018, 100–101). Beyond the question of social power, social display of one’s fortune, talents, and belongings, i.  e. desirable features that triggered the ordinary process of social evaluation, analyzed by the anthropologist as vectors of envy (ḥasad), and eventually as transmitting evil eye (al-ʻayn, Mediterranean musicians on stage, Lambert, 2013, “La firāsa: physiognomonie et évalu­ation sociale”, 98  sq.). Physiognomy and the art of governing in particular had been intimates since ancient times: learning the secrets of human beings offered intellectuals, particularly physicians, the opportunity to find positions in great households, and thus granted them social and political advantages. In Pseudo-al-Jāḥiẓ’s book, preserved in an unicum copied in 1356, both firāsa and ʻirāfa (knowledge of the future by means of past events) practitioners are compared and described as people who could earn a lot of money (Leiden, Or. 1206, 198, 2). For rulers, the way to choose courageous knights, reliable advisers and “friends” who can join their intimate circle, including boon companions (even chess players) thus becomes a matter of understanding and interpreting the signs. When dealing with this, physiognomonic texts bring to mind the genre of the Mirror of the Princes (Ghersetti 2018, 95–100). Firāsa appears as a potential knowledge

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in the education of the administration secretaries (kuttāb al-dīwān), but ʻAbdallāh al-Baghdādī (fl. ninth century), in his Kitāb al-kuttāb, recommends moderation in having recourse to it (Sourdel 1952–1954, trans., 120, 43–78).

Selected Bibliography l’Africain, Jean-Léon. Description de l’Afrique. Trans. Alexis Épaulard. Paris, 1956. Abū Maʻshar. Kitāb al-Milal wa-l-duwal = On Historical Astrology, The Book of Religions and Dynasties (On the Great Conjunctions). Eds. and trans. Keiji Yamamoto and Charles Burnett. Leiden, 2000. Anawati, Georges C. “Ibn Sīnā, Les Divisions des sciences intellectuelles.” MIDEO 13 (1977): 323–335. Barker, Hannah. “Purchasing a Slave in Fourteenth-Century Cairo: Ibn al-Akfānī’s Book of Observation and Inspection in the Examination of Slaves.” Mamlūk Studies Review 19 (2016): 1–23. Al-Būnī, Aḥmad B. ʻAlī. Shams al-maʻārif al-kubrā. Beyrouth, al-Maktaba al-Thaqāfiyya, n.d. Burckhardt, John L. Travels in Nubia. London, 1819. Casanova, Paul. Mohammad et la fin du monde. Étude critique sur l’Islam primitif. Paris, 1911. http:// gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k851849c/f18.item.zoom (9 March 2020). Chalyan-Daffner, Kristine. “Predictions of ῾Natural᾽ Disasters in the Astro-meteorological Malḥamah Handbooks.” The Occult Sciences in Pre-modern Islamic Cultures. Eds. Nader El-Bizri and Eva Orthmann. Beirut and Würzburg, 2018. 135–150. Colin, Georges Seraphin. “De l’origine grecque des ‘chiffres de Fès’ et de nos ‘chiffres arabes’.” Journal Asiatique 222 (1933): 193–215. Cook, David. Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic. Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam. Princeton, 2002. Dols, Michael W. Majnūn: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society. Oxford, 1992. Doostdar, Alireza. The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny. Princeton, 2018. Doutté, Edmond. Magie et religion dans l’Afrique du Nord. Paris, 1994 [reprint; 1st imp. 1909]. Dozy, Reinhardt. Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes. 2 vols. Leiden, 1881. Fahd, Toufic. La divination arabe: études religieuses, sociologiques et folkloriques sur le milieu natif de l’Islam. Paris, 1987 [1966]. Fahd, Toufic. “Djafr.” Encyclopaedia of Islam. Second edition (2 vols.). Leiden, 1991. 376b–377b. Fodor, Alexandre. “Malhamat Daniyal.” The Muslim East. Studies in Honour of Julius Germanus. Ed. Gyula Káldy-Nagy. Budapest, 1974. 85–160. GAL = Brockelmann, Carl. Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur. 2 vols. + 3 Supp. Leiden, 1937– 1949. GAS = Sezgin, Fuat. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. 9 vols. + 1 vol. indices. Leiden, 1967–1995. Ghersetti, Antonella. “Fisiognomica e stereotipi femminili nella cultura araba.” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 14 (1996): 195–206. Ghersetti, Antonella. “A Science for Kings and Masters: Firāsa at the Crossroad between Natural Sciences and Power Relationships in Arabic Sources.” The Occult Sciences in Pre-modern Islamic Cultures. Eds. Nader El-Bizri and Eva Orthmann. Beirut and Würzburg, 2018. 83–104. Graw, Knut. “Beyond Expertise. Reflections on Specialist Agency and the Autonomy of the Divinatory Ritual Process.” Africa 79 (2009): 92–109.



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Ḥājjī Khalīfa (d. 1657). Kashf al-ẓunūn ‘an asāmī al-kutub wa-al-funūn. Vol. 2. Ed. Gustav Flügel. repr. New York, 1964. Ibn Khaldun. Al-muqaddima. Beyrouth, Dār al-ʻAwda, 1988. Ibn Khaldun-de Slane. Les Prolégomènes d’Ibn Khaldoun. Trad. en français et commentés par William Mac Guckin de Slane. Paris, 1936. Ibn Khaldun-Rosenthal. The Muqaddimah, 3 vols. Trans. Franz Rosenthal. Second edition. Princeton, 1967. Ibn al-Nadīm. Al-fihrist. Ed. Riḍā Taǧaddud. Tihrān, Dār al-Masīra, 1988. Al-Ibshīhī. Al-mustaṭraf fī kull fann mustaṭraf. 2 vols. Ed. Mufīd M. Qumayḥa. Beirut, Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmiyya, 1986. Kazimirski, Albert de Biberstein. Dictionnaire arabe-français. 2 vols. Paris, 1860. Kennedy, Edward S., and David Pingree. The Astrological History of Māshāʾallāh. Cambridge, 1971. Klein-Franke, Felix. “The Geomancy of Ahmad b. ʻAli Zunbul: A Study of the Arabic Corpus Hermeticus.” Ambix 20 (1973): 26–35. Lambert, Jean. “L’œil des envieux et la clairvoyance du juste : regard social et Islam au Yémen.” Ed. Anne Regourd. “Divination, magie, pouvoirs au Yémen.” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 13, Special issue (1995): 93–116. Lane, Edward W. The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. London and Toronto, 1908 [first imp.] [reprint 1923 (?)]. Lane, Edward W. An Arabic-English Lexicon. 8 vols. London, 1863 [reprint in Beirut, 1968]. Lemay, Richard. “Arabic Numerals.” Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Ed. Jospeh R. Strayer. I, New York, 1982. 386–388. Lory, Pierre. “La science des lettres en terre d’Islam : le chiffre, la lettre, l’œuvre.” Cahiers de l’Université Saint-Jean de Jérusalem 11 (1985): 89–101. Al-Maqrīzī. Kitāb al-sulūk li-maʻrifat duwal al-mulūk. Ed. Said A. F. ʻĀshūr. Vol. 4/2. Cairo, Maṭbaʻat Dār al-Kutub, 1972. McDonald, Duncan Black – [T. Fahd]. “Sīmiyāʼ”, Encyclopaedia of Islam. Second edition. Vol. 9. 1997. 612a–613b. Maddison, Francis R., and Emilie Savage-Smith (eds.). Science, Tools & Magic (= The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art 12). 2 vols. London, 1997. “Magic in Malta, 1605” project: forthcoming, E.J. Brill; http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/iais/ research/projects/magicinmalta1605/about/ (9 March 2020). Melvin-Koushki, Matthew. “Defending Geomancy: Šaraf al-Dīn Yazdī Rebuts Ibn Ḫaldūn’s Critique of the Occult Sciences.” Arabica 64, 3/4 (2017): 346–403. Moʻīn, Mohammad. An Intermediate Persian Dictionary. Tehran, 1992. Mourad, Youssef. La Physiognomonie arabe et le Kitāb al-firāsa de Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. Paris, 1939. Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī. Tāj al-ʻarūs, 40 vols. Egypt, al-Maṭbaʻa al-Khayriyya. 1306H. Nallino, Carlo Alfonso. Raccolta di Scritti editi e inediti. Vol. 5. Astrologia – Astronomia – Geografia. Rome, 1944. 1–41. Al-Nuwayrī. Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab. Cairo, s.  n., 1924. Pseudo-al-Jāḥiẓ. K. “Bāb al-ʻirāfa wa-al-zajr wa-al-firāsa ʻalā madhhab al-Furs.” Zapiski Vostočnago otdelenija Imperatorskago russkago archeologičeskago obščestva. Ed. and Russian trans. Konstantin Inostrantsev. 1907–1908. 113–232. Al-Rāzī, Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Zakariyyā’. Al-manṣūrī fī al-ṭibb. Ed. Hāzim al-Bakrī al-Ṣiddīqi, Kuwayt, al-Munaẓẓama al-ʻArabiyya li-al-Tarbiya wa-al-Thaqāfa wa-al-ʻUlūm, 1987. Regourd, Anne. “La figure de l’astrologue dans les Mille et une nuits.” Studia Islamica 36 (1992): 137–150. Regourd, Anne. “Pratiques de géomancie au Yémen.” Religion et pratiques de puissance. Ed. Albert de Surgy. Paris, coll. “Anthropologie, connaissance des hommes”, 1997. 105–128.

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Regourd, Anne. “La géomancie comme voie d’accès à un savoir ésotérique : un cas isolé au Nord du Yémen?” Scienze e Islam, Proceedings of the Study day, University of Ca’ Foscari, Venice (1999, January, 30th), special issue of the Quaderni di Studi Arabi, Studi e testi 3, “Scienze e Islam”. Ed. Giovanni Canova. Venice, 1999. 5–16. Regourd, Anne. “Le jet de coquillages divinatoire en Islam arabe et en Afrique Subsaharienne: Première contribution à une étude comparative.” Journal of Oriental and African Studies 11 (2000–2002): 133–149. Regourd, Anne. “Zāʼirdja (point 2).” Encyclopaedia of Islam. Second edition. t. XI, 2002, 404–405. Regourd, Anne. “L’épître ayant pour objet la mise à l’épreuve de ceux qui n’ont d’astrologue que le nom d’al-Qabīṣī (IVe/Xe siècles).” Politica hermetica 17 (2003): 24–53. Regourd, Anne. “Divination by Dropping Shells (wad‘) in Ṣan‘ā’, Yemen.” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 8/2 (2013): 171–193. Reinaud, Henri Paul Joseph. “Divination et histoire Nord-Africaine au temps d’Ibn Ḫaldun.” Hespéris 30 (1943): 3–4. Ruska, Julius. “Zāyirdja.” Encyclopaedia of Islam. First edition (1913–1936). t. IV, 1290–1291. Savage-Smith, Emilie, and Marion B. Smith. Islamic Geomancy and a Thirteenth-Century Divinatory Device. Malibu, CA, 1980. Savage-Smith, Emilie. “Divination.” The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art. General ed. Julian Raby. Vol. 12, part one. London and Oxford, 1997. 148–159. Shāmī, Yaḥyā. Tārīkh al-tanjīm ʻind al-‘Arab wa-atharuhu fī al-mujtamaʻ al-‘Arabiyya wa-al-Islāmiyya. Beyrouth, 1994. Sourdel, Dominique. “Le ῾Livre des secrétaires᾽ de ʻAbdallāh al-Baghdādī.” Bulletin d’Études Orientales 14 (1952–1954): 115–153. Swain, Simon (ed.). Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam. Oxford, 2007. Thesiger, Wilfred. Le désert des Déserts. Paris, 1993 [reprint]. Thomann, Johannes. “Avicenna über die physiognomische Methode.” Geschichten der Physiognomik. Eds. Rüdiger Campe and Manfred Schneider. Freiburg and Rombach, 1996. 47–63. Thomann, Johannes. Studien zum “Speculum physionomie” des Michele Savonarola. Ph.D. Diss. University of Zurich, 1997. Al-Ṭūkhī, ʻAbd al-Fattāḥ al-Sayyid. Al-zāyirja al-handasiyya fī kashf al-asrār al-khafiyya wa-yalīhi Al-uṣūl wa-al-wuṣūl fī ‘ilm al-raml wa-al-zayārij. Cairo, al-Maktaba al-Maḥmudiyya al-Tijāriyya, 1948. Al-Ṭūkhī, ʻAbd al-Fattāḥ al-Sayyid. Zāʼīrjat al-Ṭūkhī al-falakiyy wa-hiya Khulāṣat jamīʻ al-zayārij. Cairo, 1991 [or: Zāyirjat al-Ṭūkhī al-falakiyy, Beirut, al-Maktaba al-Thaqāfiyya]. Urvoy, Dominique. Penser l’Islam. Les présupposés islamiques de l’“Art” de Lull (Études musulmanes, 23). Paris, 1980. Vernet, Juan. “La fecha de composicion de la ‘zâʼirayat al-ʻâālam’.” Al-Andalus 34/1 (1969): 245–246. Yahia, Osman. Histoire et classification de l’œuvre d’Ibn ʻArabī. 2 vols. Damascus, 1964.

Astral Sciences Charles Burnett

Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World Definitions and Terminology Astral Science is a modern term devised to embrace what was generally regarded as a single science from its inception in Western civilization until the early modern period. This science embraced both what we would call astronomy and astrology. For Ptolemy (ca. 100–170) in his Classical work, the Apotelesmatica or Tetrabiblos, this is “astronomia”; for Albumasar (787–886), this is “the science of the stars and their movements” (Great Introduction to Astrology, 3.2); for Alfarabi (ca. 872–950) this is “the science known under the name of the science of the stars” (On the Classification of the Sciences, chapter 3). Ptolemy regards astronomia as consisting of two parts, both being predictive: the first prognosticates the movements of the celestial bodies; the second, their effects (Tetrabiblos, I.1). For Albumasar the first is “the science of the universe (or “the whole”), based on mathematics”, the second is “the science of judgements, involved with natural things” (Great Introduction, 1.2.4). From Classical times onwards the Greek terms astronomia and astrologia had been used, though their etymologies – approximately “the law of the stars” and “the reasoning of the stars” – had been neglected. Also, in the Middle Ages, these terms were sometimes swapped: e.  g. Dominicus Gundissalinus (ca. 1110–1190), in his version of Alfarabi’s On the Classification, and in his original work, De divisione philosophiae (pp. 220–233) used astronomia for astrology and astrologia for astronomy, and this distinction persists in the Arabic-Castilian translations sponsored by Alfonso X (r. 1252– 1284). Another Greek term, specifically used for astrology – mathēsis (literally “learning”) – although used in the title of the Firmicus Maternus’s fourth-century work on astrology, dropped out of use except in humanistic circles, until it was revived in the Renaissance. After the massive introduction of works on astronomy and astrology translated from Arabic in the twelfth century “the science of the judgements (of the stars)” (Scientia iudiciorum (astrorum)) appeared alongside astrologia for the science we are dealing with, while the term astrologia iudiciaria nicely expressed the judiciary, or predictive part of this science. The practitioner, in turn, was called the astrologus –

Acknowledgement: Note that the basic doctrine of Arabic/Islamic, Jewish/Hebrew and Christian/ Latin astral sciences is the same and an attempt has been made to make the chapters on these ­subject-areas in this volume complementary in their information rather than to duplicate it. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-025

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more rarely, and primarily in literary contexts, mathematicus – and occasionally the judex (Burnett 2016). Gundissalinus defined astrology in his De divisione philosophiae, after his description of the theoretical and practical parts of astronomy, as “the science which describes the movements and the position of the stars according to man’s opinion (secundum hominum opinionem), for knowing times (ad temporum notitiam)” (Dominicus Gundissalinus, De divisione philosophiae, eds. Fidora and Werner, 228). The phrase “according to man’s opinion” suggests that astrology is based on conjecture, in keeping with the idea that astrological judgements are based not only on knowledge of natural science but also on well-informed guesses, as Ptolemy had argued in the second chapter of the first book of his Tetrabiblos (fusikōs hama kai eustochōs…dialabein, “grasping scientifically and by successful conjecture”). Galen had described such a method as “the conjectural technique” in the case of medicine (technē stochastikē: in De optima secta ad Thrasybulum liber; ↗ Demaitre, Medical Prognostication Western Christian World), and Albertus Magnus used a similar Latin term (scientia coniecturalis) to encompass astrology, medicine, meteorology and the divinatory arts (Fidora 2013, 524–530). But secundum hominum opinionem also draws attention to the human perspective of astrology. Albumasar’s carefully-argued definition is: “Astrology is ‘the knowledge of what the power of the movements of the planets at a specific time indicates for that time and for a specified future time’” (Great Introduction, 3.2.3). God surveys all present, past and future as an eternal present (tota simul: Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, 5, pr. 4). Man surveys events from his own temporal perspective – namely, the present, from which he can look back at the receding past, and look forward to the approaching future. Adelard of Bath (ca. 1080–1150), picks up this idea in saying that “if anyone makes (the maiden) Astronomia his own, he would be confident in declaring not only the present condition of lower things, but also their past or future conditions” (Adelard of Bath, De eodem et diverso, ed. Burnett, 68–69). One can see the relevance of knowledge of the past as well as knowledge of the future, in the branch of astrology covering interrogations, where one can ask as much “how many times has this woman been married?”, or “is this child the son of his (supposed) father?”, as “will this venture be successful?” But Albumasar regarded the true field of astrology as prognostication of the future. For once something has happened it is necessary that it has happened, whereas the subject matter of astrology is what may happen or may not happen – i.  e. the contingent (Great Introduction, 1.5.7–21). Gundissalinus goes on to say that the general role (genus) of astrology is that it is “the science of judging about a proposed question (which has been asked in the right way), according to the position of the planets and the signs (of the zodiac).” He says that there are many ways in which such a question can be answered (by geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, chiromancy, scapulimancy, augury etc.) but “astrology is more worthy than the rest, because it predicts things that are to come on earth from the disposition of the heavenly bodies” (228). It is not a mathematical art,



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but should be classed “among the virtues and powers by which man judges about the future, such as the virtue of interpreting visions (dreams), the virtue of predicting from birds, from sneezing and other things of this kind”. The exaltation of astrology above all other kinds of divination is argued at length by Albumasar (Great Introduction, 1.2), and Haly Abenrudian, the commentator on Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos (Burnett 1996b, I 15). The two species of astrology, according to Gundissalinus, are “computation” and “judgement.” Whereas computation relies simply on using tables, judgement depends on the astrologer’s discernment (discretio) of times, zodiac signs and planets. Albumasar would separate the mere calculator, who provided the numbers for the astrologer, from the true astrologer, who used his intelligence and experience to interpret these numbers (Great Introduction, 1.5.33). The author of the Speculum Astronomiae (the “Magister Speculi”), in the mid-thirteenth century, having described the two “astronomies” in the same way as Ptolemy (p. 6: duae sunt magnae sapientiae et utraque nomine astronomiae censetur), states that it is through God’s glorious effects that God himself can be known. These (effects) are man and the ordering of the universe in relation to him – namely of the supercelestial bodies so that they provide guidance (ductus) to rational beings, and of elements, in which what is taken up (sumptus) by rational beings can be measured – this ordering of the universe no human science attains as does the science of the judgements of the stars. (Speculum Astronomiae, ed. Zambelli, 14).

Astrology, then, is the observance of the universe by man for man, and its predictive power stems from the knowledge and the wisdom of the practitioner.

Techniques and Manifestations Astrology in the Middle Ages is divided into several different parts. The Magister Speculi describes these as follows: The first part is introductory, and is concerned with the principles of judgements. The second is accomplished through the exercise of judging, and this in turn is divided into four parts: the first is about revolutions, the second about nativities, the third about interrogations, the fourth is about the choices of commendable hours, in which is included the part which is about talismans. (Speculum Astronomiae, ed. Zambelli, 15)

The Magister Speculi implies a rise in status as one goes through these parts, since he ends this classification with the phrase “the science of talismans is the peak (sublimitas) of astronomia” (a quotation from Thabit ibn Qurra). We can take each of these divisions in turn.

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Introductions These describe the components and terms used in every branch of astrology (↗ Gaida, Introductions to Astrology). The very popular introduction of Alcabitius starts by describing the circle of the zodiac, first in respect to its “essential conditions”, then in respect to its “accidental conditions”. For the first he progresses from the largest divisions to the smallest: the circle itself, the half circles, the quadrants, then each of the signs with their particular characteristics, and finally the specific degrees. The “accidental conditions” are those imposed on the zodiacal circle by the position of the local horizon, i.  e. the division of the circle into twelve “places” (usually called “houses” in the Arabic, Hebrew and Western medieval traditions) starting from the point where the circle cuts the horizon in the east, each of which can be consulted for a different area of human experience: I life, II possessions, III brothers. IV parents, V children, VI illnesses, VII marriage and controversies, VIII death, IX religion, X rulership, XI friends, XII enemies. Then he describes the characteristics of each of the planets in themselves, in respect to their nature, the professions, characters and features of the people it indicates, illnesses, religions, colours, different parts of the body, and geographical regions. Saturn, for example, is malefic, masculine, diurnal, it indicates old age, excess of coldness and dryness, melancholy but also profundity of thought, activities involving water and agriculture, trustworthiness, leprosy and gout, the Jewish religion, the inner ear, the colour black, and the regions of Sind, Hind and Ethiopia. Then he comes to the “accidental” natures of the planets, depending on where they are in their orbits, and their relationships with other planets. An explanation of the terms used in astrology follows, many of which are transliterations or calques on Arabic terms, such as animodar, hyleg, alcocoden, and almubtaz (which later became almuten; for many of these terms; ↗ Schmidl, Astral Sciences Islamic World). He ends with a description of the astrological lots, which are the places on the ecliptic that are calculated by counting the number of degrees between two entities (usually planets) in the direction in which the zodiac is graduated, and counting them off in the same direction from the ascendant. Each lot is relevant to a particular topic. Works on this part commonly received the title “introductorius”, a masculine noun calqued on the Arabic madkhal –  ”vestibule” or “entrance way”.

Revolutions What the Magister Speculi calls “revolutions” is elsewhere described as being “general astrology”, following the terminology of Ptolemy himself (katholikon, universale, Tetrabiblos, II, 1). These included works predicting events affecting whole societies, nations and religions. The Magister Speculi divides this into three parts. The first is based on the conjunctions of the planets of which the most important are the conjunctions of the three higher planets – Saturn, Jupiter and Mars – which were



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relevant for periods longer than a year (periods of 20, 30, 60, 240 and 960 years) and of the two luminaries (i.  e. eclipses). The second part is on the revolutions of the years of the world, which are yearly predictions from the state of the heavens at the time of entry of the Sun into the first degree of Aries. The third part is on weather forecasting. Separate texts were often devoted to the success of the harvest and the prices of the yield. The predictions were based on (1) the state of the heavens when the Sun entered the first degree of Aries, or (2) the time of the Full Moon or New Moon that immediately preceded the Sun’s entrance into the first degree of Aries. Works in this genre were called De coniunctionibus (“On Conjunctions”), De revolutionibus annorum mundi (“On the Revolutions of the Years of the World”), De mutatione temporum or De pluviis (“On the Changes of the Weather” or “On Rains”) and De mercibus (“On Market Prices”).

Nativities Nativities (genethlialogical or natal astrology). This involved drawing up a horoscope for the precise time of the birth (or, if that were not known, an artificially calculated time, known as using the animodar or “the scales of Hermes”: trutina Hermetis), and predicting the character of the individual, the momentous events in his or her life, and the time when that life might come to an end. This is based on the planets in (or aspecting) each of the celestial houses, which cover the topics of the whole of the native’s life (as above), and the identification of the hyleg (literally, the planet or place from which the native is “set off” on life) and the alcocodem, the planet that has some relation to the hyleg and determines the when life’s natural energy will run out (the native’s life may be cut off before its natural end, or extended beyond it). A subdivision of this genre is the horoscopes of cities based on their real or supposed foundation dates. The subgenre of revolutions of nativities (De revolutionibus annorum nativitatum, “On the Revolutions of the Years of the Nativities” or “On Solar Returns”) compares the horoscope of the native on each anniversary of his birth with the birth horoscope (the radix or “base” horoscope), in order to predict what will befall him in the course of the following year.

Questions Questions (interrogations, horary astrology). In this case the astrologer answers questions posed by his client. The horoscope of the time of the question is drawn up, in order to arrive at the answer to that question, and compared with the client’s birth horoscope. The use of the concept of questioning cum intentione radicali (“with radical intent”; Speculum Astronomiae, ed. Zambelli, 23) brings out the necessity to concentrate hard on the question that is being asked, and not to pose frivolous or ambiguous

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questions. As the Magister Speculi writes: “The part concerning interrogations teaches one to judge about a thing about which an interrogation has been made with radical intent, namely on whether it will be completed or not” (Speculum Astronomiae, ed. Zambelli, 23). Among works on interrogations are those specifically about the finding of hidden, stolen or lost things (De occultis) and the divining of what is in the mind of the client (De interpretatione cogitationis), “because the celestial circle is according to the intention of the questioner at that very hour (of the question)” (Speculum Astronomiae, ed. Zambelli, 24).

Choices Choices or beginnings (catarchic or elective astrology). The astrologer advises his client on the optimal time to perform an action or embark on a task, which is a time in which the planet which is “lord” of the task has to be in a good condition in the horoscope of the election, and also is in agreement with the client’s birth horoscope (Speculum Astronomiae, ed. Zambelli, 25). If the birth horoscope is not known “a most definite/strong interrogation” (interrogatio certissima) can be substituted, because a man, when he asks the question, has now arrived from his birth at the good or bad which his birth horoscope signified, and instead of this, take the interrogation as the root (radix) because while births are natural things, interrogations are similar to natural things” (Speculum Astronomiae, ed. Zambelli, 25–26). Texts in this branch are usually called De electionibus (“about choices”). Questions and choices are very similar in the techniques used.

Talismans Talismans were also regarded as belonging to “choices” because one had to choose the right time to make the talisman to effect a particular aim. The Magister Speculi restricts the use of talismans to those which are astronomical, i.  e. acquire their strength simply from the effects of the stars (according to Weill-Parot 2002, 32–38, he invented the term imagines astronomicae). In addition to the genres mentioned by the Magister Speculi, one could include:

Medical astrology (iatromathematics) This draws on the techniques of earlier categories, to determine the nature of the disease, its “crises”, its outcome, and the best times for surgery, bloodletting and cupping, and includes the prognosis of the disease from the time the patient takes to



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his/her bed (the decumbiture) (↗ Demaitre, Medical Prognostication Western Christian World).

Aphorisms Finally, there is the genre of aphorisms, to which belonged the Centiloquia (or “a hundred (aphorisms)”) attributed to Ptolemy, to Hermes and to Bethen, and the “50 precepts” of Sahl ibn Bishr (Zael) – which served as memorable summaries of doctrine and precepts, such as Pseudo-Ptolemy’s Verbum 5: “The best astrologer can ward off much evil which, according to the stars, is about to come, when he knows its nature”, and Verbum 8: “The wise soul (anima sapiens) will aid the work of the stars just as the sower (will aid) the natural powers (of the seeds).” These were often quoted in astrological texts. Aside from texts devoted to each of these genres, or a single textbook which would embrace them all (such as Haly Abenragel’s On the Judgements of the Stars and The Ten Books of Astrology of Guido Bonatti), the astrologer would need to have astrological tables, an almanac and/or ephemerides to work out the positions of the planets at any time. In theory, he could also have used an astrolabe to measure their position, but it is more likely that he would have used this instrument to measure the elevation of the Sun for fixing the hour of the day (or a fixed star for a night hour). It must be borne in mind that the astrologer was a professional. He had had many years of training, or apprenticeship, and relied on textbooks that gave him detailed instructions. The typical image of the astrologer is as a man holding up an astrolabe (see Fig. 17). Though he could have used this instrument to ascertain the time of the birth or the consultation, there were also other ways of measuring the time. For knowing the positions of the planets he would have used astronomical tables, rather than direct observation, and hence tables (of which the two principle ones of the Middle Ages were the Toledan Tables and the Alfonsine Tables and their many derivatives) often accompany astrological texts in the manuscripts. Tables required calculation (explained in their Canones). To reduce the amount of time spent on this the astrologer could use almanacs or ephemerides, which gave the position of all the planets (and the positions where the orbital path of the Moon crossed the path of the Sun in a northerly and a southerly direction – the “head and tail of the dragon”) at regular intervals over a fixed period of time. Whatever the genre (as described above) the setting out of the chart or horoscope (usually referred to in Latin as a figura) was the first major task of the astrologer. The chart is a rectangular or square figure divided into twelve equal parts representing the twelve astrological houses. There were different methods for determining the limits of these twelve houses, the most popular being that named after Alcabitius (though

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Fig. 17: Illumination from the psalter of Blanca of Castile (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arsenal, Ms. 1186, fol. 1v; date: saec. XIII). Photo credits: BNF - Départment Images et prestations numériques.

not, in fact, described by Alcabitius: North 1986, 4). The ascending degree (the term “ascendant” refers both to this degree and the whole of the first house) is marked on the mid-point of the left-hand side of the figure as a certain degree and minute of a certain zodiacal sign, and the corresponding degrees and minutes of the beginning of each following house are marked: the fourth house, being below one’s feet (IMC or imum medium caelum) occupies the middle of the bottom of the figure, the seventh house, setting in the West (descendens/occidens), is directly opposite the ascendant, and the tenth, culminating above our heads (MC or medium caelum), is in the middle of the top of the figure. These four houses are the cardines (or “angles”). The positions of the planets are determined by using astronomical tables, almanacs or ephemerides, and they are inserted together with the head and the tail of the dragon, into the relevant houses. Very often positions of lots (especially the Lot of Fortune) are added. In many horoscopes the date and place of the casting of the horoscope are indicated in a box in the centre of the chart. The judgement (iudicium or consilium) is made by considering the planets in relation to each other (their aspects, their approaching or separating from one another etc.), and in relation to the sign and the degrees of the zodiac: each being lord (dominus) of two signs (except the Sun and Moon which are lords, respectively, of Leo and Cancer only), their detriment (detrimentum) being in the opposite sign – each having an exaltation (exaltatio) in a certain degree of a sign (in Ptolemy the whole sign is the exaltation), and a fall (casus) in the opposite degree or sign, and being lord



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of the triplicity into which the sign falls (the triplicity being those signs of the same elements arranged as an equilateral triangle within the ecliptic circle), or of the term within the sign (irregular divisions assigned to the five planets), or of the decan (or “face”, being a third of a sign). These earn points in descending order: the house 5, the exaltation 4, the triplicity 3, the term 2, and the decan 1 (Alcabitius, Introduction, I.22). The planet that earns the most points in a particular degree in the chart is called the almuten of that degree (eventually from Arabic al-mubtazz = “victor”). This is summarized in Alcabitius, Introduction, I.77: “When you want to know the ruling planet for a topic, you look at the planet having the most shares in the house of the topic” (i.  e. in the degree where the house begins) “and the planet indicating the nature of the topic, and the lot of the topic… Whichever (planet) is more powerful and has a greater number of powers in the place of the topic, is its ruler.” It is important to note that these points are earned by the position of the planet within the zodiac sign (its essential characteristics). Additional powers are acquired by the planets being in cardines, or being above the earth or below the earth, or being in the house of their “joy,” all of which are based on their local position (their accidental characteristics). The astrologer has always to take into account several different testimonies, since negative indications can often be counteracted by positive ones, and vice versa. The sheer number of testimonies that are presented tests his ability as a judge. Astrological text books do not provide answers, but only information and methods for the astrologer to use wisely. In the face of the complexity of the art, astrologers were often castigated for having inadequate knowledge or pretending that they knew more than they did. Alcabitius actually devised a series of questions that the aspiring astrologer should be asked, to prove that he knew the art (the kitāb al-imtihān, “The Book of the Testing”), but unfortunately these questions were not transmitted to the Latin world. There were, however, certain more mechanical techniques that cut out the detailed calculations of the astrologers: such as the lunaria and zodiologica, the spheres of Apuleius and Pythagoras (for diagnosing the outcome of an illness), or the lists of significances of each of the planets when they were (1) under the sun’s rays, (2) setting after the sun, and (3) rising before the sun (the text called Saturnus in Ariete) (Burnett and Bos 2000, 457–466). These could be used by the layman. Running parallel to astrology based on the signs of the zodiac and the celestial houses, were other techniques based on the division of the ecliptic into 27 (13 and a third degrees each) or 28 (12 and six sevenths degrees each) lunar mansions, marked out by the movement of the moon in its sidereal course (the return to the same position in respect to the fixed stars). In this case predictions were made either from the risings and settings of the mansions or from the position of the moon in its 28 mansions. The risings and settings of the mansions through the year (in this case called anwa’ in Arabic and anoe/noe in Latin) determine the weather, according to whether the mansions are moist, dry, or temperate. The position of the moon in its mansion is significant in nativities in the Alchandreana (see below) and particularly in texts derived

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from Hermetic talismanic texts, in which separate prognoses of male and female children are given. The same Hermetic texts determine under which mansions talismans should be made, alongside advice on changing clothes, entering into the presence of kings, marrying, buying slaves and riding animals, planting trees and building houses, making friends, taking medicines and travelling, and practicing alchemy. A mixture of lunar mansion in the ascendant and the moon in its lunar mansion is used in some interrogations in “Jafar Indus,” Book of Rains (Liber imbrium: Burnett 2004).

Written Sources and Artifacts Astrological prognostication in Western Europe can be divided into two periods, that preceding the massive translation of Arabic and (to a lesser extent) Greek texts on astrology, and that following this importation, which more or less coincides with the period before the late eleventh century, and the period from the late eleventh century onwards (Burnett 1996a). Very little of the rich Classical and Hellenistic writings on astrology survived into the Latin early Middle Ages. Manilius’s first-century CE poem, Astronomica, and Julius Firmicus Maternus’s fourth century Mathesis were the only Latin works on astrology to have survived Antiquity, and even these lay dormant until they started to be copied and read again in the late eleventh century. A Liber Hermetis de 36 decanis may also be antique, but has only survived in a single fifteenth-century manuscript. Nevertheless, astrological prognostication was rife in the early Middle Ages. This is thanks to the proliferation of popular texts on Prognostica, which spanned the prognostication from the day of the Moon in its calendar month (lunaria), the Sun in each of the signs of the zodiac (zodiologica), and the weekday of the first day of January. The prognostications are given in the form of lists, with no explanation or elaboration. Vestiges of ancient lore survive in, for example, the Latin texts (fourth century CE) derived from Pseudo-Callisthenes’s Life of Alexander the Great in which the astrologer and magician, Nectanebus, is shown drawing up a horoscope for the birth of the future emperor, on a disk inscribed with circles, on which he placed precious stones representing the planets. Another story of Alexander occurs in the De spermate attributed to Galen, a Hellenistic work which re-emerges in the late eleventh century, in which Alexander is said to have been born in the sign of Taurus – hence his depiction with bull’s horns. Examples of the practice of astrology have been gathered together by Valerie Flint, though these are usually inferred from its condemnations (Flint 1991). Shortly after the mid-tenth century we see the rise of a new genre of astrological literature, which is the first to reflect Arabic practices of astrology. This is what has been called by its editor, David Juste, Les Alchandreana primitifs. Here we have references to astrological doctrines such as triplicities, and the domiciles and other characteristics of the planets, but the main body of the texts deal with nativities, and



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in particular, with establishing a horoscope by counting through the zodiac the sum of the numerical equivalents of the letters of the client’s name. Prominent, too, are the twenty-eight lunar mansions, which show their Arabic origin by retaining their Arabic names: e.  g. for Alnait (Arabic al-Naṭḥ), the first mansion, “whoever is born, will find good things, will receive what he seeks, will be grey-coloured, leader of his people or country, large-hearted, an enemy of his citizens all the days of his life, tall, refined” etc. (Juste 2007, 450–451). Arising at approximately the same time (961 CE) is the Christian calendar drawn up for the Arabic-speaking Christians (Mozarabs) in Córdoba by Rabi ben Zayd, bishop of Elvira, in which the risings and settings of the lunar mansions are indicated in the relevant months. A Latin version may have arisen at the same time, but the earliest manuscript to testify its existence was written in 1132. It is prognostic in the sense that it gives the weather associated with different days of the year, and the diseases that can be expected to occur. Also, perhaps, associated with this context, are (1) a text on what do and to avoid doing when the Moon is in each of its mansions (catarchic astrology) and the prognosis of the native (nativities), called the “On the Moon” (De luna) of Aristotle, and deriving from early Arabic texts on Aristotle’s legendary retailing of the doctrine of Hermes to his royal pupil, Alexander of Macedon (e.  g.: “When the Moon lodges in al-Sharaṭān (another name for the first lunar mansion), make in it talismans of love between women, and do not put on new clothing, and do not approach kings. … Whoever is born, if he is male, the outcome for him is not good; if she is female, she will be secretly ”). (2) A text to which De luna is appended, on the Iudicia (“Judgements”) according to Plato, or to Aristotle (depending on the version). The first book gives a summary of astrological doctrine, while the second gives answers to questions posed by the client (“interrogations”) on a wide variety of topics (Burnett 2009). This last text already presages the kind of astrology introduced on a massive scale in the twelfth century, since it assumes the drawing up of a horoscope for the time of the question, and the locating of the planets in the astrological houses. The translation movement of texts from Arabic into Latin lasted from the late eleventh century until the mid-thirteenth century; while the translations from Greek were less numerous during this period (↗ Heiduk, Prognostication Western Christian World, 142–145). Amongst the earliest of these texts are the medical texts translated from Arabic by Constantine the African (d. before 1198). These included chapters “on critical days” (within the Pantegni), which predicted the “crises” in illnesses, according to the division of the Moon’s orbit (Pantegni Theorica, Book 10, chapter 8). In the early twelfth century Adelard of Bath, who introduced the maiden Astronomia in his original work On the Same and the Different (see above), contributed to this subject his translations (always from Arabic) of Albumasar’s Abbreviation of the Introduction to Astrology, Pseudo-Ptolemy’s Centiloquium, and Thabit ibn Qurra’s Liber Prestigiorum (“Book of Talismans”). While the Abbreviation provides the basic astrological doc-

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trine, the Centiloquium provides handy tips on the day-to-day practice of astrology while the Liber Prestigiorum gives detailed instructions on how to make a talisman for each of seven topics (three being for a creative effect, four for destruction), starting with the making of the mould for the talisman, and finishing with burying or carrying about the finished object – always under the right astrological configurations. The practice of astrology and the making of talismans required observing the positions of the sun, moon and planets, facilitated by astronomical tables and the use of the astrolabe, for both of which Adelard provided texts. Although Adelard wrote in fine humanistic Latin in his original works, his Arabic-Latin translations abound in Arabic transliterations, either to impress his readers by their exoticism, or because he did not know the Latin equivalents. One of the earliest manuscripts of Firmicus Maternus’s Mathesis includes Arabic equivalent terms in the margin, and may represent the attempt by a scholar such as Adelard to find an acceptable Latin astrological vocabulary. A much surer step is manifest in the translations of John of Seville and Limia, who appears to have begun his career in Limia (Northern Portugal) and finished it in Toledo (but for whom the only sure date is 11 March, 1135). A corpus of works that include his name covers the main astrological genres, as dealt with by Messahallah (Messahallah), Sahl ibn Bishr (Zael), al-Qabisi (Alcabitius) and Abū Ma‘shar (Albumasar) respectively – a collection best represented in a manuscript written in the early thirteenth century, probably for the bibliophile and scholar, Richard of Fournival: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 16204. Other collections embracing texts on each of the genres also came into existence in the mid-twelfth century: the Liber Ysagogarum atque quatuor partium (printed as the Epitome totius astrologiae), an original work of “Iohannes Hispalensis” (probably different from the John of Seville just mentioned), and the various versions of the “astrological encyclopedia” of Abraham ibn Ezra (d. ca. 1167), originally written in Hebrew, but translated into French and Latin in the late thirteenth century. Meanwhile a similar set of texts was being translated by Hugo Sanctelliensis in Tarazona (fl. 1145), in consultation (as it seems) with Hermann of Carinthia (fl. 1138– 1143). The culmination of their work was the Liber novem iudicum (“the Book of the Nine Judges”) which, aside from bringing together the works on interrogations of seven Arabic astrologers, had an extensive introduction (with two more authorities) which started off by giving doctrinal information (as in other introductions), but finished by giving some hints on practice taken from Messahallah (Messahallah) and ‘Umar ibn al-Farrukhan al-Ṭabarī (Aomar Tiberiadis). The text by Masha’allah is headed “On the method and manner of enquiring” (De ratione inquirendi et modo), and includes such advise as that “the question must be simple and complete” and “one should absolutely not mix (new) questions with what ones already asked” (Modus ergo est ut simplex et absoluta questio existens…non quesita iam quesitis minime admiscent). The words of Aomar are added to explain why properly asked questions are efficacious:



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For the divine power of the celestial circle and the property of efficacy under the hour of the question itself seems to be related to the intelligence and mind of the questioners by some likeness. For the motion of the circle compels the querent to ask the question. The human condition does not cease to imitate duly the order and progress of the affects of the celestial stars and circles as if by a bond of a certain love. (Liber novem iudicum, MS Vienna, 2428, fols 1r–v, trans. Burnett)

At the same time Plato of Tivoli, in Barcelona in the 1130s, was concentrating on the Classical works of astrology: Ptolemy’s Quadripartitum (1138), and Pseudo-Ptolemy’s Centiloquium (which he saw no reason not to be by Ptolemy), both of which were diffused mainly through Plato’s translations from Arabic, even though translations from Greek were also made. The thirteenth century saw both the translation and the production of large astrological summas. Among the translations were ʻAlī ibn Abi al-Rijāl (Haly Abenragel)’s K.  al-Bari’, ʻAlī ibn Riḍwān (Haly Abenrudian)’s commentary on Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, and Stephen of Messina’s translation of the massive Revolution of the Years of the Nativities by Albumasar. Among the original productions were Guido Bonatti’s Decem libri (“Ten Books [of Astrology]”, ca. 1277), Leopold of Austria’s Compilacio de scientia astrorum (late thirteenth century) and Michael Scot’s Liber introductorius ad astrologiam (before 1236) which, in turn, was followed by Bartholomew of Parma’s works on separate astrological genera, which were based on the various parts of the Liber introductorius. Bartholomew of Parma is credited as being the first scholar to teach astronomy and astrology, among the lawyers and medici in Bologna in the late thirteenth century (Battistini 2001). Law and medicine shared with astrology the two aspects of diagnosis and prognosis, and the use of rules (regulae). Towards the end of the same century the first translation of the Greek version of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos was made, by William of Moerbeke, but evidently this did not catch on. Arabic-derived astrology remained dominant. Alcabitius’s book in particular was on the teaching curriculum of several universities and received frequent commentaries, of which the most popular was that of John of Saxony (1331), which was printed in the Renaissance along with most of the twelfth-century translations so far mentioned (Burnett 2011). It is in the thirteenth century that the first vernacular texts also started to be produced. The earliest known text in French is the L’Introductoire d’Astronomie written for the Latin Emperor of Constantinople, Baudouin  II (r.  1249–1261; d.  1273; Dörr 1998), which is substantially a translation of the introduction of the Liber novem iudicum followed by chapters from Albumasar’s Great Introduction to Astrology, and accompanies French translations of Albohali’s De nativitatibus, Messahallah’s Book on Eclipses and Albumasar’s book on the “Flowers of astrology” (Flores). The lavishly produced manuscript presented to the emperor by his unnamed astrologer (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 1353), included as its centrepiece a detailed horoscope of the emperor, analysing the significance of the positions of the planets at the time of his birth on December 20, 1207 after the tenth hour of midday (= the fourth hour of the night).

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Alongside texts, astronomical instruments were being manufactured (↗ Rodrí­ guez-Arribas, Mathematical Instruments). The earliest Western astrolabe is the socalled “Carolingian astrolabe” which appears to have been an instrument made in an Islamic context in Spain, but inscribed with letters of the Latin alphabet (used both for letters and numerals) in Catalonia in the eleventh century. The earliest recorded Western observation made with an astrolabe is that referred to by Walcher of Malvern in 1090, in respect to a lunar eclipse (Nothaft 2017). Thereafter, references to the instrument in texts, and actual instruments, become more and more common. The astrolabe was primarily used for establishing the correct time (through the observation of the position of the sun (by day) or a conspicuous star (by night) over the horizon), and in measuring unequal and equal hours, and astrological information was added to the instrument (such as the azimuth lines: ↗ Rodríguez Arribas, Mathematical Instruments). Some of these functions were performed by other instruments, such as the quadrant, the sextant, the nocturlabe and the Jacob’s staff. Meanwhile, models of the planetary system (armillary spheres), and celestial spheres (for the constellations) were constructed, and probably already featured amongst the “spheres and hemispheres” which Gerbert d’Aurillac used for teaching the science of the stars in the late tenth century (Zuccato 2005).

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts Astrology percolated into all aspects of European culture. An astrologer is depicted at the bedside of King William II of Sicily (d. 1189) in Peter of Eboli’s, Baths of Puzzuoli (Petrus de Ebulo, Liber ad honorem Augusti, 43). Giovanni da Legnano (d. 1383) structures his history of Bologna around astrological considerations (Tractatus de bello, de represaliis et de duello, 1360). Geoffrey Chaucer’s works are full of more or less explicit astrological references (North 1990). The presence of astrology in art is still more obvious. While Georgius Zothorus Zaparus Fendulus provides a picture-book of the constellations and parts of constellations described without illustrations in Albumasar’s Great Introduction to Astrology (Fendulus, Liber astrologiae), in the frescoes of the Schifanoia Palace in Ferrara (painted 1468–1469) complete portraits of the images as described by the Persians, the Indians and Ptolemy (as reported by Albumasar) are painted on the walls. Images of the planets and their attributes appear in the murals of the Rocca di Angera (ca. 1280), the Palazzo della Ragione (1306–1309) and Chiesa degli Eremitani (after 1360) in Padua, and the Palazzo Trinci in Foligno (1407 and 1410), reflecting the academic, ecclesiastical and courtly interest in astrology of the period (Blume 2000). As befitted its “royal” status, many practitioners of astrology received noble, royal or imperial patronage. Michael Scot was the astrologus of the Emperor Frederick II, while Guido Bonatti served the feudal lord, Ezzelino III da Romano (d. 1259). Univer-



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sity curricula regularly included Alcabitius’s Introduction to astrology, and often also William the Englishman’s De urina non visa (medical astrology) and Pseudo-Ptolemy’s Centiloquium, to supplement the astronomical tables, the De sphere of Sacrobosco and a Theorica planetarum (Boudet 2006, 289: the statutes of the University of Bologna of 1405), and lecture notes on astrology courses survive in, for example, a manuscript from Prague from the early fifteenth century (Burnett 2014). Astrology also impinged on other mantic arts: geomancy became progressively more astrological, so that the geomantic figures became identified with certain lunar mansions, and the divisions of the geomantic chart were attributed to the celestial houses (↗ Rapisarda, Mantic Arts Western Christian World, 432–434). Chiromancy adopted astrological elements, such as the mounds of each of the fingers, ascribed to the planets (without moon and sun). Above all, certain branches of magic incorporated elements of astral science. While the hour of making or putting into action talismans was calculated according to the norms of elective astrology, the panoply of spiritual beings belonging to each of the planets (e.  g. 72 to Saturn alone), who were invoked and did man’s bidding, is far from the astrological view that is based on Ptolemaic astronomy and the Aristotelian idea of a fifth essence. The planets manifest themselves as daemones, and acquire distinctive (and sometimes rather frightening) visages, clothes and attributes. Characters (usually complex geometrical forms) are assigned to each planet and engraved on the talismans for powerful effect. But such astral magic forms a subject of its own which no longer belongs to prognostics.

Medieval Classifications and Discussions The very success of astrology provoked criticism and condemnation. From Ptolemy onwards writers on astrology felt they had to confirm the validity of their craft. Ptolemy’s second chapter in the Tetrabiblos, that “knowledge by astrological means is attainable,” was developed at much greater length by Albumasar who, in his Great Introduction 1.5 “gave arguments concerning the confirmation of astrology, and the refutation of everyone who claims that the stars’ movements have no power, and they have no indication for the things coming to be in this world,” and describes and refutes in turn the arguments of ten sects of such people. These included the arguments that the heavenly bodies have no influence on anything below the sphere of the moon, that they indicate universals but not particulars, that they cannot indicate contingent events (events that could go either way), but must either necessitate or prohibit, that their effects cannot be tested by experience since the same combinations of heavenly bodies occur so rarely, and finally that judgements are based on faulty measurements or that most astrologers cannot be trusted because they do not know their craft. Albumasar refutes all these arguments, paying special attention to the question of astrology and contingency, which impinges on the questions of freewill and determinism

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(the arguments, based on Aristotle’s On Interpretation are analysed in Adamson 2002). John of Saxony takes up Albumasar’s ten sects of critics in the preface to his commentary on Alcabitius, and adds an eleventh: those who say that the science is contrary to faith (Burnett 2011, 56). Sometimes one text answers the arguments of another, as (in Arabic) Alcabitius’s “Book on the Confirmation of the Craft of Astrology” responded to ‘Isa ibn ‘Ali’s text on “The Annulling (of Astrology)” (Alcabitius, Introduction, 18–19), and Hélinand de Froidmont quoted passages from Eudes de Champagne’s “Book on the Efficacy of the Art of Astrology” (Libellus de efficatia artis astrologice) to refute them one by one. But even the most thorough critiques of astrology – Nicole Oresme’s Tractatus contra iudiciarios astronomos (before 1364) and Pico della Mirandola’s Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem (1493–1496), failed to dislodge astrology from its status as a science, and the astrologer from his profession as an adviser and a teacher. That would only start to happen in the seventeenth century.

Selected Bibliography Adamson, Peter. “Abū Maʻshar, al-Kindī and the Philosophical Defense of Astrology.” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 69 (2002): 245–270. Adelard of Bath. De eodem et diverso: Adelard of Bath. Conversations with His Nephew: On the Same and the Different, Questions on Natural Science, and On Birds. Eds. and trans. Charles Burnett et al. Cambridge, 1998. Albumasar. Great Introduction: The Great Introduction to Astrology by Abū Maʻšar. 2 vols. Eds. and trans. Keiji Yamamoto and Charles Burnett. Leiden, 2018. Alcabitius. Introduction: Al-Qabīṣī (Alcabitius), The Introduction to Astrology. Eds. Charles Burnett, Keiji Yamamoto, and Michio Yano. London, 2004. Battistini, Pierluigi, Fabrizio Bonoli, Alessandro Braccesi, and Dino Buzzetti (eds.). Seventh Centenary of the Teaching of Astronomy in Bologna 1297–1997. Bologna, 2001. Blume, Dieter. Regenten des Himmels: Astrologische Bilder in Mittelalter und Renaissance. Berlin, 2000. Boudet, Jean-Patrice. Entre science et ‘nigromance’. Paris, 2006. Burnett, Charles. “Astrology.” Medieval Latin Studies: An Introduction and Bibliographical Guide. Eds. Frank Anthony Carl Mantello and Arthur G. Rigg. Washington, D.C., 1996a. 369–382 (here the different terms used before and after the translations are documented and defined). Burnett, Charles. Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages: Texts and Techniques in the Islamic and Christian Worlds. Aldershot, 1996b. Burnett, Charles. “Lunar Astrology. The Varieties of Texts Using Lunar Mansions, With Emphasis on Jafar Indus.” Micrologus 12 (2004): 43–133. Burnett, Charles. “Aristotle as an Authority on Judicial Astrology.” Florilegium Mediaevale, Études offertes à Jacqueline Hamesse à l’occasion de son éméritat. Eds. José Meirinhos and Olga Weijers. Louvain-la-Neuve, 2009. 41–62. Burnett, Charles. “Al-Qabīṣī”s Introduction to Astrology: From Courtly Entertainment to University Textbook.” Studies in the History of Culture and Science: A Tribute to Gad Freudenthal. Eds. Resianne Fontaine et al. Leiden, 2011. 43–69.



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Burnett, Charles. “Teaching the Science of the Stars in Prague University in the Early Fifteenth Century: Master Johannes Borotin.” Aither 2 (2014): 9–50. Burnett, Charles. “On Judging and Doing in Arabic and Latin Texts on Astrology and Divination.” The Impact of Arabic Sciences in Europe and Asia. Micrologus 24 (2016): 3–11. Burnett, Charles and Gerrit Bos (eds.). Scientific Weather Forecasting in the Middle Ages. London and New York, 2000. Dominicus Gundissalinus. De divisione philosophiae. Eds., trans. and comm. Alexander Fidora and Dorothée Werner. Freiburg et al., 2007. Dörr, Stephen. Der älteste Astronomietraktat in französischer Sprache: l’Introductoire d’astronomie. Tübingen, 1998. Dykes, Benjamin: see Guido Bonatti and other translations on www.bendykes.com Fendulus. Liber astrologiae: Georgius Zothorus Zaparus Fendulus. Liber astrologiae. Presented by Marie-Thérèse Gousset and Jean-Pierre Verdet. Paris, 1989. Fidora, Alexander. “Divination and Scientific Prediction: The Epistemology of Prognostic Sciences in Medieval Europe.” Early Science and Medicine 18 (2013): 517–535. Flint, Valerie. The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe. Oxford, 1991. Giovanni de Legnano. Tractatus de bello, de represaliis et de duello. Ed. Thomas Erskine Holland. Washington, D.C., and Oxford, 1917. Guido Bonatti. The Book of Astronomy (= Decem Libri, 7 vols.). Trans. Benjamin Dykes. Minneapolis, 2007. Juste, David. Les Alchandreana primitifs: Étude sur les plus anciens traités astrologiques latins d’origine arabe (Xe siècle). Leiden and Boston, 2007. Magister Speculi: see Speculum astronomiae. North, John David. Horoscopes and History. London, 1986. North, John David. Chaucer’s Universe. repr., Oxford, 1990. Nothaft, Carl Philipp Emanuel. Walcher of Malvern: “De lunationibus” and “De Dracone”; Study, Edition, Translation, and Commentary. Turnhout, 2017. Petrus de Ebulo. Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis. Eds. Theo Kölzer and Marlis Stähli. Sigmaringen, 1994. Rutkin, Darell. Sapientia Astrologica: Astrology, Magic and Natural Knowledge, ca. 1250–1800. Vol. I.: Medieval Structures (1250–1500): Conceptual, Institutional, Socio-Political, TheologicoReligious and Cultural. New York, 2019. Speculum astronomiae. Eds. Stefano Caroti, Michaela Pereira, and Stefano Zamponi. Directed by Paola Zambelli. Pisa, 1977. Weill-Parot, Nicolas. Les “images astrologiques” au moyen âge et à la Renaissance. Paris, 2002. Zuccato, Marco. “Gerbert of Aurillac and a Tenth-Century Jewish Channel for the Transmission of Arabic Science to the West.” Speculum 80 (2005): 742–763.

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Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World Definitions and Terminology In Byzantium, as in Antiquity, astral sciences were based on the double assumption that the movements of the stars were predictable mathematically and that celestial configurations influenced the natural world. While astronomy focused on the theoretical study of celestial bodies and offered the tables and methods to calculate the positions of the stars at a given time, astrology offered the tools for the practical applications of such theory in society, by interpreting the relative position of the stars in the heavens to predict future events or understand the past. In the Eastern Christian world, however, the legitimacy of some – but not all – astrological claims was periodically questioned. Moreover, even though Byzantine scholars generally distinguished these two disciplines, sources indicate that the boundaries between astronomy and astrology were not always clear to all, because astronomical tables and methods were also necessary for the astrologer to do some of his work, for instance to establish the configuration of the stars at a given time. The term “mathematician”, often applied to designate astrologers, created such confusion that all four disciplines of mathematics (arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy) were altogether condemned by the canonist John Zonaras in the twelfth century. This distinction was even less clear in the Slavic world. While a variety of Greek texts translated into Slavonic were available to the Bulgarians, Serbs and Rus, which included astronomical and astrological terms, as well as basic notions of spherical cosmology, none of these texts offered the mathematical and geometrical background necessary to practice the type of mathematical work done by Byzantine astronomers and astrologers. In Rus, the only planet given a Slavic name was Venus (d’n’nitsa or zakhodniaia, morning or evening star). Overall, there is little indication that the planets and constellations were singled out in the heavens in ways similar to the Greeks. The Slavs generally used the terms astrology (astrologiia / zviazdosloviia) and astronomy (astronomiia / zviazdozakon’ia) indifferently and inconsistently before the seventeenth century. In fact, no discipline focused on the systematic study of the stars and the mathematical prediction of their movements. Slavic literati must have been aware of the importance of astronomy and mathematics in Byzantine education, however. After all, the Apostle of the Slavs Constantine-Cyril (826/7–869) himself had Acknowledgement: Note that the basic doctrine of Arabic/Islamic, Jewish/Hebrew and Christian/ Latin astral sciences is the same and an attempt has been made to make the chapters on these ­subject-areas in this volume complementary in their information rather than to duplicate it. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-026



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been educated in the quadrivium, as his Slavonic Life indicates. John the Exarch of Bulgaria (fl. ca. 890–917), who was likely trained in Byzantium as well, marvelled at the human capacity to predict eclipses, which he used as a proof of mankind’s independence from the stars, thus against the claims of astrologers. Astral phenomena were observed, however, and laden with interpretations: eclipses (“darkening of” or “sign in the sun”), comets (“shiny stars” or “serpents”), solar and lunar haloes (“signs”) were all considered “signs in the heavens”.

Written Sources and Artifacts Astrological practices appear in a variety of sources, from the most theoretical to the most practical. Depending on the method used, an astrologer may have required technical works that went back to astronomical tables to establish the position of stars and planets at a given time, as well as astrological works explaining how to analyse and interpret these celestial configurations. Therefore, Byzantine astrological manuscripts often reproduced an eclectic mix of astronomical information related to the calculation of horoscopes, definitions and interpretative data. Many astrological compilations assumed the presence of other works at the astrologer’s disposal, however. Indeed, many manuscripts did not include the necessary tables to cast a horoscope, or the full texts to interpret them, but only excerpts. One has to assume the presence of astronomical and astrological works or tables in the library of the compiler or the professional astrologer. Finally, some manuscripts reproduce isolated horoscopes without any indications of the methods used to calculate them. Byzantine astrology was heavily dependent on texts and practices developed in Antiquity. The comprehensive works written by Dorotheos of Sidon (Pentateuch, ca. CE 75), Vettius Valens (Anthologies, ca. CE 152–162), or Ptolemy (Apotelesmatika, or Four Books of Astrological Effects also known as the Tetrabiblos, ca. CE 120–150) were among the most important sources of Byzantine astrology. Abridgments, syntheses and compilations of these works circulated, such as Paul of Alexandria’s Introduction (ca. 378), Hephaistion of Thebes’ Apotelesmatika or Astrological Effects (ca. 415) and Rhetorios’ compilation (ca. 620), a work still copied in the fifteenth century, albeit in abbreviated form. While most astrological works are rather technical and written in prose, some of these treatises were also versified, emphasizing the didactic nature of these texts. This was the case for Dorotheos of Sidon’s Pentateuch, a genre celebrated at the court of Manuel I by the poets John Kamateros and Constantine Manasses in the twelfth century. Astronomical treatises, with their tables and methods, were essential tools to calculate the position of the stars. The most prominent among them were Ptolemy’s Almagest and Handy Tables, which were heavily commented, corrected and adapted by Byzantine astronomers. The Handy Tables and their commentary by Theon of Alex-

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andria in the fourth century were the most frequently used. A few Arabic manuals made their way to the Empire in the eleventh century, for instance the tables of Ibn al-Aʽlam (d. 985), which were used to calculate an ephemeris for 1032–1036 and two horoscopes in 1153 and 1162. The most important influx of foreign texts happened during the Palaeologan period, however, when a range of Persian astronomical works were brought back to Constantinople by Gregory Chioniades around 1300. Latin and Jewish texts were also translated in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, such as the Toledan Tables or the Six Wings of Immanuel ben Jacob Bonfils of Tarascon (ca. 1365). The latter was the first set of astronomical tables and methods made available to Muscovy in the late fifteenth century. Besides astronomical tables, which required that the astrologers themselves calculated planetary positions, practitioners may have used ephemerides or almanacs. These were tables that offered the positions of the celestial bodies already calculated generally at ten-day intervals, as well as the aspects of the planets and the lunar nodes. Only a few of them are still extant, however. Instruments to calculate the position of the stars were also available. They are regularly mentioned in astronomical calculations. Several Byzantine treatises were also written about the use of the astrolabe, but only one Byzantine astrolabe remains, the astrolabe of Brescia (↗ Grünbart, Prognostication Eastern Christian World, 165). The situation in the Slavic world was different, considering that no comprehensive astronomical text was available before the fifteenth century, when the Six Wings were translated from Hebrew into Slavonic, although this text, geared to the prediction of eclipses, would have been of little help for prospective astrologers. Overall, few descriptions of methods of mathematical astrology remain from the medieval Slavic world. Some astrological techniques were described in polemical passages against the art in biblical commentaries, as in John the Exarch’s Shestodnev, a commentary on the Six Days of Creation. In this excerpt John the Exarch described astrological methods based on Sextus Empiricus’ treatise Against the Professors, but left the astrological and astronomical terms unexplained. In fact, these few Greek astrological passages translated into Slavonic must have been difficult to understand, since the translators had to create a new Slavonic terminology to match these Greek words that did not originally exist in their language. Compounded to the fact that there was no consistency across texts among these new calques and loanwords, we may surmise that astrology was not practiced until very late. Overall, with the exception of diatribes against astrology, there is little trace of the presence or use of astrological books before the thirteenth century among the Orthodox Slavs. This does not mean, however, that celestial bodies were not observed and meaning not derived from them. Even in the Byzantine world astrological texts were not confined to mathematical procedures. Other types of interpretative works circulated that took the celestial bodies as their principle. Many Byzantine astrological manuscripts reproduce texts devoted to various effects occasioned by natural phenomena such as thunder and lightning or the age of the moon. John the Lydian’s anthology On Por-



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tents (sixth century) notably includes a number of such celestial and meteorological prognoses, which were later included in other astrological compilations, such as John Kamateros’ astrological poem (twelfth century). Such type of prognoses circulated independently and became popular in the Slavic world. They first appeared in Bulgaria and Serbia in the thirteenth century and, from there, made their way to Muscovy, where they flourished from the fifteenth century onward. The most important among them included brontologia / gromniki (divination by thunder) and astrapelogia / molniianiki (divination by lightning), which provided prognostications in relation to the sign of the Zodiac or the day of the lunar month when thunder is heard or lightning is seen, as well as selenodromia / lunniki, which determined the fate of an activity based on the age of the moon or its shape. Other divinatory works circulated in Greek and Slavonic that offered prognoses based on the zodiacal sign under which one was born or prognostications for a period of twelve years based on the dominant sign of a given year. Byzantine manuscripts also include other methods that related the numerical value of letters in a client’s question to the numerical values of the celestial configuration at the time of the enquiry. Representations of the Zodiac appear on cosmological diagrams, sometimes in relation to the calendar, but they are rarely attached to any divinatory activity (↗ Lempire, Calendrical Calculations Eastern Christian World). In the Slavic world, such diagrams appear rarely and cannot be considered divinatory either. Nevertheless, such depictions are indicative of how Byzantine astrology was received in the Slavic world. An interesting example appears on the margins of folios 250v–251r, in the Izbornik completed for Grand Prince Sviatoslav in 1073, an illuminated anthology of biblical and patristic works translated in Bulgaria in the ninth or tenth century on a Byzantine prototype. In this miniature, the zodiacal signs are represented in a mixed order to illustrate a treatise on the calendar attributed to John of Damascus. While this representation does reveal some fascination with the subject, its jumbled layout is rather telling of how little this concept was understood.

Techniques and Manifestations Byzantine clients consulted astrologers for a variety of purposes. Techniques were developed accordingly. Among them, genethlialogy interpreted a thema (or, in some Byzantine manuscripts, themation, i.  e. a horoscopic diagram) on the basis of the configuration of the heavens at the time of a person’s birth or conception. Within this discipline, the astrologer could also perform a continuous horoscopy, which compared the horoscopes of someone’s birthdays to that of their nativity so as to establish a prognosis for the year. Less complex than genethlialogy, catarchic astrology, also known as elections or initiatives, determined the most favourable moment to start an activity. Such a technique could be used for a variety of purposes. For instance,

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iatromathematics or medical astrology cast the horoscope of the moment when a patient became ill (or at the time of the query) in order to establish the most favourable time to perform a medical procedure (↗ Cooper, Medical Prognostication Eastern Christian World). Other techniques included determining the most favourable time for a journey, a wedding or a military campaign. Such specific enquiries ultimately offered the freedom to decide whether or not to undertake an action and, as such, were less likely to be considered an encroachment on human free will. In an interrogation, clients enquired about the way in which any activity that had already started or that was planned would turn out. The answer was based on the horoscope cast at the moment of the query. Universal interrogations offered general prognoses about a client’s life on the basis of the configuration of the heavens at a given moment (e.  g. the potential length of their life, dangerous years and possible manners of death). Finally, political or historical astrology tried to determine the history of a nation, a religion or a ruler by interpreting astronomical cycles and horoscopes cast for longer timespans. In several cases, horoscopes – be they for initiatives or interrogations – were also cast retrospectively to explain an event or the outcome of an endeavour. One may discuss whether or not the interpretation of astral omens belonged to astrology per se. Byzantine and Slavic authors frequently attached meaning to specific celestial phenomena in their chronicles, sermons and letters. Solar eclipses were notably related to the death of sovereigns, an interpretation found in some astrological manuals, such as that of Hephaistion of Thebes, and repeated by prominent Byzantine scholars. Orthodox chroniclers also interpreted the specific shape of comets in the light of current events.

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts While there are periods when evidence for the practice of astrology is richer than at other times, sustained interest in astrology is visible in the Byzantine world from the founding of Constantinople in 330 to its fall to the Ottomans in 1453, and even beyond. The number of astrological handbooks and horoscopes dating from the early days of the Byzantine Empire testify to the activity of astrologers at the time. Paul of Alexandria’s Introduction notably served as a textbook of astrology. It was commented in ca. 500 by Heliodoros, used by Olympiodorus the Younger during lectures delivered in Alexandria in May-June of 564, and still studied in the ninth and twelfth centuries. Rhetorios’ compilation survived in Byzantine epitomes dated from the tenth or eleventh centuries, which were still copied in the Palaeologan period (fourteenth to fifteenth centuries), attesting to their continuous use. His work reproduced horoscopes dated between 401 and 516, though horoscopes from that time are also preserved in other compilations. For instance, several horoscopes were cast about Emperor Zeno’s political rivals (r. 474–491), such as the rebels Leontios and Pamprepios of Panopolis,



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showing the prominence of astrologers at the imperial court. These political opponents employed astrologers as well; indeed, rivalries seemed rife between these practitioners as these horoscopes indicate. Astrologers were consulted by a wider array of people, however, including travellers. From Zeno’s reign also date three anonymous horoscopes that established the best moment to undertake voyages across the Mediterranean Sea. One of them was made retrospectively, as the client looked for explanations about the storms, delays and fights that plagued his journey. Evidence for the following centuries is scantier, but the presence of astrologers is mentioned in some chronicles. This may be due to Justinian’s decrees against “mathematicians”, which ordered that no one “interpret astronomy” (Malalas, Chronicle, 18.47) and which closed the school of Athens and affected the school of Constantinople. Gauging the effectiveness of such laws is always difficult, however. Indeed, this is also the time when the bureaucrat John the Lydian published his survey On Portents that compiled different means of divination in Roman history. According to his own statement, Lydos partly justified his endeavour after a comet rightfully foretold a Persian attack. Later chroniclers also reported this celestial event. George Hamartolos (ca. 866/867), for instance, listed the comet among a range of other omens that includes a dreadful earthquake, a solar eclipse and shooting stars. With its rays shooting up in the western skies, the comet was a harbinger of popular uprisings and murders. In recounting how “new stars” (comets) appeared and vanished by divine order, foretelling the death of kings, the theologian John of Damascus (ca. 675 – ca. 753/754) not only repeated ancient and widespread beliefs, but also couched them within the boundaries of Orthodoxy. In Alexandria, astrology belonged to the curriculum until the Persian invasions of 619. Indeed, the last Alexandrian teachers mentioned Paul’s Introduction as an authority for the teaching of astronomy. In the late seventh century, the Coptic chronicler John of Nikiu also reported that astrologers predicted the fall of Emperor Maurice in 602. Astrology was likely part of the curriculum imported to Constantinople by Stephen of Alexandria after he fled the Persian onslaught, even though the astrological works attributed to his name were likely made a century later by another Stephen, Stephen the Astrologer. The Persian and Arabic invasions of the seventh century and their ensuing hardships may explain why eschatological preoccupations and criticism against divination abounded at the time as well. The harvest is more bountiful for the eighth–tenth centuries. Four astrological treatises that combined Hellenistic astrology with Persian and Indian sources were written in Greek by the Syrian Maronite Christian Theophilus of Edessa (ca. 695–785). These works may have reached Constantinople with one of his students, Stephen the Astrologer, when he moved from Baghdad to Byzantium in ca. 775. Stephen’s name is attached to three texts: a treatise of political astrology on the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, an apology of astrology, and a work On the Mathematical Art that also decried the decadence of astronomical and astrological studies in Constantinople. Most interestingly, Stephen’s apology introduced a horoscope of Islam with a range

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of predictions from its rise to its alleged fall. The thema, dated to 621 and attributed to Stephen of Alexandria, was likely cast a century later, in ca. 775–780, since prognoses are only accurate up to these years. The Byzantine court was a regular patron of artists and scholars, including astrologers, whose advice was sometimes sought by Emperors. In his chronicle, Theophanes notably mentioned the death of Pankratios, an astrologer working for Constantine VI who wrongly predicted a Byzantine victory against the Bulgarians in 792. An example of ephemeris added to Rhetorios’ compilation may be dated to 796 as well. That the appearance taken by celestial phenomena was tied to specific disasters is clear in another passage of Hamartolos’ chronicle related to the uprising of Thomas the Slav in 820–821, where “a bright star in the shape of two shining moons, coming together then again splitting in various forms” prefigured internal divisions in the Empire (Chronicon, II, 777). Astrologers were active at the beginning of the tenth century, notably casting an imperial nativity for the birth of Constantine VII on 3 September 905 on the basis of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos and Dorotheos’ poem. Calculations of planetary longitudes for 906 adjusted the empirical methods of Vettius Valens to coincide with early tenth-century observations. As Anne Tihon has shown, the methods used are awkward, but they constitute rare evidence for Byzantine observations. Different versions of Stephen’s horoscope of Islam seem to have circulated at the time as well, which adjusted the original data. Chroniclers also reported portents. Theophanes Continuatus, for instance, related how Leo VI consulted Pantaleon, metropolitan of Synada, to interpret a lunar eclipse in 907–908; the same chronicler tied the appearance of a comet to the birth of Constantine VII. Finally, according to Leo the Deacon, John I sought the opinion of astrologers about a comet in 975. The eleventh and twelfth centuries are marked by a renewed interest in Ptolemaic works, possibly fuelled by an upsurge in translation, adaptation, and use of Arabic astronomical and astrological material. Astrology fascinated the imperial court. Several Byzantine historians, such as Michael Psellos, Anna Komnene and Nicetas Choniates, criticised the presence of astrologers at the court, although their position about astrology is indecisive; the first two even acknowledged learning this science. In the eleventh century, Psellos criticized these astrologers’ theoretical knowledge of the heavens, but acknowledged their ability to cast horoscopes and interpret them; people required predictions from him as well, even though he did not believe in the fatal influence of the stars. Anna Komnene named some astrologers in her Alexiad (ca. 1137–1147), such as Eleutherios Zebelenos, an Egyptian; Katanankes, an Athenian; and Symeon Seth, a scholar who had been to Egypt and who, according to her, correctly foretold the death of the Norman Robert Guiscard in 1085 with a method that she decried as “a modern invention” (Alexiad, VI.7.1–7). Anna’s scornful description of the astrologers’ influential presence at court also indicates that astrological methods inherited from the Arab world were becoming more prevalent. At the time, indeed, the term “modern” was often applied to Arabic astronomy and astrology. Finally, the



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princess was also embarrassed to explain how her father consulted astrologers when a comet appeared in 1107, before the Norman invasion of Epirus. Horoscopes may be dated to the turn of the millennium, as well as a Greek translation of Abū Maʻshar’s Revolutions of Nativities (ca. 1015). A long scholium in Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. gr. 1594, a ninth-century manuscript of the Almagest, indicates that the astronomical tables of “Alim”, most certainly Ibn al-Aʽlam (d. 985), were already available ca. 1032. An ephemeris for 1032–1036 and two horoscopes cast for some John Synadinos in 1153 and 1162 were calculated on the basis of these tables. The thema of John Synadinos – otherwise unknown – for 5 February 1153 formed the basis of a universal interrogation that is followed by a handbook of classical and Arabic astrological sources. Interestingly, the style and choice of excerpts seem to point to an audience found among a literate public outside scholars and professional astrologers. Two astrological poems by John Kamateros, the Introduction to Astronomy (in fact an astrological compilation) and the Poem about the Zodiacal Circle, were dedicated to Emperor Manuel I (r. 1143–1180). The poet Constantine Manasses also dedicated astrological verses to Manuel I’s sister-in-law, the Sebastokratorissa Irene. The emperor himself became entangled in a controversy about the validity of astrology with the monk Michael Glykas after penning a long apology of astrology that also expounded the legitimacy of interpreting celestial portents. Manuel I’s strong belief in astrology was also fiercely criticised in Nicetas Choniates’ History (ca. 1207). According to him, the emperor made a range of ludicrous decisions on the sole basis of astrologers’ advice about military campaigns and succession. The same historian also mentions the consultation of a brontologion during a campaign. Interest in astrology touched clerics as well, as the bitter complaint of some Peter the Philosopher about Patriarch Luke Chrysoberges (r.  1157–1169) indicates. Other sources point to the practice of astrology among the clergy, notably in the works of two twelfth-century archbishops, Theophylact of Ochrid and Eustathios of Thessalonica. John Kamateros himself may have been archbishop of Bulgaria. The Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204 seemingly set the practice of astrology to a halt. Indeed, no astrological, or even astronomical, calculations remain from the thirteenth century. The difficulty that George Akropolites faced in 1239, when he was contradicted vociferously by a court physician in front of Empress Irene about the cause of a solar eclipse, suggests that the level of education in astronomy was not particularly high outside scholarly circles. Yet, the same George Akropolites also believed that this eclipse and the presence of a comet six months before announced Irene’s death on that year. Such beliefs were widespread at the time. Celestial portents were discussed in a Greek translation made in 1245 of an Arabic version of an apocalypse of Daniel. Furthermore, the scholar George Pachymeres, otherwise a stark critic of the astrologers’ capacity to predict future events, believed that a solar eclipse foretold the death of Emperor Theodore II Laskaris in 1258. A revival in mathematical astronomy happened around 1300, characterized not only by an influx of texts of Persian, Latin and Jewish origins adapted to Byzantine

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conditions, but also by renewed interest in Ptolemaic astronomy and attempts to correct Ptolemy’s tables, which at that point did not provide accurate results. Persian astronomy and its new data, translated and brought to Byzantium by the monk Gregory Chioniades in ca. 1300, gave much impetus to Byzantine astronomers and astrologers alike. The most successful of these Byzantine adaptations, however, was George Chrysokokkes’ Persian Syntaxis (ca. 1347), a work largely inspired by Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s Zīj-i Īlkhānī (ca. 1260), which included methods for calculating longitudes and latitudes, syzygies and eclipses, as well as ephemerides and horoscopes. Both Chioniades and Chrysokokkes were physicians as well as astronomers and saw astrology as the purpose of their work, because this discipline was useful in medicine. Unfortunately, according to Anne Tihon, these translations were faulty, notably in the calculation of syzygies, which occasioned erroneous results and prompted a few Byzantine astronomers and astrologers to still have recourse to Ptolemy for the calculation of syzygies, then to switch to Persian methods and tables for the calculation of eclipses. A number of Byzantine scholars tried their hands at predicting solar and lunar eclipses. Nicephorus Gregoras, for instance, calculated and predicted several eclipses in the 1330s, using the Almagest and the Handy Tables. While he believed that stars may be the cause of disastrous natural phenomena, such as storms, he disputed their influence on individual fate, a view shared by other scholars such as Theodore Metochites. The predictability of eclipses sometimes worried the authorities, however, maybe because they heralded disasters. Gregoras was notably enjoined by Andronikos  III not to reveal the prediction of the solar eclipse of 1333. In his own Roman History, Gregoras interpreted eclipses as harbingers of disasters, including an imperial death (Andronikos II), foreign invasions, and a civil war. Ephemerides circulated at the time as well. Along with some allusions in the letters of Constantine Akropolites and Nicephorus Gregoras who decried their use, an anonymous ephemeris was made in Trebizond from the Persian tables for 1 March 1336–1 March 1337. In the margins of this work, a range of predictions are offered pertaining to all sorts of meteorological, agricultural, commercial, military or medical questions. The activities of the astrologer and physician John Abramios and his students appear in a series of astrological texts, horoscopes, and eclipse calculations that may be dated between 1370 and ca. 1410. This “astrological school”, as it was coined by David Pingree, left its mark in several manuscripts, compiling and revising the texts of several classical astrological works and the translations of some Arabic material. Many horoscopes are preserved in these manuscripts, which offer us clues as to who consulted these astrologers and for what purpose. For instance, several horoscopes were cast in relation to Andronikos IV’s rebellion against John V in 1376, which all seem to favour Andronikos. Horoscopes were not only cast for members of the imperial family, however. Clients also included a wealthy man, close to the Emperor, or a Venetian ambassador. That these astrologers considered celestial portents to be significant is visible in a comment establishing a link between Timur Lenk’s victory at



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Ankara in 1402, an earthquake and a thunderbolt on the monastery of the Peribleptos in Constantinople. These astrologers were also aware of the need to update Ptolemaic and Persian tables to obtain more accurate results. According to David Pingree, they notably produced comparative eclipse calculations using both methods, Ptolemaic and Persian, an activity that occupied a few Byzantine astronomers at the time. Cardinal Isidore of Kiev (ca. 1385–1463), for instance, calculated eclipses on the basis of the Persian tables, but also copied astrological works, including a translation of Abū Maʻshar’s Revolutions of Nativities. He may be the author of an ephemeris calculated for 1454–1457. The Ottoman onslaught on Constantinople was linked to a series of Byzantine prophecies and eschatological previsions (↗ Brandes, Eschatology Eastern Christian World). For instance, the Oracula Leonis, a series of prophecies on Byzantine emperors falsely attributed to Leo VI (r. 886–912), even came to be applied to the Ottoman sultans. Surprisingly, few astral omens or astrological predictions appear among them with the exception of the lunar eclipse of 24 May, which was associated to a prophecy about the fall of the city at the time of the waning moon. Astrological texts are rife in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Byzantine manuscripts, however. There would be no point in listing them here, but their number clearly indicates a high interest in astral divination in the Palaeologan period and well beyond. Some of these texts, especially those that provided more immediate interpretation of celestial portents such as Brontologia and Selenedromia, were still copied on Mount Athos until the eighteenth century, an essential channel for the transmission of Byzantine texts to Slavic Orthodox lands. Nothing indicates the presence or the use of astrological books stricto sensu among Orthodox Slavs prior to the fifteenth century. Foundational texts in geometry, astronomy, and astrology were missing, which would have provided the tools to calculate the configuration of the heavens and cast horoscopes. Brief descriptions of astrological techniques appear occasionally in Slavonic translations of Byzantine works, although the Slavonic terminology was inconsistent and often left unexplained. Even the condemnation of genethlialogy included in the Novgorodian collection of canon law (Kormchaia kniga) of 1280 is likely the result of a translation of Byzantine canon law, rather than evidence for such practices in Rus. The first full set of astronomical tables available was the Six Wings (Shestokryl) of Immanuel Bonfils, translated from the Hebrew and brought to Novogorod in the late fifteenth century with the so-called heresy of the Judaizers, but the use of this text, normally geared to the calculation of eclipses, was first associated with calendar issues related to the eschatological fears of the 1480s in relation to the upcoming year 7000 in the Orthodox calendar (1492). According to its sixteenth-century Muscovite detractors, however, the work was also used for astrological purposes. Other types of divinatory works, mostly related to predictions from thunderstorms (gromniki or gromovniki) (↗ Grünbart, Importance of Thunder) or the appearance of the moon (lunniki), started to circulate from the thirteenth century onward, though

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they are mostly prevalent after the fifteenth century. The Trier Psalter (late tenth century), a Latin prayer book brought to Rus in the eleventh century by Gertruda, the Polish wife of king Iziaslav Iaroslavich (r. 1054–1078), included a dream lunary in Latin with interpretations of dreams for each day of a lunar month, but it is hardly evidence for such a practice in Rus at that time. There is little indication about the context in which these texts were used, but their success on Mount Athos does suggest a clerical audience. Some of these predictions were even attached to events or characters of the Old Testament. More telling, however, is the inclusion of medical and agricultural advice according to lunar phases in one of the compilations of the hegumen Kirill Beloozerskii (1337–1427). Celestial phenomena were considered portents, however, and the unusual appearance of the sky was a divine sign that current misfortunes were the result of humanity’s disobedience to God. As in the Byzantine world, strange stars (e.  g. comets) and celestial phenomena (e.  g. eclipses and atmospheric phenomena) were reported by chroniclers and tied to upcoming or past events. While such interpretations in Slavic chronicles may be ascribed partly to Byzantine chronographic models, the presence of celestial gods in the Slavic pantheon suggests practices and beliefs related to the heavens. Unfortunately, evidence for them is scarce. Solar eclipses instilled fear within the population, as attest the cries and tears that accompanied the eclipse of 14 May 1230. In Rus, the chronicler of the Povest’ vremennykh let (Tale of Bygone Years) scorned a popular belief that the sun was being “eaten up”. But these clerical authors also considered celestial phenomena as divine portents, just as their Byzantine counterparts. For instance, a series of omens mentioned for 1065 (1064 in our calendar) in the Povest’, namely a comet, a solar eclipse and shooting stars, announced murders and invasions, the bloodlike comet foretelling bloodshed. The solar eclipse of 19 March 1113 predicted the death of King Sviatopolk Iziaslavich (r. 1093–1113) a month later, while the lunar eclipse of 12 February 1161 was attached to the murder of Iziaslav Davidovich, ruler of Chernigov, in the same year. Finally, the shooting stars described in the Suzdal chronicle for the winter of 1203 were thought to announce the end of time, as if the stars had been diverted from their course towards the earth. In his sermons, Bishop Serapion of Vladimir (d. 1275) considered cosmic phenomena to be signs of disobedience to God. Such portents also appear, though more sparingly, in Serbian chronicles. Thus, the death of the Serbian king Stefan III Dušan in 1331 is associated with a solar eclipse in some of them (and wrongly dated to 1335), and the successful defense of Belgrade in July 1456 with the appearance of unusual stars.



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Medieval Classifications and Discussions Astronomy held a prominent place in the Byzantine quadrivium. The place of astrology among mathematical sciences, however, was regularly disputed. While the use of Paul of Alexandria’s Introduction as an astronomical handbook until the early seventh century is noteworthy, other manuals openly distantiated themselves from the discipline. For instance, the astronomical section of an anonymous quadrivium dated from 1007 ended with definitions that pertain to astrology, but set boundaries to the claims of astrologers, particularly when it came down to predict human fate. Similarly, in his quadrivium written in 1300, the scholar George Pachymeres explained astronomical and astrological concepts in greater depth than his predecessor of 1007, but also rejected astrological predictions even though, as many did at this time, Pachymeres believed in the ominous role of celestial bodies. The ambiguous ties between astronomy and astrology, however, prompted twelfth-century canonists to restrict mathematical studies altogether – with little effect. For instance, Michael Balsamon reinterpreted canon 36 of the synod of Laodicea (364) on the study of mathematical arts as a prohibition for Christians to study astronomy, while John Zonaras recommended that churchmen refrained from excessive interest in all four disciplines of the quadrivium. The Slavs were aware of the Byzantine mathematical curriculum, but nothing indicates that these sciences were taught formally. The astrological texts that were transmitted through monastic networks did not require mathematical education. Overall, we know little about the practical sides of Byzantine astrologers’ work, their networks and instruction, or the ways in which consultations happened. The “school of John Abramios” mentioned earlier points to a group of astrologers working together and possibly mentoring students during their forty years of known activity, but not to a formal institution. The legitimacy and the orthodoxy of astrological practices were periodically discussed in Byzantine religious circles, and particularly the claim that stars may hold sway over the fate of mankind, a debate that was passed onto the Slavic world through the writings of Basil of Caesarea (fourth century) and John of Damascus (eighth century) among others. These Church Fathers strongly upheld the idea that human free will made celestial determinism impossible: stars may influence weather conditions, but they have no bearing on human fate. Overall, the Zodiac was for them no more than a measuring instrument for the calendar or celestial coordinates. That stars may influence humours thus the suitable times to perform medical procedures was acknowledged, however, even among the harshest critics of astrology, such as Michael Glykas or Peter the Philosopher in the twelfth century. As we have seen, though, such critiques did not prevent even members of the Orthodox clergy to experiment with this science. Interestingly, astrologers themselves strove to keep their interpretations within the boundaries of orthodoxy. This is notably the case for the horoscope of John Synadinos and the astrological handbook attached to it. While the horoscope set the client’s potential lifespan to 79 years, its interpretation offered an unsurprising wide

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range of possibilities for an untimely death and conceded that only divine providence would bring Synadinos to such a ripe age. The astrological handbook that follows this horoscope also explicitly rejected the possibility of predicting the character of each individual on the basis of geographical locations, a doctrine that is developed in the Tetrabiblos. In the early fourteenth century, an anonymous Christian apology of astrology, Hermippos or on Astrology, attempted to reconcile the belief in the influence of the stars over the natural world with the dogmas of divine providence and free will, suggesting that astrology led to divine contemplation more so than asceticism. Needless to say, such a position was strongly condemned. Overall, however, polemicists’ attempts to curtail the practice of astrology were never very successful and, as we have seen, astrologers pursued their activities relatively unabated.

Selected Bibliography Abu Maʻshar. De revolutionibus nativitatum. Ed. David Pingree. Leipzig, 1968. Andreeva, Margarita Alekseeva. “K istorii vizantiisko-slavianskikh gadatel’nykh knig.” Byzslav 5 (1933–1934): 120–161. Angusheva-Tikhanova, Adelina. Gadatelnite knigi v starobŭlgarskata literature. Sofia, 1996. Bouché-Leclerq, Auguste. L’astrologie grecque. Paris, 1899. Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum, 12 vols. Eds. Franz Cumont et al. Brussels, 1898–1953. Caudano Anne-Laurence. “An Astrological Handbook from the Reign of Manuel I Komnenos.” Almagest 3.2 (2012): 46–65. Caudano, Anne-Laurence. “Let There Be Lights in the Firmament of the Heavens.” Cosmological Depictions in Early Rus. Cambridge, 2006. Dagron, Gilbert, and Jean Rougé. “Trois horoscopes de voyages en mer (5e siècle après J.-C.).” RevByz 40 (1982): 117–133. Estestvoznanieto v srednevekovna Bŭlgariia: sbornik ot istoricheski izvori. Eds. Tsvetan Kristanov and Ivan Dujchev. Sofia, 1954. Hephaistionis Thebani Apotelesmaticorum libri tres, 2 vols. Ed. David Pingree. Leipzig, 1973–1974. Ieraci Bio, Anna Maria. “Michele Glica sul contrasto fra astronomia e astrologia (epist. 39 Eustr.)” Rendiconti dell’Accademia di Archeologia, Lettere e Belle Arti 71 (2002): 173–189. Ieraci Bio, Anna Maria. “Astrologia e medicina nella polemica fra Manuele I Comneno e Michele Glica.” Sileno 25 (1999): 79–96. Ioannis Laurentii Lydi, Liber de ostensis et calendaria graeca omnia. Ed. Curtius Wachsmuth. Leipzig, 1863. Magdalino, Paul and Maria Mavroudi (eds). The Occult Sciences in Byzantium. Geneva, 2006. Magdalino, Paul. L’Orthodoxie des astrologues. La science entre le dogme et la divination à Byzance (VIIe–XIVe siècle). Paris, 2006. Magdalino, Paul. “The Porphyrogenita and the Astrologers: A Commentary on Alexiad VI.7.1–7.” Porphyrogenita: Essays on the History and Literature of Byzantium and the Latin East in Honour of Julian Chrysostomides. Ed. Dendrinos Charalambos. Aldershot, 2003. 15–31. Mercier, Raymond (ed). An Almanac for Trebizond for the Year 1336. Louvain-la-Neuve, 1994. Neugebauer, Otto, and Henry Bartlett van Hoesen. Greek Horoscopes. Philadelphia, 1987. Pauli Alexandrini elementa apotelesmatica. Ed. Emilie Boer. Leipzig, 1958.



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Pingree David. “From Alexandria to Baghdad to Byzantium: The Transmission of Astrology.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 8.1 (2001): 3–37. Pingree, David. “Political Horoscopes from the Reign of Zeno.” DOP 30 (1976): 133–150. Pingree David. “The Astrological School of John Abramius.” DOP 25 (1971): 191–215. Ryan, William F. The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia. Stroud, 1999. Ševčenko, Ihor. “Remarks on the Diffusion of Byzantine Scientific and Pseudo-Scientific Literature among the Orthodox Slavs.” Byzantium and the Slavs in Letters and Culture. Ed. Ihor Ševčenko. Cambridge, MA, and Naples, 1991. 585–615. Simonov, Rem Aleksandrovich. Russkaia astrologicheskaia knizhnost’ (XI – pervaia chetvert’ XVIII veka). Moscow, 1998. Stephani Alexandrini quod fertur Opusculum apotelesmaticum. Ed. Hermann Usener. Bonn, 1879–1880. Tihon Anne. “La longitude des planètes d’après un texte anonyme du Vat. gr. 184.” Bulletin de l’Institut historique belge de Rome 52 (1982): 5–29. Tihon Anne. “Les sciences exactes à Byzance.” Byzantion 79 (2009): 380–434. Tihon, Anne. “Traités byzantins sur l’astrolabe.” Physis 32 (1995): 323–357. Titov, Vladimir Vassilievich (ed). Lozhnye i otrechennye knigi slavianskoi i russkoi stariny. Teksty-pervoistochniki XV–XVIII vv. s primechaniiami, kommentariiami i chastychnym perevodom. Moscow, 1999. Turfa, Jean MacIntosh. Divining the Etruscan World: the Brontoscopic Calendar and Religious Practice. Cambridge, 2012. Weigl, Ludwig. Eisagoge astronomias. Ein Kompendium griechischer Astronomie, Astrologie, Meteorologie und Ethnographie in politischen Versen. Leipzig, 1908. Westerink, Leendert Gerrit. “Ein astrologisches Kolleg aus dem Jahre 564.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 64 (1971): 6–21.

Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas

Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World Definitions and Terminology The way in which astrological language, and in our case Hebrew, refers to the q ­ ualities of and relations among the heavenly bodies (the two luminaries and the five planets plus the two lunar nodes) deserves some thought (Rodríguez-Arribas 2011a, 34–37). These stars have dominion (memšalah), control (as a paqid, memuneh, šal·liṭ, or baʻal) and influence (yoreh) the sublunary bodies, nature, and the actions of animated beings, including human actions and thoughts. The language of the Jewish astrologers is very clear when they explain the ways and limits of astrological influence, but at the same time this language is also highly confusing when they perform their practice: the planet rules, but not of its own free will. Saturn is the most harmful planet and Jupiter the most favorable, but neither of them is good or evil from a moral point of view. The sextile is an astrological aspect of half-love and the square is an astrological aspect of hate, but the planets in the heavens neither love nor hate each other in any of the angular relations that they might have. It is a Talmudic lesson (Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 71a) that the Torah speaks the language of humans because it was given to humans to understand it. Divine speech would lie beyond the reach of human understanding. Something similar happens with astrological language and Jewish astrologers were aware of the tendency for users of astrology to think that the planets behave exactly like humans (Rodríguez-Arribas 2011a, 35). This is the main feature that, in rabbinic thought, separates the astrology as it is practiced by pious Jews from the astrology that the pagan practices advocate: pagans believe that the negative influence of the stars can be diverted if one performs propitiatory rituals to gain their favor. On the other hand, as stars are supralunar beings, they do not consist of the elementary qualities that determine the characteristics of the sublunary world and its beings, so it is nonsense to attribute to them the same qualities as terrestrial beings. As Abraham Ibn Ezra (twelfth century) commented succinctly: “the sun whitens the garment but blackens the face of the person who launders it” (Sela 2011, 459). The question of the stars’ influence is, in fact, a question of the reception of the influence according to the specific individual and circumstances: “The root of any evil lies in the faulty nature of the one who

Acknowledgement: Note that the basic doctrine of Arabic/Islamic, Jewish/Hebrew and Christian/ Latin astral sciences is the same and an attempt has been made to make the chapters on these ­subject-areas in this volume complementary in their information rather than to duplicate it. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-027



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receives the heavenly influence (ha-meqabbel)” (Joseph Bonfils in Rodríguez-Arribas 2011a, 277). This explains the anthropomorphism of astrological language: stars see and hear each other; give, receive and reject each other’s powers, light, rule, and natures; they either approach, separate from or combine with each other; they hinder, annul, and reward each other; they receive, give away, and mediate; they are straight or crooked; and they return good or evil. This speech refers to the heavenly bodies as if they were part of the terrestrial realm, but this is simply a consequence of human nature, which is sublunary despite the high heavenly origin of the soul; it tries to explain and understand how the supralunar realm, whose components are totally different and which follows different rules, behaves, and acts. This speech transcends languages, cultures, centuries, and localities, and was also received and adapted in the astrological jargon of ancient and early medieval Hebrew. In Hebrew, astrology was given the name ḥoḵmat ha-mazzalot (wisdom or science of the stars), or more accurately ḥoḵmat mišpetei ha-mazzalot or ḥoḵmat dinei ha-mazzalot (wisdom or science of astrological judgements). Ḥoḵmat ha-mazzalot also denotes astronomy, which was also called ḥoḵmat ha-ḥizayon (science of observation), while astrology was also denoted by the rabbinical word of Greek origin isṭagninut. Astrologers were called ḥaḵemei/baʻalei/dayyanei ha-mazzalot, ḥaḵemei/baʻalei ha-mišpatim, or simply ḥaḵamim. They built mišpetei/dinei ha-mazzalot (astrological judgements) based on the information that they were able to see in the horoscopic diagram (ṣurah, mazzal, or molad), in light of the position (maʻareḵet, maqom) of the planets (koḵevim leḵet, just koḵavim, or mešaret, the latter lit. “servants”). In their judgements, they analyzed the astrological aspects (mabaṭim) among the planets, the astrological houses (batim), astrological directions (nihugim), profections (haqqafot), and the revolutions of the year and of the natal horoscope (haqqafot/tequfot). The cardinal houses had a generic name (yetedot), but each also had a specific one: ascendant (ha-ṣomeaḥ, ha-ʻoleh, ha-yated ha-rišon, ha-zoraḥet), midheaven or upper meridian (ḥeṣi ha-šamayim, ha-yated ha-ʻasiri, or yetad ha-rom), angle of the earth or lower meridian (yetad ha-areṣ, yetad ha-tehom, yetad ha-šefel, or ha-yated ha-reviʻi), and descendant (ha-maʻalah ha-yoredet, ha-mazzal ha-yored, ha-yated ha-šiviʻi, or ha-šoqeʻa). The houses that are not cardinal can be either cadent (nofelim) or succedent (semuḵim). The zodiac signs (mazzalot) were distributed in four triplicities (šelišuyot) according to their element (fire/eš, air/ruaḥ, water/mayyim, and earth/ereṣ or ʻafar) and into two or three groups according to their gender (masculine/zahar or feminine/ neqebah) and according to the position in the season (cardinal/mithapeḵ, fixed/ʻomed or neʻeman, and mutable/baʻal šetei ṣurot or baʻal šetei gufot). The planets can be diurnal (koḵav yom) or nocturnal (koḵav lailah), male (zaḵar) and female (neqevah), benefic (tov) and malefic (raʻ, nezeq or maziq), direct (yašar) or retrograde (ḥozer/šav le-aḥor), and have different forms of dignity (maʻalah or kavod) according to their positions: domicile (mazzal or bait), exile or detriment (qalon), exaltation (kavod or

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nesiʾut) and fall (sinʾah). Each zodiac sign is subdivided into terms (gevulim) assigned to planets, and decans (panim) assigned either to zodiac signs or to planets. The five aspects can be benefic (tov/ahavah) and malefic (raʻ/eibah): opposition (mabaṭ noḵaḥ), conjunction (dibbuq, ḥibbur, maḥberet, or hitḥabrut), trine (mabaṭ ahavah or mabaṭ šelišit), sextile (mabaṭ šišit or mabaṭ ḥeṣi ahavah), and square (mabaṭ reviʻit, mabaṭ sinah, mabaṭ eibah, or merubaʻ). Aspects can also be left (smoʾli) and right (yemani). The 28 lunar mansions (maḥanot ha-levanah or maḥanot gešem), which are divided into dry (yevešim) or humid/moist (laḥim), were also taken into consideration, especially in mundane/world astrology for weather forecasting. All of the astrological terms have variants and different forms but the most common are given here. There were several branches of astrology related to prognostication, some with techniques and calculations specific to them. Natal astrology (moladot), electional astrology (mivḥarim), interrogational astrology (šeʾilot), medical astrology related to the sun and moon (mišpeṭei ha-meʾorot), world astrology (mišpeṭei ha-ʻolam), and weather forecasting or astrometeorology, usually related to the forecasting of rain (gešem). The terminology for these fields becomes fixed between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries through the paramount work of Abraham bar Ḥiyya in Spain, and Abraham Ibn Ezra in Spain, France, and Italy, and the scientific translations from Arabic that the Ibn Tibbon family produced in southern France.

Written Sources and Artifacts The establishment of the corpus of ancient and medieval Hebrew sources dealing with astrology is a desideratum that has not yet been fully accomplished. Leicht (Astrologumena Judaica, 2006) contributed an exhaustive list of the available astrological manuscripts, but most of the astrological texts have not been edited, and many have not yet been studied. Sela finished the editions and translations of the complete astrological encyclopedia that Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1164) composed in Hebrew. There are also several isolated studies on specific works and authors. Fragments from the Qumran scrolls starting in the first century BCE: the Aramaic 4Q318 (on brontology), and 4Q186 and 4Q561 (on physiognomics), are among the first testimonies (see Albani 1999; Jacobus 2014). The Treatise of Shem, written in Syriac in the first century BCE (Charlesworth 1983) or later (Mengozzi 1997), is an exposition of world astrology according to the rising sign of the year. There also exist treatises by Shabbetai Donnolo (913–ca. 982), Judah ben Barzillai (d. 1130), Abraham bar Ḥiyya (d. after 1136), Maimonides (1135–1204), Judah ben Solomon ha-Cohen (born ca. 1215), Shem-Tov Ibn Falaquera (ca. 1225–1295), Levi ben Gershon (1288–1344), Kalonymus ben David (sixteenth century), and many others.



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Naturally astrology is found in technical treatises devoted to it, like A. Ibn Ezra’s texts, but is also mentioned with or without explanations related to its very technical aspects in biblical commentaries (A. Ibn Ezra, Levi ben Gershon, Joseph ben Eliezer Bonfils in the second half of the fourteenth century, and others); in poetry (Samuel ha-Nagid 993–after 1056, Solomon Ibn Gabirol ca. 1021–1056, Isaac Ibn Ghiyyat 1038– 1089, Moses Ibn Ezra ca. 1055–1138, A. Ibn Ezra, Isaac ha-Levi Bar Zerahia in the eleventh/twelfth century, Isaac ben Solomon Ibn Sahula, born in 1244, Immanuel of Rome ca. 1261–ca. 1328, Isaac ben Solomon al-Aḥdab in the fourteenth century, Solomon Bonafed – d. after 1445, etc.); in medical texts (Sefer refu’ah le-ʾAsaf ha-Rofeʾ – before 1200, David ben Yom Tov – fl. first half of the fourteenth century, Moses ben Judah Galeano  – fl. ca. 1500, etc.); in explanations on the Hebrew alphabet (A. Ibn Ezra and Judah ben Solomon ha-Cohen  – born 1215); in kabbalah (Moses ben Naḥman 1194–1270, Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla 1248–1325?, Baḥya ben Asher 1255–1340, Samuel Ibn Moṭoṭ in the fourteenth century, etc.); in texts dealing with astronomical instruments (A. Ibn Ezra, Mordeḵai ben Eliezer Comtino ca. 1425–ca. 1490, Josef ben Solomon Ṭaiṭaṣaq 1465? –1545?, Moses ben Baruch Almosnino ca. 1515–ca. 1580, etc.); in Christian-Jewish polemics (Abner of Burgos/Alfonso of Valladolid ca. 1270–ca. 1347 and Isaac of Polqar/Pulgar second half of the thirteenth century–ca. 1330); in cosmological texts (Sh. Donnolo’s Sefer Ḥaḵmoni, a commentary on the Sefer yeṣirah written in the tenth century); in mystical texts (the Zohar, written in the thirteenth century by Moses of León); in religious texts (maḥzorim and siddurim, i.  e. prayer books of different periods); and in philosophical texts (Shem-Tov Ibn Falaquera, Ḥasdai Crescas’s ’Or ha-Šem in the fourteenth/fifteenth centuries, and Joseph Albo’s Sefer ha-‛iqqarim, written in 1425). Let us consider five examples, four in Hebrew and one in Judaeo-Arabic, taken from different literary genres (not in chronological order): rhymed prose, poetry, a commentary on an early medieval cosmological and mystical work (Sefer yeṣirah), a biblical commentary, and a fragment on astral magic providing knowledge of the future. The kabbalist and fabulist Ibn Sahula included a large amount of scientific material in his main work, Mešal ha-qadmoni (written between 1281 and 1284, Loewe 2004), the fifth section of which deals with astrology. The content of the rhymed prose seems to imply that the arrangement of stars determines gluttony and, therefore, illness. In any case, God is the efficient and final cause of any change. If someone asks why someone devours without considering the harm to himself, / we should answer that his sin awakened his appetite / and the mood of his stomach. The reason for the awakening of his appetite, which / is the root of his illness, is the change in the time […]. The reason for this change is / motion, which depends on the sphere. The reason / for the motions of the sphere is magnificent and holy and is in the upper world. / They are reasons coming from the power of the Creator, / […] (Rodríguez-Arribas 2010a, 195).

The following text is a fragment taken from the 12th of the 28 Maḥbarot of the poet Immanuel of Rome (ed. Yarden 1957). His poem resonates with biblical references

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while at the same time pinpointing the astronomical and astrological values of Teli, an ambiguous and intriguing concept that here means the nodes; i.  e. the points of intersection of the orbits of the planets or the moon with the ecliptic or solar path, when they change from a southern to a northern latitude at the Head of Teli or do the opposite at the Tail of Teli. As a rule, the Head (ro’š) has a positive influence on a horoscope, while the Tail (zanav) is considered malefic and destructive in nature. When Teli moves from one limit to the other, it makes equal the latitudes of the luminaries, and places them closer if they are far away, […] its Head makes anything better, while its Tail destroys […]. (Rodríguez-Arribas 2010a, 196)

The first description of a standard medieval horoscope emerges in the commentary on the Sefer Yeṣirah by Saadia Gaon (Tafsīr kitāb al-mabādi), head of the rabbinic academy in Baghdad, written in Judaeo-Arabic in 931 (Goldstein 2001a, 50–54). This horoscope helps to illuminate our understanding that medieval astrology was the science of time, discerning how the quality of time changes with the motion of the spheres as well as the art of establishing how these changes of quality affect sublunary beings over time. According to the details of the text, Saadia, as the Arabic author whom he is following in his explanation, was familiar with astrolabes and other mathematical instruments that were used in astrology (↗ Rodríguez-Arribas, Mathematical Instruments), for he explains how the quality of the influence changes because of the change of the zodiac signs in the first and subsequent houses every two hours. Another interesting concept that this text seems to suggest is that the aspects can be calculated according to the positions of the planets in the signs and houses rather than according to their exact degrees within these. The biblical commentaries of A. Ibn Ezra were one of the main channels through which astrology spread among Sephardic and non-Sephardic Jews. As they are the subject of several books (Sela 1999; Rodríguez-Arribas 2011a), here is a sample of this genre by one of his disciples, the biblical commentator Josef ben Eliezer Bonfils (Ṣofnat paʻneaḥ, ed. Herzog 1911; Rodríguez-Arribas 2011a). Bonfils expands Ibn Ezra’s hints (Leviticus 16:8) about the meaning of the two kids that must be sacrificed (one for God and one for ʻAzaʾzel) on Yom Kippur, the tenth day of the seventh month, Tišri in the Jewish calendar (Libra), which is the astrological opposite of Nisan (Aries). The goat that corresponded to God was beheaded and the altar was sprinkled with its blood seven times, while the goat that corresponded to ʻAzaʾzel was sent out into the desert, after being exposed to the people to take on their sins and carry them out of Israel: All the sacrifices were meant to move Israel out from under the rule of Mars, which is associated with blood, fire, pillars of smoke, and wars. The emissary goat was meant to nullify the decree of Saturn upon them, which indicates destruction, exile, deportation and the desert […]. (Rodríguez-Arribas 2011a, 376–378)



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Astrology is also present in texts related to magic, in which the practitioner attempts to bring about a change in the world or his/her personal circumstances. The procedure is aimed at bringing down the spiritual powers (ruḥaniyyot) of the heavenly bodies to carry out a specific task, sometimes also with divinatory or prophetic purposes that are linked to the knowledge of what is secret or hidden (like the future). So it is explained in an anonymous epistle copied in the fourteenth century and originating somewhere in the Iberian Peninsula (after an Arabic source). According to the instructions, an anthropoid form, molten at the moment of a specific configuration of the sky that includes a conjunction of Saturn and Mercury, is intended for divinatory uses and the disclosure of secrets, among other things: […] And in the hour of the conjunction, when the stars are in this configuration, you shall have ready whatever metal you like, and the metal should be molten. And a mould of a beautiful man should be in front of you. You shall have an astrolabe in your hand, or any instrument that is built to determine the hour. When you arrive at the part of the hour of the conjunction, you should pour the metal into the mould. And a form of man will emerge , full of a very subtle pneuma, made up of wisdom and prophecy, and a favorable zodiacal sign and grace and honour. It will possess the faculty of speech, will foretell all future , when you will ask it about them. (Idel 1991, 13)

Techniques and Manifestations Astrology worked through a system of techniques and interpretations that rely on the tradition and experience that practitioners transmitted in different sources throughout centuries and cultures. It seems that the interpretation of the horoscope used to take place verbally and only a brief outline, stating the main features of the horoscope and the prognostication, was recorded in writing. The available techniques (aspects, houses, dignities, directions/progressions, profections, annual revolutions of the natal or the foundational horoscope, transits, lots/parts, etc.) were used in all branches of astrology (natal, historical, or world astrology, electional, interrogational, medical, weather forecasting, and astral magic) (↗ Schwartz, Medical Prognostication Jewish Traditions; ↗ Schwartz, Weather Forecasting Jewish Traditions), but certain techniques were more frequently used in some branches than in others. For instance, profections were used in the annual revolution of the natal or foundational horoscope, which was considered the radix, while everything related to the moon (phases, mansions, aspects, etc.) was prevalent in medical astrology (Rodríguez-Arribas 2011a). Any horoscope was a map of the sky, but the sky of a specific place at a specific moment. Like any map, the horoscope displays different points and areas whose scope and order in the scale of the horoscopic components must be determined with accuracy. The expertise and wisdom of the astrologer is his/her ability to capture the dynamism enclosed in the chart and discern the interplay of influences and its impact on specific aspects of the life of the native. As the anonymous author of a

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fifteenth-century astrological geomancy text writes, the “combination”/“merging”/“mixture” (mimsaḵ) of different components is the foundation of the whole process of interpreting a horoscope (Ms. Ets Haim 47 D 20, f. 123b). The astrologer must combine the various components in the correct way to build the right narrative, which is the meaning of the horoscope. Focusing on a specific Jewish contribution to this field, the astrologer, who is also aware of the high degree of personal speculation involved in this process, must have at his disposal the quantitative means to ascertain the degree of accuracy of his judgements. These are the astrological doctrines of the witnesses (ʻedim) or testimonies (ʻeduyot) and of the powers (koḥot) (Rodríguez-Arribas 2010b and 2017, respectively). All of them are quantitative terms in Hebrew astrology and it is possible to refer to a half, one, two, three, or more witnesses/testimonies and powers. The quantitative form of testimony/witness was introduced into Arabic astrology by Kūšyār Ibn Labbān (eleventh century), and into Hebrew astrology by A. Ibn Ezra (twelfth century). Another Jewish contribution, this time in the field of historical astrology, which the Persians introduced, is the consideration of a new cycle in the periodic conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn (a cycle of 2,859 years). In Persian and Arabic astrology, these conjunctions occur in cycles of approximately 20, 240, and 960 years. A. bar Ḥiyya added a longer cycle that made sense within the history of Israel and its salvation: the conjunction of the two upper planets every 2,859 years. This conjunction took place when the Israelites left Egypt and emerged as an independent nation (1396 BCE), and its recurrence 2,859 years later would signify the end of time and the arrival of the Messiah; at that moment, any stellar influence will cease. Bar Ḥiyya wrote a complete history of Israel up to this future historical moment according to the horoscope of the vernal equinox that precedes each of these cyclical conjunctions. This astrological history included references to major events in contemporary civilizations (like Christendom and Islam) (Rodríguez-Arribas 2011b).

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts The history of Jewish astrology begins early (Leicht 2006, 2011a and 2011b; Harari 2006; Jacobus 2014; Ness 1990), possibly under the influence and in the context of the peoples among whom the Jews lived before and after the diaspora. However, a distinctive Jewish imprint is apparent at least in the language (different forms of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Judaeo-Arabic), as one can perceive in the Jerusalem and the Babylonian Talmuds (ca. fourth and fifth centuries respectively), Baraita di-Shmuel and Baraita de-mazzalot (ca. ninth century), Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer (ca. ninth century), and astrological fragments from the Cairo Genizah (the earliest is a natal horoscope for 22 May 955, see Goldstein and Pingree 1981, 156–158; ↗ Saar, Divination in the Cairo Genizah). The Baraita di-Shmuel is a pseudepigraphic work attributed to the sages of the Talmud



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Samuel bar Abba or to Samuel ha-Qaṭan, and is considered one of the oldest Jewish texts dealing with astrology. The first half constitutes the earliest important exposition of mathematical astronomy extant in Hebrew (Amran 1861; Beller 1988; Leicht 2006). The second half of the work, which coincides with the content of the Baraita de-mazzalot, is later and mainly astrological in nature (Wertheimer 1955; Sarfatti 1965 and 2004). The Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer, a midrashic work of the Gaonic period attributed to the mishnaic sage R. Eliezer ben Hircanus (ca. 45–117 CE), contains two chapters on astronomy and astrology (Friedlander 1916; Keim 2017). As for the Cairo Genizah materials, most of the horoscopes and astrological almanacs are in Judaeo-Arabic (Goldstein and Pingree 1977, 1979, 1981, 1983; Fenton 1985) and, to a lesser degree, Arabic. The earlier Jewish astrological sources are in Aramaic, probably dating from late antiquity and before the Muslim conquest (Greenfield and Sokoloff 1989; Shaked 1992). Jewish astrology substantially changed with the reception of ancient sources on astronomy and astrology by means of the translations, commentaries and original contributions that Arab and Muslim authors produced mainly between the eighth and eleventh centuries. As regards to pre-Islamic Jewish astrology, “apart from occasional references in the Talmud, discussions of astronomy or astrology can be found in only a few Hebrew texts that may date from the period before the rise of Islam” (Goldstein 2001a, 20). The paramount impact of this reception in Hebrew language took place in the twelfth century with A. bar Ḥiyya and A. Ibn Ezra, although there had been previous manifestations in Hebrew (Sh. Donnolo and S. Ibn Gabirol, tenth and eleventh centuries, respectively), Judaeo-Arabic (Saadia Gaon in the tenth century), and Arabic (Dunash Ibn Tamīm in the second half of the tenth century). The relationship in the Middle Ages between astronomy and astrology is one of necessity. Very frequently, astronomy was studied, and consequently developed, because of its astrological applications. Likewise astrology, at least as regards the “scientific” astrology practiced by those authors who relied on actual astronomical knowledge for their astrological practice, was impossible without a sound understanding of the principles of astronomy and the use of updated astronomical tables and instruments (see Repertoire). This of course did not apply to those forms of popular, “userfriendly” astrology, which were associated with techniques unrelated to the actual heavenly positions of the sky, and sometimes even completely unrelated to astronomy (for instance, geomancy, numerology, or onomancy, among others). “Scientific” or “learned” astrology was a prestigious knowledge and considered a science. Some Jews converted to Islam and became very famous astrologers working for Muslim rulers: Māshā’allāh (d. ca. 815), who worked for the Caliph al-Manṣūr; Sanad Ibn ʻAlī (first half of the ninth century), who worked for the Caliph al-Maʼmūn; Sahl Ibn Bishr al-Yahūdī (early ninth century); and ʻAlī Ibn Dāwūd al-Yahūdī (fl. end of the ninth century). Isaac ben Baruḵ Ibn Albalia (d. 1094) served as astrologer to King Muʻtamid of Seville. All of them were also astronomers. Several Jews also worked as translators of astrological/astronomical works and as astrologers at the courts of Castile (Isaac Ibn Said and Judah ben Moses ha-Cohen for Alfonso X, thirteenth century; see Roth

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1985/1990 and Gil 1974), the Crown of Aragon (Jacob Corsuno, Cresques de Viviers, Vidal Efraim Bellxom, or Isaac Nafuci for Pedro IV and Juan I, fourteenth century; see Valls Pujol 2008, and Navarra (R. Gento and Moises Baco for Carlos III, fourteenth century; see Serrano 2009), to mention just a few, and they did so frequently in collaboration or alongside their Christian or Muslim colleagues. The cosmological system that was prevalent (though there was discussion about the number or actual physicality of the spheres) consisted of concentric spheres, with the stationary Earth placed in the center, each of the seven planets located in its own sphere, an eighth sphere for the fixed stars and zodiac, an ninth sphere for the daily movement from east to west, and, depending on the author, a tenth or more spheres with different functions and meanings. For instance, in Ibn Gabirol’s cosmology as well as in A. Ibn Ezra’s astronomical system, there was a tenth sphere (Kiseh ha-kavod/Throne of Glory) that fulfilled a role that was more mystical than astronomical in nature (Rodríguez-Arribas 2011a), while Bar Ḥiyya only recognized nine spheres. There was an actual physical understanding of the universe with which Ptolemy’s mathematical one overlapped (not without conflict), thereby making it capable of calculation and anticipation. The physical system required all of the motions to be circular around a center and uniform in nature, so the mathematical one tried to save them by different means as well as explain the various anomalies of the planets (retrogradation and changes in magnitude). Several Jews devoted themselves to astrology as well as astronomy and some composed astronomical tables that were equally necessary for both sciences: A. Ibn Ezra, A. bar Ḥiyya, Levi ben Gershon, Immanuel ben Jacob Bonfils of Tarascon (ca. 1300–1377), Judah ben Verga (fifteenth century), Abraham Zacuto (1452–ca. 1515), etc. Much of Bar Ḥiyya’s Tables is derived directly from al-Battānī, but the choice of Ptolemaic rates of motion was determined by Bar Ḥiyya’s belief that the length of the year used in the Almagest was that of the Jewish calendar according to Rav Ada (see Millás Vallicrosa 1959; Mercier 2013; ↗ Saar, Calendrical Calculations Jewish Traditions). It seems that some scientific choices, predictably, were influenced by religious beliefs. In the monotheistic Jewish understanding, God had established any possible heavenly influence and the planets and stars were His “servants” (šammašin, as the Baraita di-Shmuel or the Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer named them); their influence was not of their own free will, but only according to what God established for them. An essential topic in this context is the special status of Israel vis-à-vis the influence of the stars. According to Abraham bar Ḥiyya, in his Sefer megillat ha-megalleh (Poznanski 1924; Millás-Vallicrosa 1929; Toÿryla 2014), the zodiac sign of Israel is Aquarius (ruled by Saturn), for Israel left Egypt and became an actual people during its stay in the desert. This foundational change took place under the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Aquarius (according to the true motion of these planets) or Pisces (according to the mean motion of these planets) in 2365 anno mundi/1396 BCE (Rodríguez-Arribas 2011b). Hebrew and non-Hebrew literature had already established the association of



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Fig. 18: Tables with planetary positions in Moses ben Baruch Almosnino’s Ḥibbur al ha-’astrolab, Istanbul 1560 (St. Petersburg, Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ms. B446, fol. 62a). Photo credits: Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas.

Saturn with Israel from Antiquity (e.  g. Flavius Josephus, 37–100), but the Talmud and many medieval authors (A. bar Ḥiyya, A. Ibn Ezra, Judah ben Solomon ha-Cohen, etc.) made it clear that Israel is not under the rule of the stars. Only when Israel departs from God does it become one of the nations of the world and falls within their status, thereby receiving the same influence of the heavens as anyone else (Sela 2010, 7, 32, and 34).

Medieval Classifications and Discussions In the Middle Ages, astrology was considered an empirical and mathematical science as well as an art. Bar Ḥiyya states, in his Sefer ṣurat ha-areṣ, that astrology is based on experience and its results are sometimes inaccurate (Millás Vallicrosa, La obra forma, 29–30). The philosopher Šem Tov Ibn Falaquera (1225–1295), in his Rešit ḥoḵmah, considered astrology one of the physical sciences (together with medicine, physiognomy, oneirocriticism, talismans, and alchemy) and (together with astronomy) one of the mathematical ones. In this book, he also considered astrology both a science and an art. In his Sefer ha-mebaqeš, which he wrote late in life, Ibn Falaquera placed astron-

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omy (and astrology) as one of the four sciences of the medieval quadrivium, noting the conjectural character of astrology and asserting that the majority of its judgements are unreliable (see Urrutia Sánchez 2007). So, in his encyclopedic work Deʻot ha-filosofim, he opposed the doctrine of those who supported the cyclical recurrence of the same individuals (baʻalei ha-haqqafot) under the cyclical recurrence of the heavenly positions, and consequently refuted judicial astrology (Freudenthal 2000, 359–360). However, he established the unity of the cosmos and its providential nature, and so Ibn Falaquera “construes the celestial bodies as donating the forms to the sublunar existents” (Freudenthal 2000, 350, 355, and 367). The astronomer Levi ben Gershon was likewise concerned with the unity of the cosmos (that depends on and mirrors the unity of God) and divine providence (which uses the stellar radiances and their influences to safeguard the natural order) in his Milḥamot ha-Šem (book 5). According to him, only God fully understands the working of the heavenly spheres, while the Agent Intellect has an imperfect knowledge of them and the mover of each sphere is cognizant only of its own specific function (Langermann 1999). Astrology was broadly accepted in medieval times (despite its shortcomings) and most of its practitioners did not feel pressed to justify their acceptance of it. However, there were several refutations among those who considered the practice of astrology to conflict with Jewish religion. A. bar Ḥiyya, who wrote his lengthy Letter in response to one of those Jews who saw this conflict, tried to separate astrology from the practices condemned in the Torah and Talmud. In addition, Abner of Burgos (ca. 1270–1348) defended astrology in his Minḥat kenaʾot, only extant in a Castilian version (Libro de la predestinacion). He wrote it in response to the Libro de desmentimiento de la astrologia, by his Jewish coreligionist and contemporary, Isaac ben Polqar. This text is not extant but, according to Abner, its main thesis was: [Isaac ben Polqar claims that] if the accidents of men came [to pass] by decree and necessity, the doctrines of our holy Law would be destroyed and all of its commandments and protections would be in vain. […] Isaac [ben Polqar] wanted to detach not only the stellar decrees, but also all the wisdom and decrees of God from [any connection with] all accidental and possible things. For this reason he [Ben Polqar] said in his book that we must not believe in any way that such [accidental] things are known or found out by anybody before they come into being, and in this he included that they are neither known nor perceived by God. (Mettmann, 18–19; trans. Rodríguez-Arribas)

The greatest detractor of astrology in Medieval Judaism is Moses ben Maimon (1135– 1204). He, like some of his predecessors (Judah Halevi) and successors (Joseph ben Judah Ibn Aknin, ca. 1150–ca. 1220; Shem-Tov Ibn Falaquera; Jedaiah ben Abraham Bedersi, ca. 1270–ca. 1340; Isaac ben Polqar; etc.), rejected any form of judicial astrology. However, he (like others) did not discuss natural astrology; i.  e. the actual influence of the heavenly bodies on nature and living beings, which was accepted by most and used in the fields of medicine, agriculture, weather, botany, etc. Those who saw in astrology a threat to free will and religious practice rejected the use of the natural



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influence of the stars to anticipate and regulate individual life, for this knowledge seemed to make the fulfillment of commandments and religious practices irrelevant to the balance of punishment/reward and individual salvation. Judah Halevi expressed this very clearly: We cannot deny that the heavenly realm exercises influence on terrestrial matters. We must admit that the material components of growth and decay are dependent on the orb [but] the particulars are unknown to us. The astrologer boasts of knowing them, but we repudiate [his claims], and assert that no mortal can fathom them (as quoted in Goldstein 2001a, 46).

Maimonides went further than prior detractors with “the extremity of his opposition to astrology”, as Langermann (2017) refers to it. Maimonides rejected the knowledge and practice of astrology for religious and rationalstic reasons (Freudenthal 1993; Kreisel 1994; Langermann 1991 and 2017; Katzmann 2006; Lerner 2000; Pessin 2001). According to Maimonides, astrology is false, for true science results from reasoning from first principles versus inductive reasoning based upon repeated experience (tajrība) on which astrology relies, so astrology provides neither a causal account (efficient causes) nor formal proofs, but rather relies on the imaginative faculty (ḵiyāl). Moreover, astrologers are confused about fayḍ and qūwāt, the former meaning the emanation (non-corporeal and unrestricted by distance) of the separate Intelligences and Angels upon the celestial spheres, and the latter meaning the physical influence of the stars upon sublunary beings, which is initiated by the corporeal bodies and restricted by time and distance. In this way, astrologers misused fayḍ to denote the stellar influence. According to them, the stars decide the moral character of humans. This conflicts with free will, even if, according to Maimonides’ “historiosophy”, “there are some predetermined events whose future occurrence is decreed” (see Langermann 2017, cf. Pines 1960 and Altmann 1974). This specific stellar influence also conflicts with the Jewish belief in divine justice and fair retribution for deeds. Finally, according to Maimonides, astrology is frequently associated with magic and star worship. Abraham Ibn Ezra is one of those with a strong understanding of the stellar influence, which means determinism, as he makes clear in the second version of his Sefer mivḥarim: Consequently whoever is destined by the configuration of his natal horoscope to be poor and impecunious can never get rich. But since the soul of man has been created in a place that is higher than the stars, a man can employ his intelligence to reduce his misfortune somewhat (Sela 2011, 143).

But Gersonides made room for human initiative (Wars of the Lord II, book 2): […] [God] has endowed us with the intellectual capacity that enables us both to act contrary to what has been ordered by the heavenly bodies and to correct, as far as possible, the misfortunes that befall us (Feldman 1987, 35).

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The way the heavenly bodies affect and influence the sublunary beings was also a topic of discussion. Motion, heat and light were proposed as the agents of the influence, while the intelligence of the sphere and the Agent Intellect were its sources. Some branches of astrology were also subject to criticisms. For instance Saadia Gaon, A. Ibn Ezra, Levi ben Gershon, and Isaac Arama (ca. 1420–1494) rejected the use of historical astrology and the theory of the cyclical conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn to determine the arrival of the Messiah, while S. Ibn Gabirol, A. bar Ḥiyya, and Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508) supported and used it. The addressee of A. bar Ḥiyya’s Letter in defense of astrology considered that, to determine the hour of a wedding according to astrological conditions (electional astrology), notably the belief that even-numbered hours are unfavorable while uneven-numbered ones are propitious, was a case of a “consultation of Chaldeans”, which is forbidden in the Talmud. To conclude, the distinctive character of Jewish astrology was apparent in two features: firstly, the influence of the heavenly bodies was established by God since the beginning and the stars are merely their servants; and, secondly, Israel, because they are the chosen people, enjoy a special status vis-à-vis the stars, that keeps them apart from the stellar decrees as far as they fulfill the commandments.

Selected Bibliography Albani, Matthias. “Horoscopes in the Qumran Scrolls.” The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years; a Comprehensive Assessment, 2 vols. Eds. Peter W. Flint and James C. Van der Kam. Leiden, 1998–1999. 2: 279–330. Altmann, Alexander. “Free Will, and Predestination in Saadia, Bahya and Maimonides.” Religion in a Religious Age. Ed. Shelomo Dov Goitein. Cambridge, MA, 1974. 25–52. Amram, Nathan. Baraita di-Shmuel. Thessaloniki, 1861. Re-published by Aryeh Leib Lipkin. Baraita di-Shmuel ha-qaṭan. Piotrków, 1901 (re-print Jerusalem 1933); and Julius David Eisenstein, Oṣar midrašim, vol. II. New York, 1915. 542–547. Beit-Arié, Malachi and Moshe Idel. “Treatise on Eschatology and Astrology by R. Abraham Zacut.” Kiryat Sefer 54 (1979): 174–194 (in Hebrew). Beller, E. “Ancient Jewish Mathematical Astronomy.” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 38.1 (1988): 51–66. Benedetto, Marienza. Un enciclopedista ebreo alla corte di Federico II – Filosofia e astrologia nel Midrash ha-hokmah di Yehudah ha-Cohen. Bari, 2010. Bíró, Tamás. “A Renaissance Astrological Manuscript from the Kaufmann Collection.” David Kaufmann Memorial Volume. Ed. Éva Apor. Budapest, 2002. 41–51. Charlesworth, James H. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments. New York, 1983. 473–486. Dienstag, Jacob I. “Maimonides’ Letter on Astrology to the Rabbis of Southern France.” Kiryat Sefer 61 (1987): 147–158 (Hebrew edition). Feldman, Seymour. Gersonides, The Wars of the Lord, Books Two, Three and Four. Philadelphia, 1987. Fenton, Paul. “Les Manuscripts Astrologiques de la Guénizah du Caire.” Le monde juif et l’astrologie. Ed. Jacques Halbronn. Milan, 1985. iii–xvii.



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Freudenthal, Gad. “Maimonides’ Stance on Astrology in Context: Cosmology, Physics, Medicine, and Providence.” Moses Maimonides: Physician, and Philosopher. Eds. Fred Rosner and Samuel S. Kottek. Northvale, NJ, and London, 1993. 77–90. Freudenthal, Gad. “Providence, Astrology, and Celestial Influences on the Sublunar World in Shem-Tov ibn Falaquera’s De’ot ha-Filosofim.” The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy. Ed. Steven Harvey. Dordrecht et al., 2000. 335–370. Friedlander, Gerald. Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer. The Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer the Great According to the Text of the Manuscript Belonging to Abraham Epstein of Vienna. London, 1916. Gil, José S. Los colaboradores judíos en la Escuela de traductores de Toledo. Washington, D.C., 1974. Goldstein, Bernard R. “Levi Ben Gerson’s Astrology in Historical Perspective.” Gersonide et son Temps. Ed. Gilbert Dahan. Louvain and Paris, 1991. 287–300. Goldstein, Bernard R. “Astronomy and the Jewish Community in Early Islam.” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 1 (2001a): 17–57. Goldstein, Bernard R. and David Pingree. “Horoscopes from the Cairo Geniza.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 36.2 (1977): 113–144. Goldstein, Bernard R. “Astrological Almanacs from the Cairo Geniza.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 38.3 (1979): 153–175 and 231–256. Goldstein, Bernard R. “More Horoscopes from the Cairo Geniza.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 125 (1981): 155–189. Goldstein, Bernard R. “Additional Astrological Almanacs from the Cairo Geniza.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 103 (1983): 673–690. Goldstein, Bernard R. “Levi Ben Gerson’s Prognostication for the Conjunction of 1345.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 80 (1990): 1–60. Greenfield, Jonas C. and Michael Sokoloff. “Astrological and Related Omen Texts in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 48.3 (1989): 201–214. Halbronn, Jacques. Le Monde juif et l’astrologie: histoire d’ un vieux couple. Milan, 1985. Harari, Yuval. “The Sages and the Occult.” The Literature of the Sages, 2 vols. Eds. Shemuel Safrai and Peter J. Tomson. Assen and Philadelphia, 1987–2006. 2: 521–564. Herzog, David. Joseph Bonfils, Ṣofnat Paʻneaḥ, Ein Beitrag zur Pentateuchexegeses des Mittelalters. Heidelberg, 1911. Holo, Joshua. “Hebrew Astrology in Byzantine Southern Italy.” The Occult Sciences in Byzantium. Eds. Paul Magdalino and Maria Mavroudi. Geneva, 2006. 291–323. Idel, Moshe. “An Astral-magical Pneumatic Anthropoid.” Incognita 3 (1991): 19–23. Jacobus, Helen. Zodiac Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Reception. Leiden and Boston, 2014. Katzman, Michael. “Maimonides’ Rejection of Astrology.” Milin Havivin, A Student Journal Devoted to Torah, Society and the Rabbinate 2 (2006): 105–120. Keim, Katharina E. Pirqei de-Rabbi Eliezer: Structure, Coherence, Intertextuality. London, 2017. Kiener, Ronald. “The Status of Astrology in the Early Kabbalah: from the ‘Sefer Yesirah’ to the ‘Zohar’.” The Beginnings of Jewish Mysticism in Medieval Europe. Ed. Joseph Dan. Jerusalem, 1987. 1–42. Langermann, Y. Tzvi. “Maimonides’ Repudiation of Astrology.” Maimonidean Studies, 5 vols. Ed. Arthur Hyman. New York, 1990–2008. 2: 123–158. Langermann, Y. Tzvi. “Gersonides on Astrology.” Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides): The Wars of the Lord, 3 vols. Trans. Seymour Feldman. Philadelphia et al., 1984–1999. 3: 505–519 (Appendix).

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Langermann, Y. Tzvi. “Historiosophy and the Rejection of Astrology in Maimonides.” Conference Paper (March 2017). http://www.academia.edu/31606056/_Historiosophy_and_the_Rejection_ of_Astrology_in_Maimonides_1 (11 May 2020). Leicht, Reimund. Astrologumena Judaica. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der astrologischen Literatur der Juden. Tübingen, 2006. 82–89. Leicht, Reimund. “The Planets, the Jews and the Beginnings of «Jewish Astrology».” Continuity and Innovation in the Magical Tradition. Eds. Gideon Bohak, Yuval Harari and Shaul Shaked. London and Leiden, 2011a. 271–288. Leicht, Reimund. “Toward a History of Hebrew Astrological Literature: A Bibliographical Survey.” Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures. Ed. Gad Freudenthal. Cambridge and New York, 2011b. 255–291. Leicht, Reimund. “The Reception of Astrology in Medieval Ashkenazi Culture.” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 13.2 (2013): 201–234. Lerner, Ralph. “Maimonides, Letter on Astrology.” Maimonides’ Empire of Light. Ed. Ralph Lerner. Chicago, 2000. 178–187. Loewe, Raphael. Isaac Ibn Sahula. Meshal Haqadmoni: Fables from a Distant Past. A Parallel Hebrew-English Text. 2 vols. Oxford and Portland, OR, 2004. Mancuso, Piergabriele. Shabbatai Donnolo’s Sefer Ḥakhmoni. Leiden and Boston, 2010. Marx, Alexander. “The Correspondence between the Rabbis of Southern France and Maimonides about Astrology.” Hebrew Union College Annual 3 (1926): 311–358 (ed. and trans.). Mengozzi, Alessandro. Trattato di Sem e altri testi astrologici. Brescia, 1997. Mercier, Raymond. “Astronomical Tables of Abraham bar Ḥiyya.” Time, Astronomy and Calendars in the Jewish Tradition. Eds. Sacha Stern and Charles Burnett. London, 2013. 155–207. Mettmann, Walter. Alfonso de Valladolid (Abner aus Burgos), Ofrenda de Zelos (Minḥat Kena’ot) und Libro de la Ley. Düsseldorf, 1990. Millás-Vallicrosa, José María. Llibre Revelador. Barcelona, 1929. Millás-Vallicrosa, José María. La Obra Séfer Ḥešbón mahlekot ha-kokabim de R. Abraham Bar Hiyya Ha-Bargeloní. Barcelona, 1959. Ness, Lester J. Astrology and Judaism in Late Antiquity. Ph.D. Diss. Miami University, 1990. Pessin, Sarah. “Maimonides’ Opposition to Astrology: Critical Survey and Neoplatonic Response.” Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 13 (2001): 25–41. Pines, Shlomo. “Studies in Abul-Barakat al-Baghdadi’s Poetics and Metaphysics.” Studies in Philosophy Scripta Hierosolymitana 6 (1960): 195–198 (notes on Maimonides’ views concerning free will). Poznanski, Adolph. Megillat ha-megalleh. Berlin, 1924. Rodríguez-Arribas, Josefina. “Science in Poetic Contexts: Astronomy and Astrology in the Hebrew Poetry of Sepharad.” Miscelánea de estudios árabes y hebraicos (Estudios en honor del Prof. Ángel Sáenz-Badillos) 59.1 (2010a): 167–202. Rodríguez-Arribas, Josefina. “The Testimonies in Medieval Astrology: Finding Degrees of Certitude in Astrological Judgments.” Doxa, Études sur les formes et la construction de la croyance. Ed. Pascale Hummel. Paris, 2010b. 115–133. Rodríguez-Arribas, Josefina. El cielo de Sefarad – Los judíos y los astros (Siglos XII y XIV). Córdoba, 2011a. Rodríguez-Arribas, Josefina. “The Terminology of Historical Astrology according to Abraham Bar Ḥiyya and Abraham Ibn Ezra.” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 11.1 (2011b): 11–54. Rodríguez-Arribas, Josefina. “Quantitative Concepts in Hellenistic and Medieval Astrology.” From Masha’allah to Kepler. Eds. Charles Burnett and Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum. London, 2017. 325–352.



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Petra G. Schmidl

Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World Definitions and Terminology Pre-modern Arabic terms show some varieties that might include either astronomy or astrology or distinguish between them, while modern usage suggests a strict separation of both disciplines. In general, a first component, “science, knowledge” or “art, craft”, is combined with a second one, e.  g., “star” or “sphere”. Parallel to this usage, the experts of these subjects are denoted (see Tab. 2). Tab. 2: Arabic terminology concerning astronomy and astrology*. First term ʻilm – ʻulūm

Second term science, knowledge

Experts

Modern Categories

star

al-munajjim – al-munajjimūn

astral sciences, science of the stars (astronomy and astrology combined)

zīj – azyāj or zījāt

zījes*

ahl al-azyāj

falak – aflāk hayʼa – hayʼāt

sphere

ahl ʻilm al-falak

najm – nujūm

tanjīm n-jāma kawkab – kawākib

ṣināʻa – art, craft ṣināʻāt

mīqāt – mawāqīt

configuration/ structure timekeeping

(the denoted branch of) astronomy

al-muwaqqit – al-muwaqqitūn

Acknowledgement: Note that the basic doctrine of Arabic/Islamic, Jewish/Hebrew and Christian/ Latin astral sciences is the same and an attempt has been made to make the chapters on these ­subject-areas in this volume complementary in their information rather than to duplicate it. The author likes to thank all colleagues who helped in improving this paper, in particular Charles Burnett, Matthias Heiduk, Klaus Herbers, Hans Christian Lehner, Josefina Rodriguez-Arribas and Daniel Varisco. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-028



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Tab. 2 (continued) First term

Experts

Second term

Experts

Modern Categories

aḥkām (al-nujūm)

judgement (by means of the stars)

al-aḥkāmī – al-aḥkāmiyyūn

astrology

qaḍāyā

* For more information on these astronomical-astrological handbooks with tables see ↗ Gaida, Zījes

From approximately the rise of Islam until the ninth century, Arabic astral sciences draw, directly and indirectly, on different written and oral sources, Greek, Syriac, Persian and Indian texts, but also indigenous Arabic star lore, Egyptian and Mesopotamian traditions as well as new observations. Collection, copying and translation of ideas and methods predominate. Constructing out of this divergent material a consistent theory becomes then first graspable in the ninth and tenth centuries, particularly in the oeuvres of Abū Maʻshar (fl. ca. 800), al-Battānī (d.  929) and al-Ṣūfī (d.  986). Its kernel forms the Almagest of Ptolemy (second century) (μεγάλη σύνταξις; al-Majiṣṭī) and his Tetrabiblos (or ’Aποτελεσματικὴ σύνταξις; Kitāb al-Arbaʻa), both of which were translated for the first time into Arabic in the eighth century, the former by Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf ibn Maṭar (786–830) and again by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (d. 910/911), and the latter by Abū Yaḥyā al-Biṭrīq (eighth century). These translations paved the way for all subsequent engagement with Ptolemaic astronomy and astrology. Furthermore, other elements were integrated, of Persian origin; for example, the theory of the great conjunctions, and of Indian, most probably the lunar elections. From the tenth and eleventh centuries onward regional astronomical traditions begin to emerge, scholars started presenting astral knowledge in Persian or translating existent texts into this language. It enters Indian literature, arrives in Chinese writings, arouses Ottoman curiosity and finds its way via Greek and Latin, and later also by the vernaculars, to the eastern and western Christian societies, as well as via Hebrew into the Jewish scholarship (↗ Burnett, Astral Sciences Western Christian World; ↗ Caudano, Astral Sciences Eastern Christian World; ↗ Rodríguez-Arribas, Astral Sciences Jewish Traditions). Astrolabes inscribed in Arabic received additional information in other languages or were copied from Arabic templates.

Sources The knowledge of astral sciences in Islamic societies is mainly based on texts, be they scientific, scholarly writings, administrative and legal texts, or literary works and

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 Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages: Astral Sciences

belles-lettres. Slowly modern research takes into consideration astronomical instruments and what they might reveal to us. The scholarly literature contains subject streams that include both astronomy and astrology combined or that focus on one of these areas. To the former belong zījes, astronomical-astrological handbooks with tables (↗ Gaida, Zījes), but also almanacs and calendars (↗ Varisco, Calendrical Calculations Islamic World, 641–643) and instrument books, e.  g., the treatise on the construction and use of the a ­ strolabe Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, written in ninth-century Baghdad and the e­ arliest text of its kind preserved in Arabic. It describes, in addition to other, more common engravings, a plate for casting the rays, a plain astrological procedure (↗ Rodríguez Arribas, Mathe­matical Instruments) – but deals also with specific curves for the times of the Muslim midday and afternoon prayers. In the second category, treatises dealing exclusively with astronomy, one finds those of the hayʼa tradition that become graspable at least as early as the eleventh century. In general, they provide an introduction to the configuration of the universe, and therefore cosmographical and geographical knowledge for a more general, albeit scholarly, readership such as the Tadhkira fī l-hayʼa (“Memoir on Astronomy”) by Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (1201–1274). Needless to say, some of the information provided in these treatises, although lacking any connection to astrology, is useful for such practices. To the third category, astrological treatises, belong the texts of the mudkhal genre (↗ Gaida, Introductions to Astrology). These provide the basic astrological concepts, useful not only for general, horoscopic, but also for electional and interrogational astrology. Others belonging here focus on specific topics; e.  g., historical astrology, as dealt with by Abū Maʻshar in his Kitāb al-Milal wa-l-duwal (“The Book of Dynasties and Religions”) or electional and interrogational astrology, such as the Kitāb al-Ikhtiyārāt ʻalā l-buyūt al-ithnā ʻashar (“The Book on Elections according to the Twelve Houses”) by Sahl ibn Bishr (d. ca. 854) and his Kitāb al-Masāʼil (“The Book on Interrogations”). Further groups of scholarly writings that focus on astronomy or astrology either individually or in combination, are not defined by their similar contents and organisation, but by their formation process; e.  g., commentaries or didactic poems (↗ Díaz-Fajardo, Didactic Poems Islamic World), that help one to memorize the information more easily, such as that preserved in the Kitāb al-mudkhal ilā ṣināʻat aḥkām al-nujūm (“Book of the Introduction to the Craft of Astrology”) by al-Qabīṣī (fl. second half of the tenth century); namely, a poem by al-Fazārī (fl. eighth century), on the terms. Commentaries on zījes are relatively common, while those on astrological introductions are unknown to date. In contrast to this technical literature on astral sciences, other scholarly writings provide further information. Historiographies and chronicles could yet record extraordinary celestial observations and interpret these as auspicious, ambiguous, or inauspicious signs. Philosophical and religious texts deal with their principles and ask if astronomy, but mainly astrology, is licit or illicit. Encyclopaedic treatises organize and present the sciences.



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Further information on the background of astrologers, their context, practices and clients is to be found in bio-bibliographical works, in treatises that regulate the behaviour of professional groups of practitioners and those who train for their examination (ḥisba and miḥna literature), as well as in literary sources and belles-lettres. For instance, the story collection “Arabian Nights” includes the humoristic story of a talkative barber who was engaged solely to cut his client’s hair, but instead unwraps his astrolabe, rattles down a couple of astronomical parameters, deduces that the moment is advantageous for cutting hair and offers further predictions, in which his client is uninterested (Nights 24–34). In addition to mocking astrologers, testing their capabilities is another recurring topos. In addition to treatises, artefacts also provide information on astral sciences (↗  Rodríguez Arribas, Mathematical Instruments). In the tenth century, astrolabes start to present engravings that can only be used to solve astrological problems; e.  g., the astrolabe of al-Khujandī (d. ca. 1000) (IIC #0111), that comprises tables of the lord of the triplicities, the terms and the decans.

Techniques and Manifestations Concepts The existing manuscripts and artefacts related to astral sciences in the Medieval Islamic world rest mainly on two, originally Greek, concepts. First, the earth is immovable, lying at the centre of the universe. Around its spherical body move, in perfect circles (dāʼira) or spheres (falak), the Moon, Sun, and the five planets; i.  e., those of pre-telescopic astronomy, observable by the naked eye. Next follow the fixed stars, in some cases enclosed by further spheres representing sometimes God’s Footstool and His Throne, sometimes an all-encompassing circle. Everything situated beyond the lunar sphere was regarded as unchangeable, particularly with regard to its magnitude and substance, but the sublunar region, composed of the four elements, also arranged in circles or spheres, is not, so all of the changes observed in the sky are considered atmospheric phenomena; e.  g., rainbows, lightning flashes or thunder, but also meteors (shihāb – shuhub or nayzak – nayāzik), comets (kawkab dhū dhanab – kawākib dhawāt al-adhnāb, lit. “stars with tail”), and haloes. Accordingly, these are considered by other mantic practices and also in weather forecasting. The second basic concept links the supra- and sublunar world through analogies. As the Sun heats up and the Moon responds to the tides, so all celestial bodies influence terrestrial events and human life. Associations and correspondences, sympathies and antipathies define the characteristics and responsibilities of celestial objects. Not a third basic concept, although a crucial point when making prognostications by means of celestial bodies, is time. Moment and prognostication are essentially

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 Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages: Astral Sciences

interdependent, albeit in two different ways. The first concerns methods that reconstruct the sky, particularly the positions of the Sun, Moon, and planets, for a specific place and moment in time, and interprets this reconstruction. That is the situation with horoscopic and interrogational astrology: the moment in time is known, while computations and prognostications based on it mainly still have to take place. Conversely, the second method elects a point in time that is recommended for starting/ refraining from an activity. That is the situation with electional astrology: the prognostication is still recorded, while the specific moment in time has still to occur.

Principles The signs with which astral sciences are concerned are of two different kinds; first, actual, observable objects, mainly the Sun, Moon, planets and stars; and, second, notional, computed reference points and systems that also serve as signs; e.  g., the lunar nodes or the lot of fortune. Combined, they provide an overall picture that calls for interpretation and leads to predictions. Tab. 3: The planets (kawkab – kawākib, sometimes specified by the attribute “wandering” [sayyāra]) and a few selected general characteristics of them. Planet Saturn  or: “the Fighter”

Zuḥal  or: al-Muqātil*

maleficent

male

cold, dry

Diurnal

Jupiter

al-Mushtarī

beneficent

male

hot, moist

Diurnal

Mars  or: “the Red”

al-Mirrīkh  or: al-Aḥmar*

maleficent

male

hot, dry

Nocturnal

Sun

al-Shams

ambiguous / male beneficent

hot, dry

Diurnal

Venus

al-Zuhra

beneficent

female

cold, moist Nocturnal

Mercury  or: “the Writer”

ʻUṭāriḍ  or: al-Kātib*

mixed

hermaphrodite

changeable

Moon

al-Qamar

ambiguous / female beneficent

cold, moist Nocturnal

ascending node  (lit. “head of the dragon”) descending node  (lit. “tail of the dragon”)

raʼs al-tinnīn

beneficent

male

hot

Diurnal

female

cold

Nocturnal

dhanab al-tinnīn maleficent

* Used in the western part of the Arabic-speaking world

changeable



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 537

The Sun and Moon belong to the former and fulfil two different tasks regarding prognostication. On the one hand, they serve as a time base while, on the other, they are treated as planets, although the texts clearly indicate an awareness of their specific role by calling them “the two luminaries” (al-nayyirān). The planets constitute another group of these objects. Due to their apparently irregular movements, using them as a time base is nearly impossible, but it is precisely this irregularity that invites the use of the planets as signs for prognostications (see Tab. 3). Each of the planets has its own individual characteristics, responsibilities, associations and correspondences (see Tab. 3). Physiognomic, medical, dietic, social, political and economic issues are associated with them; e.  g., a person’s appearance or character, as still shines through in the meaning of the adjectives “jovial”, “martial” and “lunatic”, but also parts of the body, incense, food, and much more. Items of animated and unanimated nature correspond to them; e.  g., animals, plants, metals, weekdays, regions, and so forth. This information is mainly found in the mudkhal genre (↗ Gaida, Introductions to Astrology) that heavily relies on Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos. In general, these attributions coincide, but vary in details. At times, the two lunar nodes (al-jawzahārān or also al-ʻuqtadān), although not actual celestial objects, are deemed planets, too, an extension probably due to Persian rather than Greek sources. At the ascending node, the moon crosses the ecliptic from south to north; at the descending, from north to south. Less prominent in view of prognostication is the role allotted to the stars (najm– nujūm, or kawkab – kawākib, the latter often specified by the attribute “fixed” [thābita] to distinguish them from the planets, and therefore also simply thawābit). Their organization in constellations (ṣūra – ṣuwar) is based on Ptolemy’s Almagest and harmonized with Arabic star lore in al-Ṣūfī’s Kitāb al-Ṣuwar (“Book of Constellations”). Only a few are taken as signs. al-Bīrūnī (b. 973), e.  g., lists stars harming the eye (ed. Wright 1934, 272–274, § 460) and Kūshyār ibn Labbān (fl. ca. 1000) their temperaments (mizāj – amzija (?) or m-zāja) derived from the powers of the planets (ed. Yano 1997, 18–25), based on Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos. A specific group of star constellations comprises the twelve zodiacal signs (see Tab. 4), which form the background to the Sun’s apparent path around the earth during the course of a year: the ecliptic (minṭaqat al-burūj). They are, as a reference system, divided into 12 equal parts of 30° each. The Moon and the planets share this path, albeit with a slight deviation toward north and south, the lunar and planetary latitudes. Tab. 4: The zodiacal signs (burj–burūj). No.

Zodiacal sign

1 2 3

Aries Taurus Gemini

al-ḥamal al-thawr al-jawzāʼ  or: al-tawʼamān

No.

Zodiacal sign

7 8 9

Libra Scorpio Sagittarius

al-mīzān al-ʻaqrab al-qaws  or: al-rāmī

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 Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages: Astral Sciences

Tab. 4 (continued) No.

Zodiacal sign

4 5

Cancer Leo

6

Virgo

No.

Zodiacal sign

al-saraṭān al-asad

10 11

Capricorn Aquarius

al-sunbula  or: al-ʻadhrāʼ

12

Pisces

al-jadī al-dalw  or: sāqib al-māʼ al-ḥūt  or: al-samaka

Similar to the planets, each zodiacal sign has its own specific characteristics, responsibilities, associations and correspondences. In addition, they are organized into groups according to several classification systems that share commonalities, e.  g.: according to their positions in the zodiac (see Tab. 5), Tab. 5: Zodiacal signs and their positions in the zodiac. Zodiacal signs ascending half descending half

crooked in rising direct in rising

Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius

according to their positions in a season of the year (see Tab. 6), Tab. 6: Zodiacal signs and their positions in a season of the year.

tropical fixed bicorporal

munqalab thābit dhū jasadayn

Position

Zodiacal signs

beginning of a season middle of a season end of a season

Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces

according to their elements, natures and humors (see Tab. 7), Tab.7: Zodiacal signs and their elements, natures and humors Element fire earth air water

nār ʻarḍ ḥawwāʼ māʼ

Nature

Humor

Zodiacal signs

dry, hot dry, cold moist, hot moist, cold

yellow bile black bile blood phlegm

Aries, Leo, Sagittarius Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn Gemini, Libra, Aquarius Cancer, Scorpius, Pisces

but also according to further criteria, such as gender, time of day, season or direction. Further, the 30° of each zodiacal sign are classified, e.  g.: according to gender in male or female degrees, according to luminosity in “bright” (muḍīʼa or munīra), “dark”



Petra G. Schmidl 

 539

(muẓlima), “smoky” (qatima or mudkhina) or “empty” (khāliya) degrees, according to effects in degrees, bringing, e.  g., good fortune (zāʼida fi l-saʻāda), harming the eyes, bringing diseases or causing misfortune when a planet falls into their “wells” (abʻar). Several systems, the dignities, associate zodiacal signs with planets and see them in these parts of the ecliptic more or less potent, mainly: domicile and exile, the point opposite (see Tab. 8), Tab. 8: The domiciles (bayt – buyūt) of the planets and their exiles (wabāl – wabālāt [?]). Diurnal

Half

Leo Virgo Libra Scorpio Sagittarius Capricorn

Sun

Nocturnal Moon Mercury Venus Mars Jupiter Saturn

Half

Diurnal

Half

Nocturnal

Cancer Gemini Taurus Aries Pisces Aquarius

Leo Virgo Libra Scorpio Sagittarius Capricorn

Saturn Jupiter Mars Venus Mercury Sun Moon

Half Cancer Gemini Taurus Aries Pisces Aquarius

exaltation, where a planet is most, and dejection, where it is least potent (see Tab. 9), Tab. 9: Exaltation (sharaf) and dejection (hubūṭ) of the planets. Planet

Exaltation

Dejection

Sun Moon Mercury Venus Mars Jupiter Saturn

Aries Taurus Virgo Pisces Capricorn Cancer Libra

19° 03° 15° 27° 28° 15° 21° or: 20°

Libra Scorpio Pisces Virgo Cancer Capricorn Aries

19° 03° 15° 27° 28° 15° 21°

ascending node descending node

Gemini Sagittarius

3° 3°

Sagittarius Gemini

3° 3°

lord of the triplicity (see Tab. 10), Tab. 10: The triplicities (muthallath – muthallathāt) and their lords (arbāb al-muthallathāt) of the day (rabb al-nahār), of the night (rabb al-layl) and companion (al-sharīk). Triplicity

Zodiacal signs

Lord of the day

Lord of the night

Companion

fiery earthy airy watery

Aries, Leo, Sagittarius Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn Gemini, Libra, Aquarius Cancer, Scorpius, Pisces

Sun Venus Saturn Venus

Jupiter Moon Mercury Mars

Saturn Mars Jupiter Moon

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 Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages: Astral Sciences

the terms (ḥadd – ḥudūd) – there were different systems in use –, a subdivision of each zodiacal sign into five irregular parts, each associated with one of the planets (excluding the two luminaries), the decans (or: faces; wajh  – wujūh), a subdivision of each zodiacal sign into three parts of 10°, each associated with one of the planets (including the two luminaries) and probably having not Greek but Egyptian roots. A second group of specific constellations pertains to the lunar mansions (manāzil al-qamar). They originated probably from the merging of the Arabic anwāʼ-system with the 27 Indian lunar mansions. Similar to the zodiacal signs, they divide the ecliptic according to the Moon’s monthly revolution in a reference system of 28 equal parts of 12;50° each (↗ Burnett, Weather Forecasting Islamic World, 690–691) and are mainly used for timekeeping at night, calendrical purposes and weather forecasting, but also for lunar elections, a practice probably not due to Greek, but to Indian traditions, where the Moon’s position in a lunar mansion determines auspicious, inauspicious and ambiguous times for activities. To the second group of notional, computed reference points and systems belong the astrological houses (or: places; bayt–buyūt) that subdivide the heaven below and above a local horizon at a specific moment in twelve parts. Its starting point constitutes that point of the ecliptic that rises at the place and time in question, the a ­ scendant or horoskopos. It defines the cusp (markaz–marākiz) of the first house and constitutes, together with the other three cardinal points, the lower mid-heaven, descendant and upper mid-heaven, the basic framework (see Tab. 11). To compute the cusps other than the cardines, different methods were discussed and in use. Tab. 11: The astrological houses (bayt – buyūt). Responsibilities

No.

Name

Ecliptic point at

life, soul property brothers & sisters parents

I II III IV

the ascendant

al-ṭāliʻ

eastern horizon

V VI VII VIII IX X

watad al-ʻarḍ  or: al-rābiʻ

lower midheaven

children health & disease marriage death travel & religion honours

the pivot of the earth  or: the fourth

the descendant

al-ghārib

western horizon

the mid heaven  or: the tenth

upper midheaven

hope & friends sadness & enemies

XI XII

wasaṭ al-samāʼ  or: al-ʻāshir



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Similar to the zodiacal signs, each house has its own characteristics, responsibilities, associations and correspondences (see Tab. 11). The first house, the ascendant, concerns, according to al-Bīrūnī, the period of infancy and the head; the second the rest of childhood and the neck (ed. Wright 1934, 277, § 463 and § 465). Further, several classification systems organize them into groups that share commonalities, e.  g.: according either by means of the meridian or the horizon in two groups of six (see Tab. 12), Tab. 12: Houses and their positions in relation to the meridian and the horizon. Houses ascending half descending half

Houses

X, XI, XII, I, II, III IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX

right left

above the earth below the earth

I, II, II, IV, V, VI VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII

according to the relations to the cardines (see Tab. 13), Tab. 13: Houses and their relations to the cardines. Position Cardine Succedent Cadent

Houses watad mā yalī l-awtād al-sawāqiṭ ʻan al-awtād

I, IV, VII, X II, V, VIII, XI III, VI, IX, XII

but also according to further criteria, such as gender or direction. In addition, the aspects constitute another notional reference system that describes approximately the angle between two signs and the celestial objects found there visualised in an aspect scheme (see Tab. 14 and Fig. 19): Tab. 14: The aspects (naẓar–anẓār). Name conjunction (in general)  conjunction (only, when the two luminaries are concerned) opposition quartile trigon, trine sextile

Angle qirān, mukārana, ijtimāʻ, mujāmaʻa

0°

most friendly

most potent

muqābala, istiqbāl tarbīʻ tathlīth tasdīs

180° 90° 120° 60°

inimical unfriendly friendly friendly

least potent

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 Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages: Astral Sciences

Fig. 19: The aspects (naẓar – anẓār) (scheme based on the model of: al-Bīrūnī, ed. Wright 1934, 225, § 373). Photo credits: Matthias Heiduk

Fig. 20: Casting the rays (matrāḥ al-shuʻāʻāt) (scheme based on the model of: Casulleras & Hogendijk, 40). Photo credits: Matthias Heiduk

The same angular distances lie behind the concept of the seven rays cast by one planet to seven other points on the ecliptic (see Fig. 20). These seven rays, a concept which was already established in ancient Greek traditions, are sometimes provided on additional astrolabe plates (↗ Rodríguez Arribas, Mathematical Instruments, 867); the earliest such plate for casting the rays is preserved in al-Khujandī’s astrolabe (IIC #0111), made in 984–985. The Lots (sahm – suhūm) are notional points on the ecliptic. The most famous of these is the lot of fortune, the only one still mentioned by Ptolemy. They are computed by taking into account the ascendant that is then interrelated with planetary positions, cusps of the houses or the lot of fortune. Later, they increased in number, so that al-Bīrūnī lists in his Tafhīm, based on Abū Maʻsharʼs Mudkhal al-kabīr, nearly 100 different lots (ed. Wright 1934, 283–289, § 476). With the lots, the principles start to become less concrete and more abstract, the methods less descriptive and more computational. They lead over to mathematical astrology, that comprises a complicated, elaborate set of concepts, methods and procedures to determine specific points or periods and their movements, such as the prorogator (hīlāj), shifts (taḥwīl – taḥāwīl), progressions (intihāʼ – inthihāʼāt), directions (tasyīr – tasyīrāt) and firdaria (fardar – fardarāt), often discussed in the tail of zījes (↗ Gaida, Zījes).



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Prognostic Methods and Procedures Considering the basic system, there are three main astrological branches, first, horoscopic astrology whose basis forms casting a horoscope. After determining the ascendant for a specific place and moment in time, the cusps of the houses are computed and then the positions of Sun, Moon, planets and further celestial signs, either actual or notional, considered and entered in a horoscopic scheme (see Fig. 21).

III II

IV

V VI VII

I XII XI

X

VII IX

Fig. 21: A horoscopic scheme with the twelve houses. Photo credits: Petra G. Schmidl.

A conceivable scenario might start with setting an astrolabe for a specific geographical latitude and time, then computing the position of the planets by means of an ephemeris (taqwīm) or planetary tables, a computation that can be carried out by using either the dust board (takht) or paper and ink. Next, the planetary positions are marked with wax drops on the astrolabe rete’s ecliptic ring to allow the data to be read (↗ Rodríguez Arribas, Mathematical Instruments, 863–864). The first step is reflected in miniatures, a relatively late source, depicting astrologers at work who lift a circular object with their arms extended. The second step is illuminated by Aḥmad al-Uqlīdisī (fl. ca. 950) in the preface of his book on arithmetics, where the dust board “is seen in the hands of the good-for nothings who earning their living by astrology in the streets” (Berggren 2016, 43). The entire procedure finds its expression in the story of the barber in the “Arabian Nights”. The whole task might be accomplished only by means of tables, too, a method that longs for advanced computational skills. The subsequent interpretation takes into account not only the characteristics, responsibilities, associations and correspondences mainly of the planets, but also of other celestial objects and notional points. To horoscopic astrology mainly belong genethlialogy, mawālīd (“nativities”) and anniversary horoscopes, taḥāwīl sinī al-mawālīd (“the revolutions of the years of the nativities”). In the first case, since birth is neither an instantaneous act nor is its exact time known to each individual, a technique is required to handle this problem: the namūdhār. This helps to define a notional ascendant of the contemplable event. To learn more about the child’s lifespan, prorogator and kadkhudāh, the planet with most dignities (Pers. “lord of the house”) are taken into account. In the second case,

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further horoscopes are cast for each birthday in order to learn more about the following year. Another part forms general, also political or mundane, astrology that predicts changes in a community in its entirety. Again, a horoscope is cast, this time for a social or political entity/activity, such as the commencement of reigns or founding of cities; e.  g., that of Baghdad (3. Jumāda I 145 / 30 July 762) by a group of eighth-century astronomers and astrologers, Māshā’allāh, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Fazārī, Ibn Nawbakht al-Fārisī and ʻUmar ibn Farrukhān al-Ṭabarī (al-Bīrūnī; ed. Sachau 1879, 270–271). Not only points of time as determined by human activities, but also repeated celestial occurrences, for instance, the vernal equinox, are taken into account in order to predict annual events. Another example of particular importance concerns the moments when Jupiter and Saturn are in conjunction, which happens approximately every twenty years, and serves as a basis for predicting the course of public affairs for the following two decades. After a period of 240 or 260 years, the conjunction moves from one triplicity to another, indicating the fate of a dynasty. After 960 years, the whole cycle starts again in the triplicity where it began and predicts the character and religious message of a major prophet. These techniques were used in the past not only to predict the future, but also to explain historical events retrospectively. Likewise, a branch of general prognostication is weather forecasting. Only parts of its prognostic repertoire, however, rely on supra-lunar signs, in particular either by considering a system of risings and settings of different stars and constellations (nawʼ – anwāʼ) or by making deductions from the course of the planets. Other weather forecasting methods are based on sublunar signs, such as atmospheric phenomena, the behaviour of animals or the shoulder blades of sheep (scapulimancy) (↗ Burnett, Weather Forecasting Islamic World, 691–692). Second, elections (ikhtiyār – ikhtiyārāt or ibtidāʼ – ibtidāʼāt) list moments, that may be either auspicious (saʻd), ambiguous or inauspiciuous (naḥs), regarding a specific venture. These can be described in different ways, such as identifying a day of the week or the Moon’s positions in respect to the zodiac. Depending on how this moment in time is defined, electional or catarchic astrology calls for a person more or less skilled in computation, astronomy and astrology. For instance, selecting a propitious day in a text or table is much simpler than first determining the positions of Sun, Moon and stars as a basis for identifying the advantageous moment in time. The subjects included deal with economic, social and political matters. Advice is offered concerning health and agriculture, such as wearing new clothes, taking medicine, planting and harvesting. Even magic-related topics, e.  g., making talismans, are discussed (↗ Regourd, Mantic Arts Islamic World, 478). Slightly different, al-Kindī (d. 873) lists the ventures that one likes to accomplish, such as digging a channel, and describes the appropriate moment to begin such endeavors. Third, interrogational or horary astrology deals with similar subjects to electional astrology. Concerning interrogations (masʼala  – masāʼil), the moment at which a question is posed is crucial. A common method determines at that time the cardines,



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the ascendant (representing the actor), the descendant (the person acted upon or the object in question), the upper mid-heaven (the means of action) and the lower midheaven (the result). Accordingly, to predict a direction; e.  g., the associations of the cardines with the cardinal directions were used. Possible questions may concern discovering a thief or hunting for treasure. In addition, several other prognostic practices exploit basic astral knowledge for other purposes. Besides those cases, where they only provide a time base, the stars, for instance, occur in lot books (kutub al-faʼl) where they act as judges, answering questions or guiding the interrogator to ask further questions. Another example set the lunar mansions on a geomantic device, where their role remains disputable (↗ Cooper and Schmidl, Geomantic Artefacts). These practices also build a bridge to astral magic, that does not deal with predicting but aims to alter the future, e.  g., by wearing amulets with planetary symbols. Finally, two methods for applying predictions by means of celestial signs should be mentioned: first, medical astrology or iatromathematics (↗ Cooper, Medical Prognostication Islamic World, 596–597); and, second, timekeeping and calendrical calculations (↗ Varisco, Calendrical Calculation Islamic World). In general, the former uses all of these methods and tailors them to suit its purposes. The latter calculates beforehand a specific moment in the future to schedule when a specific act must be performed or a specific event like a feast has to happen; e.  g., the five ritual prayers in Islam or the beginning of the fasting month of Ramaḍān.

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts The technical or instructive sources maintain mainly silence on the contexts and motives for their creation as well as their target readership, not to mention the political, economic or social settings of the practitioners and their clients. Only in a few cases is additional information provided; e.  g., when al-Bīrūnī explains that he wrote the Tafhīm for the otherwise unknown Rayḥāna bint al-Ḥasan, or when al-Qabīṣī aimed to improve his predecessors’ works, because they omitted important topics, were too prolix, or organized them in a way that did not suit an introduction to astrology. In addition, occasions are traceable when predictions by means of celestial bodies are in demand; e.  g., when a child is born, a military campaign is pending or major changes and challenges might threaten an individual’s life or a community’s persistence. Although the research on the social settings of astronomers, astrologers and their clients is still in its infancy, two main contexts become apparent: scholars moving in a courtly orbit and practitioners offering their services on the streets and in marketplaces. The first group earns its living either by holding an office or by being patronized by rulers and other with political influence. While such an institution is attested

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at least for ʻAbbāsid, Ṣafāwid and Ottoman times, patronage was an established, common practice overall in pre-modern Islamic societies. The second group practices in streets or marketplaces. They belong to the street scene of the bigger cities in pre-modern Islamic societies, as illustrated, e.  g., in the story of “Arabian Nights”. Some of them offer to their clientele, mainly women and young, idle men, not only astrological predictions, but also other mantic services, such as the interpretation of dreams (taʻbīr) (↗ Cortese, Dream Interpretation Islamic World) or omens (faʼl, but also ʻiyāfa and zajr, respectively, and slightly different in meaning) (↗ Schmidl, Medieval Traditions Islamic World, 199, 203, 213, 221). Evidently, reports, even in the treatises of famous scholars and astrologers such as Abū Maʻshar and al-Kindī, that tell about charlatans posing as astrologers, are aimed at this group. This accusation might be accounted for by different skills that parallel the social settings. Possibly the borderline runs here between theoreticians and practitioners, but this is not yet properly investigated. However, not only professionals, but also amateurs pursued this art; e.  g., healers interested in determining an advantageous moment at which to begin a medical treatment or rulers dabbling in election. In general, to learn more about astral sciences, astronomers, astrologers and astrolabists might gain expertise by reading books. Probably more common, however, were apprenticeships between pupils and teachers, consisting of personal connexions rather than being institutionalized in observatories and affiliated schools. Although several places of education are known, e.  g., school (madrasa), mosque (jāmiʻ), tomb (qubba) and convent (ribāṭ), the act of teaching appears to be more important than the locale where it took place. The teachers associated with the institutions coined the institution’s curriculum.

Pre-modern Classifications and Discussions The perception of astronomy and astrology as two sides of the same coin, as what one might call the “astral sciences”, occurs as early as in the writings of Ptolemy, whose two major works, the Almagest and the Tetrabiblos, reflect this perception. To a certain extent, this distinction finds itself in the zīj- and mudkhal-literature (↗ Gaida, Introductions to Astrology; ↗ Gaida, Zījes). The variety of terms used for the astral sciences in the pre-modern Arabic sources complicates the appraisal of their classifications in the realm of the sciences. One main issue concerns their attribution to either the mathematical or the natural sciences. According to Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī (d. 950), astral sciences (ʻilm al-nujūm) belong to a class whose other parts form arithmetics, geometry, optics, music, and the science of weights and of ingenious devices. al-Farābī further subdivides the astral sciences into astrology (ʻilm aḥkām al-nujūm) and what he calls the “propaedeutical (or: mathematical) sciences of the stars” (ʻilm al-nujūm al-taʻlīmī). The former he defines as the science of indications of the stars about what



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will happen in the future, while the second investigates the celestial bodies and the earth, e.  g., their constellations, their distances and their movements (cf. ed. Palencia 1953, art. iii). Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), not a century later, uses the term “astronomy” (ʻilm al-hayʼa) and groups it together with arithmetics, geometry and music among the mathematical sciences (al-ḥikma al-riyāḍiyya). It deals, besides other things, again with constellations, distances and movements. As its branches, Ibn Sīnā lists the sciences of zījes (ʻilm al-zījāt) and of ephemeris (ʻilm al-taqāwīm). Astrology, though, he relocates to the branches of the natural sciences (al-ḥikma al-ṭabīʻiyya), together with medicine (al-ṭibb), physiognomy (al-firāsa), dream interpretation (al-taʻbīr), alchemy (al-kīmiyāʼ) and others. Explicitly, Ibn Sīna mentions horoscopic, electional and interogational astrology (al-mawālīd wa-l-taḥāwīl wa-l-tasāyīr wa-l-ikhtiyārāt wal-l-masāʼil). In the thirteenth century, Nasīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī adopts, in his Tadhkira, another approach when stating that the astronomical “principles that need proof are demonstrated in three sciences: metaphysics, geometry, and natural philosophy” (ed. Ragep 1993, 90). The classifications found in the sources appear to concentrate on the scholarly, even elite traditions when classifying astronomy and astrology, although pre-modern astronomers and astrologers in Islamic societies master different levels of knowledge and practice their art in different social settings. These differences shine through in the repeatedly returning topos of astrologers accused of charlatanry. Treatises, such as those by al-Fārābī and others, might have consolidated the perception of astrology and astronomy as part of the ancient, also Greek or foreign sciences and philosophies that reached Islamic societies during the translation movements in Umayyad and ʻAbbāsid times. Generally speaking, this affinity occasioned two results. First, scholars especially in the religious and legal sciences, find the astral sciences suspicious or even reprehensible. For instance, al-Aṣbaḥī (thirteenth century) wrote in his folk astronomical treatise that it is prohibited to determine the prayer times by means of calculations by a scientists of the stars (al-munajjimūn) or philosopher (al-falāsifa) as well as by geometry (cf. Schmidl 2007, 132–133). Second  – and simultaneously  –, because astrology is regarded as one of the ancient or foreign sciences, it provides a gateway to a general criticism of them. Several modern scholars argue that the hayʼa genre attempts to free astronomy from astrology in order to make it more acceptable to religious scholars and to increase its general acceptance. Further criticism of astrology emanates from scholars and educated men of all sides writing on grammar, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, theology, jurisprudence, history and other topics. Rejection, approval or a more differentiated opinion are linked to a multitude of possible motifs. Therefore, a relatively extreme example might illuminate the complex background of the attitudes toward the astral sciences. al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāḥ (b. 985), the Fāṭimid Caliph of Cairo, on the one hand, patronized ʻAlī ibn ʻAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn Yūnus (d. 1009), who dedicated his al-Zīj al-kabīr al-Ḥākimī to him (↗ Gaida, Zījes, 1001). On the other hand, al-ʻUkbarī, a contem­

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porary, but otherwise unknown astrologer who was quite close to the ruler, suffered his wrath and was killed; subsequently, astrologers were declared infidels and fled the country. The story, though, is not simply that al-ʻUkbarī failed in his prognostications. Other reasons, such as political, social, economic and personal interests, influence individuals’ attitudes toward astronomy and astrology, so the accusation of heresy might be simply an acceptable (counter) strategy against an unwelcome person.

Selected Bibliography Bakar, Osman. Classification of Knowledge in Islam: A Study in Islamic Philosophies of Science. 2nd ed. Cambridge, 1998. Berggren, John Lennart. Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam. 2nd ed. New York, 2016. Brentjes, Sonja. ‘Orthodoxy’, Ancient Sciences, Power, and the Madrasa (‘college’) in Ayyubid and Early Mamluk Damascus (Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Preprint 77). Berlin, 1997. Brentjes, Sonja. “On the Location of the Ancient or ‘Rational’ Sciences in Muslim Educational Landscapes (AH 500–1100).” Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies 4 (2002): 47–71. Brentjes, Sonja and Robert G. Morrison. “The Sciences in Islamic Societies (750–1800).” The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 4: Islamic Cultures and Societies to the End of the Eighteenth Century. Ed. Robert Irwin. Cambridge et al., 2010. 564–639 and 831–833. Burnett, Charles. “al-Kindī on Judicial Astrology: ‘The Forty Chapters’.” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 3 (1993): 77–117. Burnett, Charles, and Keiji Yamamoto (eds.). Abū Maʻshar on Historical Astrology: The Book of Religions and Dynasties (On the Great Conjunctions; i.  e., Kitāb al-Milal wa-l-duwal). 2 vols. (Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science 33 and 34). Leiden, 2000. Burnett, Charles, Keiji Yamamoto, and Michio Yano (eds.). Abū Maʻshar: The Abbreviation of the Introduction to Astrology, together with the Medieval Latin Translation of Adelard of Bath, Edited and Translated (Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science 15). Leiden, 1994. Burnett, Charles, Keiji Yamamoto, and Michio Yano (eds.). al-Qabīṣī (Alcabitius): The Introduction to Astrology. Edition of the Arabic and Latin Texts and an English Translation (Warburg Studies and Texts 2). London, 2004. Burnett, Charles. “Astrology.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE. Eds. Kate Fleet et al. http://dx.doi. org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_0162 (11 May 2020). Casulleras, Josep, and Jan P. Hogendijk. “Progressions, Rays and Houses in Medieval Islamic Astrology: A Mathematical Classification.” Suhayl 11 (2012): 33–102. Charette, François, and Petra G. Schmidl. “al-Khwārizmī and Practical Astronomy in Ninth-Century Baghdad: The Earliest Extant Corpus of Texts in Arabic on the Astrolabe and Other Portable Instruments.” SCIAMVS 5 (2004): 101–198. Die Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten. Vollständige deutsche Ausgabe in sechs Bänden. Zum ersten Mal nach dem arabischen Urtext der Calcuttaer Ausgabe aus dem Jahre 1839 übertragen von Enno Littmann. Frankfurt am Main, 2004. Abū Naṣr al-Farābī. Catálogo de las ciencias. Ed. y trad. castellana Ángel González Palencia. 2nd ed. Madrid, 1953. Abū Naṣr al-Farābī. Iḥṣāʼ al-ʻulūm: Qaddama lahu, sharjahu wa-bawabahu al-Duktūr ʻAlī Bū M-l-ḥ-m. Beirut, 1996.



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Goldstein, Bernard R. “The Book on Eclipses by Mashaʼ Allah.” Physis 6 (1964): 206–213. Herbers, Klaus, and Christian Sassenscheidt. “Sakralität und Sakralisierung. Wie kann Zeit geheiligt werden? Die Sakralisierung von Zeit in lateinischen und arabischen Kalenderwerken.” Sakralität und Sakralisierung. Perspektiven des Heiligen. Eds. Andrea Beck and Andreas Berndt. Stuttgart, 2013. 89–103. Ibn Sīnā. Tisʻ rasāʼil fi l-ḥikma wa-ṭ-ṭabīʻiyyāt. Qusṭanṭīnīya, 1881. IIC = International Instrument Checklist, organized as follows: #0001-#0336 see Gunther, Robert T. The Astrolabes of the World, 2 vols. Oxford, 1932 [repr. in one volume London, 1976]; up to #4000 see Derek de Solla Price, “An International Checklist of Astrolabes”, Archives internationales d’histoire des sciences 8 (1955), 243–249 and 363–381 [repr. Astronomical Instruments and Observatories in the Islamic World. Texts and Studies 12. Eds. Fuat Sezgin et al. Frankfurt am Main, 1998, 93–119] and Derek de Solla Price et al. A Computerized Checklist of Astrolabes New Haven, Ct., 1973; from #4000 on see King 2004–2005, study XVIII, id. “European Astrolabes to ca. 1500. An Ordered List”. Medieval Encouters 23 (2017), 355–364 and on his webpage http://davidaking.academia.edu/research#catalogueofmedievalastronomicalinstruments the two files “Medieval Instrument Catalogue” http://www.academia. edu/attachments/55611960/download_file?s=portfolio and ttp://www.academia.edu/ attachments/55611959/download_file?s=portfolio (14 January 2019). Kennedy, Edward S., and David Pingree. The Astrological History of Māshāʼallāh. Cambridge, MA, 1971. King, David A. “Too Many Cooks … A New Account of the Earliest Muslim Geodetic Measurements”. Suhayl 1 (2000): 207–241. King, David A. In Synchrony with the Heavens: Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization, volume one: The Call of the Muezzin (Studies I–IX). Volume Two: Instruments of Mass Calculation (Studies X–XVIII). Boston and Leiden, 2004–2005. Kunitzsch, Paul. Arabische Sternnamen in Europa. Wiesbaden, 1959. Kunitzsch, Paul. Untersuchungen zur Sternnomenklatur der Araber. Wiesbaden, 1961. Morrison, Robert G. “Discussions of Astrology in Early Tafsīr.” Journal of Qurʼanic Studies 11 (2009): 49–71. Nallino, Carlo Alfonso. “Sun, Moon, and Stars (Muhammedan).” Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 2. Ed. James Hastings. Leipzig, 1922. 88b-101b. Pellat, Charles. Le Calendrier de Cordoue publié par R. Dozy: Nouvelle édition. Leiden, 1961. Pines, Salomon. “The Semantic Distinction between the Terms Astronomy and Astrology according to al-Bīrūnī.” Isis 55 (1964): 343–349. Pingree, David (ed.). The Thousands of Abū Maʻshar (i.  e., Kitāb al-Ulūf) (Studies of the Warburg Institute 30). London, 1968. Pingree, David. “Astronomy and Astrology in India and Iran.” Isis 54 (1963): 220–246. Ragep, F. Jamil (ed.). Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s Memoir on Astronomy (al-Tadhkira fī ʻilm al-hayʼa). 2 vols. New York et al., 1993. Ragep, Sally P. al-Jaghmīnī’s Mulakhkhaṣ: An Islamic Introduction to Ptolemaic Astronomy. Berlin, Göttingen and Heidelberg, 2017. Sachau, Carl Eduard. The Chronology of Ancient Nations: An English Version of the Athār-ul-Bākiya of Albīrūnī, or “Vestiges in the Past”. London, 1879 [repr. Frankfurt am Main, 1984, and in the series Islamic Mathematics and Astronomy 31. Frankfurt am Main, 1998]. Saliba, George A. “Science before Islam.” The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture, vol. IV: Science and Technology in Islam, part 1: The Exact and Natural Sciences. Eds. Maqbul Ahmed, Ahmad Y. al-Hassan, and Albert Zaki Iskandar. Paris, 2001. 27–49. Savage-Smith, Emilie (ed.). Magic and Divination in Early Islam (The Formation of the Classical Islamic World 42). Aldershot, 2004.

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Schmidl, Petra G. “On Timekeeping by the Lunar Mansions in Medieval Egypt.” Time and Astronomy in Past Cultures. Ed. Arkadiusz Soltysiak. Warsaw and Torun, 2006. 75–87. Schmidl, Petra G. “Islamische Astronomie: Eine kurze Einführung.” Ex oriente lux? Wege zur neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft, Begleitband zur Sonderausstellung. Ed. Mamoun Fansa. Oldenburg and Mainz, 2009. 124–139. Schmidl, Petra G. Volkstümliche Astronomie im islamischen Mittelalter: Zur Bestimmung der Gebetszeiten und der Qibla bei al-Aṣbaḥī, Ibn Raḥīq und al-Fārisī. Leiden, 2007. Schmidl, Petra G. “Lunar Elections in Ibn Rahiq’s Folk Astronomical Treatise.” From Māshā Allāh to Kepler: Theory and Practice in Medieval and Renaissance Astrology. Eds. Charles Burnett and Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum. Ceredigion (Wales), 2015. 425–453. Schmidl, Petra G. “Using Astrolabes For Astrological Purposes: The Earliest Evidence Revisited.” Heaven and Earth United. Instruments in Astrological Contexts. Eds. Silke Ackermann, Richard Dunn, and Giorgio Strano. Leiden and Boston, 2018. 4–23. Sen, Tunc. Astrology in the Service of the Empire: Knowledge, Prognostication, and Politic at the Ottoman Court, 1450s–1550s. Ph.D. Diss. University of Chicago, 2016. Sezgin, Fuat. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. Vol. 6: Astronomie. Leiden, 1978. Sezgin, Fuat. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. Vol. 7: Astrologie, Meteorologie und Verwandtes. Leiden, 1979. Ullmann, Manfred. Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam (Handbuch der Orientalistik 1. Abt., VI:2). Leiden, 1972. Walker, Paul E. Caliph of Cairo. Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, 996–1021. Cairo, 2012. Wright, R. Ramsey (ed.). The Book of Instruction in the Art of Astrology of al-Bīrūnī (i.  e., Kitāb al-Tafhīm li-awāʼil ṣināʻat al-tanjīm). London, 1934 [repr. in the series Islamic Mathematics and Astronomy 29. Frankfurt am Main, 1998]. Yano, Michio (ed.). Kūshyār Ibn Labbān’s Introduction to Astrology. Tokyo, 1997.

Medical Prognostication Luke Demaitre

Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World Definitions and Terminology In a definition of “medical prognostication”, a tight circumscription will prevent redundant discussion of areas that are fully covered elsewhere in this handbook. More important, a precise definition has far-reaching implications for an accurate understanding of medieval medicine. In a first circumscription, the designation of “medical” is restricted here to principles and activities dealing with disease and health, patients and, most specifically, to the management and remediation of their condition. This focus entails the exclusion of a wide range of non-medical concerns that were also addressed by physicians, from matrimony and succession to crops, business, travel, and conflict. On the other hand, the designation should be inclusive, extending beyond university teaching to monastic life, household care, and popular beliefs and customs. In addition, it is crucial to appreciate the far-reaching ramifications of the holistic orientation in the concept of health and the care of patients, which extended to the consideration of their habitus, circumstances and environment. Before the heyday of dissection and anatomy, the human body was an integrated entity in which life and vital functions depended on the interaction between the four humors. The organic whole was subject to the goals of a purposeful Nature and, beyond, to the influence of celestial motions, conjunctions, and temperaments. This organized framework of teleology and correlations lent a degree of predictability to the causes, course and outcome of an illness. Paradoxically, the generic and qualitative nuances in the scheme allowed for a measure of imprecision in the forecasts. In a tightening of the second half of the definition, “prognostication” is delineated within the confines of medicine, which eliminates most of horoscopy, even the parts that were discussed and practiced by doctors. Precision further requires an internal division, into three meanings with distinct implications – although not without semantic ambiguity and overlaps. First, and in general, the care of a patient and the treatment of an illness required “thinking ahead” wisely, with Vorsicht. This basic sense inspired the opening declaration of the authoritative Hippocratic Book of Prognostics, that it is “best for a physician to cultivate forethought” (pronoia, providentia), part of the wisdom and intuition crucial to “the Art” (technē, ars) of medicine. Two more consequential interpretations of prognostication enter in the subsequent lines, in which Hippocrates elaborates that it is excellent to “know” beforehand (progignōskōn, precohttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-029

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gnoscere) and to “announce” in advance (prolegōn, proagoreuōn; predicere) “what is going to happen” (Hippocrates, Book of Prognostics, ed. Jones, 7). The central notion is prognōsis, the “fore-knowledge” which, drawn from the observation of precedents, symptoms and constants, transcends discrete perception and momentary impressions. The third and most manifest phase of medical prognostication consisted in “fore-telling” the further course and eventual outcome of an illness. In the learned tradition, exemplified most memorably by Galen, prediction showed great affinity for rhetoric, both as taught among the liberal arts and as performed at the bedside. Doctors (a term which will hereafter will be reserved for university trained practitioners) treated prediction as a decisive phase in bedside attendance; popular practitioners cultivated it with special flair; and observers in either milieu might view it as oracular. Medical prognostication easily lent itself to predicting aspects of fortuna other than health, but rational prediction differed essentially from fortunetelling to the extent that it was linked to diagnosis and care. It depended utterly on the “differential” (dia-) recognition of a disease’s identity and the patient’s condition. Pro-gnosis is so intimately connected with dia-gnosis that it is often treated by historians as a mere subdivision of observational knowledge, with the result that noteworthy dimensions of pre-modern medicine are overlooked. Medieval authors did distinguish between both forms of knowledge, that is, between observing signs of the present and interpreting their significance for the future. Underscoring the distinction, they noted that the unforeseeable made prognostication more liable to error than diagnosis and that predictions were necessarily conditional and conjectural, even though they did not know that Celsus called medicine ars coniecturalis (De medicina, Prooemium 48). The doctors’ ultimate objective, which they rationalized in various ways, was to achieve as much certainty as possible in seeing ahead. The immediate objectives and stated benefits of competent medical prognostication were more tangible than for most other forecasting. Some objectives, particularly the ability to adjust treatment, were spelled out with logical arguments. Others, however, were comparatively empirical and less directly consequential for health. These included determining the sex of a fetus, for which Latin authors drew on traditional doctrines about right and left sides of the body; in an empirical test, recorded in an Anglo-Saxon manuscript, a lily and a rose were presented to a pregnant woman, and her choice indicated, respectively, a boy, the latter a girl. The principal and most intensely reasoned objective was to adapt diet and treatment to the anticipated direction of an illness. Common analogies referred to the sailor and to the general, who adjust course or tactics in response to foreseen and, when necessary, unforeseen conditions. Anticipation was not only a logical prerequisite to an appropriate treatment, but also more achievable than success. It was most urgently needed when death was a possibility and cure unlikely, but it promised the widest range of benefits in less threatening illnesses. The knowledge and a declaration of coming events would make the patient hopeful, trusting, and “obedient”; it would also increase or at least safeguard the physician’s reputation.



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Written Sources and Artifacts The written sources on prognostication display a rich diversity in content, character and context. The Latin writings, which are generally didactic, document both the constancy and the development of tradition in learned medicine, with the Book of Prognostics by Hippocrates as mainstay. Western Christendom inherited Greco-Roman notions about medical prediction through New Rome and indirectly, in greater volume, through Arabic transmission. The most solid thread of continuity runs through the development of the university curriculum. From the beginning, the formal program of courses featured the Hippocratic Prognostics with Galen’s commentary among the core texts, in a group that became known as Articella, the “little” or elementary Art. While the Book of Prognostics was one of the initial treatises in the Articella, it was eclipsed by the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, which reigned supreme even for the discussion of prognostication. The first aphorism, in fact, inspired one of the most perceptive discourses on contingency in medical prediction, in a lecture by Arnaldus of Villanova (ca. 1240–1311). The Hippocratic Prognostics generated a considerable number of commentaries, but none of them circulated widely, and the subject of prognostication may have received limited coverage in courses until the arrival of new translations, particularly of Galenic works on criteria for reliable prediction. While professors considered prognostication indispensable to medical practice and worthy of scholarly commentary, some may have considered it an experiencebased “art” and therefore hesitated about teaching it as a subject in its own right rather than under diagnostics. This hesitation, in conjunction with late-thirteenth-century stimuli from a surge in Galen’s influence, could explain why Bernard de Gordon (ca. 1258–ca. 1320) in 1295 wrote an animated and tightly argued defense of a rational and teachable scientia that was “difficult yet greatly useful” – and thus neither a simple supplement nor a vain exercise in theory (Guardo 2003, 118). His Book of Prognostics stands out as a classic textbook, an epitome of scholastic concepts and methodology, and an exemplar of medical theory driven by practical objectives. While framed by Galenic doctrine, it could hardly be called derivative. It is more logically constructed than Bernard’s more famous Practica seu Lilium medicine (1305), in which he referred to his own work on prognostication for the complete teachings on fever by Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna and others. In every one of the Lilium’s 163 chapters he dedicated a section to the rules for determining the prognosis of the discussed disease. Doctors and surgeons consulted both of these books by Bernard for more than two centuries, and they cited him for prognostic methods in general as well as for the prognoses of particular diseases. Conrad Heingarter in 1477 called Bernard “in his Prognostics, the most skilful of modern medical men” (Demaitre 2004, 115). The wide appeal of the work is manifest in the dozens of manuscript copies and six translations into vernacular languages. One of these translations, in Middle English, is extant in an acephalous but pristine early-fifteenth-century manuscript (Voigts 2004). The quality of this version suggests a translator who was able to bridge Latin and vernacular in

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his combination of faithfulness to the original text, comprehension of the arguments, and sense of daily usage. Bernard de Gordon’s Book of Prognostics was also known as On Crisis and Critical Days. Drawn from the fifth and final section of the book, this title was actually borrowed from two works by Galen that became standard in the university syllabus. The subject led to extraterrestrial dimensions as will be explained below. Moreover, Bernard’s discussion of medical astrology, in the last pages, enjoyed independent circulation. This reflects both a shift in emphasis from strictly medical to astrological prognostication, and a rising interest in the predictive application of astronomia medicorum. Inversely, a number of astrological tracts dealt exclusively with medical prediction. Some of these were ascribed to Hippocrates, including On the prognostications of diseases according to the movement of the moon, which opened with words of “wise Ptolemy, the most skilled of all physicians” (Demaitre 2003, 785). Attributions to Hippocrates, Ptolemy, or Pythagoras perpetuated and reinforced the conviction that recent additions were respectably ancient and canonical. A similar belief in venerable antiqueness permeated lists of unlucky days or ominous names, and non-medical prognostications in which health matters were embedded with forecasts about a voyage, marriage, or conflict. Thus, indications of a long life, the duration of an illness, and “hasty” death occupy spaces in The Golden Table of Pythagoras and The Sphere of Pythagoras or of Apuleius (Voigts 1994). Medical interests of great consequence were shared across the cultural spectrum, particularly around the issue of reproduction. This was a natural area for relying on computational and other devices to predict a favorable time for conception or the sex of offspring, and also to determine sterility – a problem that, while usually covered under diagnostics, bore as much on the future as on the present. Much information on medical prognostication remains to be collected from areas outside medicine into which physicians ventured. These excursions, which they did not consider extracurricular, cannot be pursued here without risking a superficial and redundant discussion of subjects covered adequately in other sections of this handbook. Suffice it to select some instances in which the divination pertained directly to aspects of health. An astrological geomancy with plausible association with Bernard de Gordon addressed several medical questions, including whether it was advisable to accept a new patient, and whether recovery or death was more likely; other questions concerned reproduction. Bernard was also credited with a treatise about making seals with astrological images for treating diverse diseases. This treatise was in line with a body of sources from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Provence and Montpellier that document the therapeutic and preventive application of seals, particularly with the sign of Leo for kidney problems and Pisces for gout. The practice was controversial enough to provoke disputes among Jewish rabbis and within the faculty of medicine. The controversy is documented in several tracts that, while attacking claims of efficacy rather than veracity, attest to the actuality of astrological practices and to the ramifications of the practitioner’s conduct (Weill-Parot 2004).



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Fig. 22: The Zodiac Man according to a Latin Folding Almanac (London, Wellcome Library Ms. 8932; date: saec. XV). Photo credits: Wellcome Images, London.

The practitioner faced the greatest behavioral and mental challenge when attending to a patient who might die (Jacquart 2004). The anticipation of death was a more prominent concern in medieval than in classical medicine, in which it was just one aspect of pronoia. A sketch of facial signs that presaged death was taken out of the context of the Hippocratic Book of Prognostics II, in late Antiquity. It became a famous self-standing formula, as facies hippocratica, and it enhanced the reputation of Hippocrates as having possessed extraordinary foreknowledge. His name lent authority to tracts known as Secreta pronosticorum, Experimenta vite et mortis and Capsula eburnea or “ivory casket”. The casket, when allegedly discovered by Galen in the tomb of Hippocrates, contained a letter with maxims on the prognosis of terminally ill patients. The Capsula is followed in a few manuscripts by related texts attributed to Galen, one a version of Pronostica dierum timendorum, “days to be feared”, and another a list of Signa mortifera. It may be argued that these texts, even though they were associated with medicine, bear more on cultural attitudes towards death than on Hippocratic teaching about foreknowledge as a bridge between diagnosis and treatment. For the further context of medical prognostication, the expansion of the mostly descriptive evidence, and a counterbalance to the prevailingly prescriptive nature of the sources, it is valuable to cull anecdotal echoes from literary works, including the twelfth-century romance Cligès by Chrétien de Troyes and the late-fourteenth-century Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (↗ Rapisarda, Novels and Poems Western Chris-

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tian World). Manuscript illuminations expand the perspective further with recurrent themes such as the stargazing physician or the inspection of a patient’s urine, about which more below. The zodiac man and woman adorned not only the well-known illuminated devotional manuscripts but also medical miscellanies from the fifteenth century with texts in Latin and several vernacular languages (see Fig. 22). The richness of the texts and images is supplemented by a variety of objects, some of which show signs of heavy use while others, better preserved, may have been displayed as emblems of knowledge. Most fascinating among the objects are the “girdle books” which, hanging from the belt, served the physician on his rounds as a handy guide for recognizing symptoms and prescribing remedies. The vademecums, however, also included astronomical tables of lunar, planetary, and zodiacal calculations or charts for sorting out the odds; a considerable number of these survive from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England. A more familiar group of artifacts consists of zodiacal calendars for bloodletting, which may pertain more to the practice of barbers than to medical prognostication (↗ Nothaft, Calendars and Tables Western Christian World).

Techniques and Manifestations The key to medical foresight lay in knowing disease and correlating the particular illness with the patient. Prognostication was tightly linked with nosology, etiology and semiotics, in practice as well as theory. The nexus is strikingly illustrated in the report of Pope Martin IV’s death in 1285: even though he had revealed to be suffering gravely from an unseen disease, his demise was unexpected since, as observers alleged, the physicians failed to see the warning signs because they did not know the disease and its cause. It may be noted that this criticism was limited to the physicians’ ignorance of intrinsic criteria, without regard for the patient’s condition of for extraneous factors that, as part of the Hippocratic holistic tradition, also played a crucial role in predictions on disease and death. On the other hand, the observers revealed their educated background by concentrating on the knowledge of nosology and etiology, the prerequisite that lay closest to theory. Disease was defined as an event “against nature”, so that it was the prognosticating practitioner’s task, first, to assess the moment in the struggle between the force of the disease and the strength of the patient’s “nature” and, then to predict, or at least guess, the continuation and outcome of the battle. The task was most challenging and urgent in acute diseases, and prognostication for chronic ailments received less attention from learned practitioners than from popular soothsayers. Fevers constituted the vast majority of acute diseases, with an elaborate taxonomy based on their humoral character or chronological pattern. Even though this classification was partly qualitative, it implied a degree of quantifiability. Fever was defined, furthermore, as “unnatural warmth” that, like fire, followed a predictable trajectory; it essentially involved



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the heart, the generator of warmth. Another capacious and diverse group of diseases comprised apostemata or external eruptions, which were classified by humor and location on or in the body. As taught in the universities, the prognostication of any disease required the knowledge, scientia, of a series of aspects, beginning with its essence and causes or, more specifically in this case, the nature and location of the offending matter, which consisted in an excessive, corrupt, or burned humor. Next, it was necessary to know the force or intensity (virtus) of the disease, in correlation with its habitual way or “behavior” (maneries). The most precisely defined requirement was the recognition of four stages in an illness (which were set out by Galen in De temporibus morbi and De crisi and summarized by Avicenna in Canon IV.1.1.3–4), namely, the onset, intensification, stasis, and retreat. The phases of a disease were proportionate and of estimable duration, for example, the time between the onset and the end of stasis corresponded to the time from the end of stasis to the end of recovery. This chronicity allowed the physician to adapt the timing of treatment and to offer assurance to the patient. One crucial and quintessentially Galenic element within the tempora morbi was the crisis, from the Greek krinein, “to decide”. This turning point arrived suddenly, and it was most typical of acute disease in which, according to a sensible observation, a positive outcome was easier to predict than a negative one. The decisive turn for the worse, which should not be confused with a surging attack or paroxysm, occurred during the stasis or climactic plateau of an illness. Therefore, the immediate and anticipatory knowledge of this stage was most valuable “in the entire science of predicting” according to Bernard de Gordon (who also devoted an entire chapter in his Tractatus de urinis to prognostication). Signs such as a headache or perspiration announced the manner of the stage’s arrival. Symptoms (accidentia), which revealed the patient’s “complexion” or humoral mixture and strength (virtus) for fighting the battle, were gathered from excretions and direct appearance, particularly of the face. Observation was chiefly visual, but also with touch and the other senses. Palpation was practiced though seldom described, in contrast with the long-standing and complex expositions on feeling the pulse. While a vital sign, the pulse was admittedly difficult to read, and primarily indicative of the moment rather than the future. Nevertheless, it was helpful in the differentiation of fevers and in the perception of approaching death. The explanation of pulses was nearly always coupled with the much more elaborate discussion of urines. Urine, as the liquid strained (colamentum) from the blood in the body’s “cooking” process, was eminently indicative not only of unseen conditions but also of ongoing developments and thus of the difference between a fast-moving acute and a prolonged chronic illness. Urines were differentiated in many ways by volume, consistency, layers and colors. These, by themselves or in combinations, presaged recovery, an impending stroke, incurable dropsy, and so on. Uroscopy found ardent proponents among practitioners and believers among patients, but skeptics and caricaturists pointedly exposed the dangers of deception (see Fig. 23).

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Fig. 23: Physician pouring out the urine flask prognosticating certain death of the visionary Liedwy (Johannes Brugman. Vita alme virginis Lijdwine. Schiedam [print: Otgier Pietersz/Nachtegael], 1498. Fol. 15r. Utrecht, Rijksmuseum Het Catherijneconvent, BMH i44). Photo credits: Museum Catherijneconvent / Ruben de Heer.

For a reliable prognosis, the practitioner needed to interpret the “signs” in addition to observing the symptoms even more carefully, comprehensively and discriminatingly than in diagnosis. This precision was needed for smallpox, for example, which was less threatening when the pustules were white, hard and sparse than when they were blackish and close together. Additional criteria ranged from the patient’s gender, age, complexion and history to a host of external factors. The patient’s natural vigor – as well as the disease’s force – would be helped or hindered by immediate circumstances, including the location, weather and season, as well as by remote but even more powerful influences. A fundamental paradigm, positing a correspondence between earth and the heavens, was deeply rooted in the Hippocratic-Galenic holistic legacy, rationalized in Aristotelian physics, and nourished by Near East astronomical traditions. The microcosm of the human body was subject to the movements and conjunctions and, in expanding elaborations, the temperaments of celestial bodies in the macrocosm. While the behavior of terrestrial entities was erratic and the interplay of humors elusive, the conspicuous regularity of cosmic cycles and permanence of the moon, planets and constellations provided predictability. Cosmic influences (“the upper root”, radix superior) converged with the earthly criteria (radix inferior) of prognostication in the doctrine of “critical days”. Acute diseases, influenced by the moon, reached the decisive point on days that could be computed on the basis of divisions of the lunar cycle. The seventh, fourteenth, and twen-



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Fig. 24: A volvelle, which helped calculate the sign of the zodiac the moon would be in on a given date (London, British Library Ms. Egerton 2572, fol. 51b; date: saec. XV). Photo credits: The British Library.

tieth (or twenty-first) day of an illness were generally viewed as critical for a positive prognosis; a crisis on the sixth, eighth or tenth day would spell trouble (see Fig. 24). The doctrine loomed large in the teaching of medicina practica and for learned practitioners who endeavored to make prognostication more objective by applying mathematical methods. This endeavor meshed with Ptolemaic astronomy and with works ascribed to Ptolemy, especially the Centiloquium, which was translated from Arabic to Latin in 1136. Lunar computations also dovetailed with the more sweeping cosmic calculations of astral ascents and descents, and with horoscopes (↗ Burnett, Astral Sciences Western Christian World). Lunar conjunctions were also part of the qualitative astrology that concentrated on the signs embodied in the images of the zodiac. Chaucer drew on daily observation when he portrayed the “doctour of phisik” as the “perfect practiser” who was “grounded in astronomy” and able to “fórtunen the áscendent / Of his ymáges for his pacïent” (Canterbury Tales, Prologue). It is worth noting that Chaucer suggested the fundamental place of astronomy by mentioning it before the physician’s understanding of disease, knowledge of their causes, and familiarity with medicines. Astronomical calculations were complex and astrological applications were fluid. This made prognostication even more challenging than when it depended on the

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knowledge of disease, the illness, and the patient. It is not unreasonable to assume that the conscientious doctor considered as many of the principles and criteria as possible in weighing the prospects of patients. Some of the abstruse notions percolated, beyond academe, to practitioners who endeavored to emulate the doctors, as vernacular texts indicate. Illiterate empirics, on the other hand, dispensed with academic rationalizations or transformed them into impressive formulas. Surgeons who considered therapeutic bloodletting, and barbers who performed most of the routine phlebotomies, relied on simplified calendars. Practitioners across the spectrum, from learned to illiterate, also resorted to prognostic techniques that were not based on the canon of theoretical premises but on a wide variety of casual criteria. Some of these criteria were fixed, such as the patient’s name (↗ Heiduk, Prognostication Western Christian World, 126–127; ↗ Rapisarda, Mantic Arts Western Chrisitan World, 435); others were coincidental, such as an “unlucky day” of birth (↗ Nothaft, Calendrical Calculations Western Christian World, 610). Some techniques involved rituals or incantations, others empirical tests (experimenta), such as urinating over a nettle and watching whether it dried, which signified that the patient would be cured. Non-canonical devices were the mainstay of empirics outside the university, and they tell us more about the world of divination than about medical prognostication. On the other hand, some professors rejected the techniques as not belonging to “the Art” but adopted them as part of comprehensive practice. In all, the balance between canonical and empirical techniques, as well as the concerns in medical prognostication, varied with the immediate context and, more consequentially, with cultural differences and chronological changes.

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts The history of medical prognostication opens perspectives on the evolution of learned and lay traditions, and on changes in cultural priorities and social frameworks. Within this history, too, there were significant changes in the focus of prediction, the status of the practitioner and the concerns of the patient. In an early stage, when transmission of classical medicine to western Christendom was sporadic, Hippocratic teaching received a hospitable welcome in monasteries where its holistic tenets were in harmony with the rule, and where books were held in high regard (Paxton 1993). Monastic scriptoria copied and preserved various texts on prognostication, most famously at the abbeys of Saint Gall and Montecassino, but monastic communities emphasized a particular aspect of foreknowledge, as will be seen shortly. The monks of Montecassino contributed to the vitality of the so-called “School of Salerno” which, although it produced at least three commentaries on the Hippocratic Prognostics, evinced less interest in prediction than in etiology and therapeutics. Subsequently, a wave of translations from Arabic pervasively affected medical teaching,



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but the impact on prognostication was more marked in areas of astronomy and astrology than in the nexus with diagnosis. When universities became organized, the Hippocratic Prognostics with Galen’s commentary became a standard item in the Articella syllabus. The elements of continuity, however, risk overshadowing a profound change. In the second half of the thirteenth century, shifts in academic medicine resulted from the introduction of “new” works by Galen which included On Critical Days and, most significant for this subject, On Crisis (McVaugh 2013). Discussions of the latter hinted at a distinction between prognosis drawn from the observation of the decisive turns in the disease itself and, on the other hand, forecasts based on celestial cycles and influences. These hints, in fact, adumbrated the divergence of astrological prediction from the prognostication that, though holistic, was essentially an extension of diagnostic observation. A practitioner familiar with astrology might even dispense with diagnosis, as William of England suggested as early as 1219 when he taught how to predict from the stars and zodiac without seeing the patient’s urine, in De urina non visa (Moulinier 2012). Even though most practitioners continued to include both approaches, the divergence grew wider, in parallel with the growing gap between “professional” doctors and popular empirics. The parallel was underscored by Thomas Forestier, a Norman physician in London, who in 1485 scathingly denounced “the false leeches who, when they lack gold or silver, write and put letters upon gates and church doors promising to help the people of their sickness. These unskilled men – some of them carpenters and some millwards – prognostify and profit of things that are to come” (Jones 2012, 1). Forestier’s jab leaves no doubt about status and profit as stakes of prognosticating. These stakes, while already spelled out in the Hippocratic Prognostics, rose in proportion to what may be called the “professionalization” of medicine. A sense of competition surfaces in the warning by Archimatheus of Salerno that, if the physician hesitates in anticipating the patient’s future, “someone else will come in and pick the fruits of your labor” (Grensemann 2001, 76). Tensions between competition and solidarity played a role in the rise of medical faculties, where prognostication raised issues of professional conduct, as will become clearer towards the end of this article. Surgeons who were faculty members or who claimed parity with doctors and superiority to barbers and bonesetters, manifested their rising professional status in various ways. They pointed out that their prognostications were based on knowledge as taught in the schools. Thus, Henri de Mondeville (ca. 1260–1316) submitted that the cyrurgicus operator who knew the differences and causes of ulcers was eminently “able to prognosticate which ulcers are curable and which ones incurable, and which ones are easy to treat and which ones difficult” (Chirurgie Tract. II, Doctr. II, cap. I). In the 1370s John Arderne appropriated the label medicus for the surgeon when discussing issues of prognosis in cases of fistula in ano (Jones 2012, 2). In another manifestation of professional status, surgeons presented forensic prognoses that, thanks to their experience and learning, were more reliable than those of lay witnesses and even of

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physicians. From the mid-thirteenth century on, for example, Iberian courts recorded several cases in which a surgeon predicted the consequences of injuries, assured that the prediction was based on his scientia, and allowed for contingencies such as the patient’s unhealthful regimen or intervening disease. In principle, surgeons focused on the patient’s present condition while leaving the future course as well as past causes at the periphery. In common practice, they claimed, their knowledge and expertise best qualified them to predict whether a wound would cause death. The anticipation of death, a basic human concern, was consonant with the Hippocratic-Galenic emphasis on the prognostication of acute, that is, fast acting diseases. However, the preoccupation with the end of life seems to have been keener in medieval than in ancient or modern medicine, due at least in part to Christian beliefs. In the exemplary world of monasticism, the anticipation of death was cultivated in a context of communal caring, disciplined health maintenance, ritualized days, and paramount apprehension about a good transition to eternity. This outlook stimulated abbey librarians, most notably between the eighth and the eleventh century, to accumulate various texts on “the signs of approaching death”, with a predilection for prognoses that were attributed to Hippocrates. These texts gained wide dissemination from the twelfth century on, as Christian apprehensions about being prepared for eternity were intensified by doctrinal expansion and penitential classifications, together with the emotional dramatization of memento mori in liturgy, preaching, and iconography. Disquisitions on the Last Judgment and eternal punishment, and even the introduction of purgatory, placed greater weight on dying a “good death” in the “state of grace”. The ecclesiastical hierarchy promoted the indispensability of individual confession and last rites, and medical practitioners followed suit. Twelfth-century Salernitan teachers instructed the physician to assure, upon arrival, that the patient had confessed or would promise to do so. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council entered the obligation into canon law. The 1240 statutes of the university of Montpellier incorporated the law by requiring masters of medicine at their graduation to “swear that they would not accept an acutely suffering patient unless he had presented himself to a priest” (Cartulaire, I:188). Later, the Parlement of Paris ordered doctors to deny treatment to patients refusing confession, which suggests that there may have been resistance. It may be argued that the signa mortifera pertained more to pious preparations for death and the afterlife than to medical judgments on the course of an illness and adjusted treatment. The patients’ pious priorities, however, and even more their practical concerns, affected the popularity and direction of medical prognostication. Some patients expected to hear a prediction based on their condition and the doctor’s learning, while others preferred more imaginative assurances. Still others placed little stock in forecasts because they were, by faith or necessity, resigned to the course of an illness, even if it was disabling or irreversible. Pressures for prognostication increased with rising fears of sudden or unforeseen death in epidemics, violent conflicts, and natural disasters. It is possible that threats to life were experienced more constantly in the closer quarters of towns, but it is difficult to determine the differential effect on



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prognostication. Another difference may be easier to gauge, namely, in the concern with prediction among poor commoners and among nobles or bourgeois for whom health and death were decisive for the maintenance of patriarchy, power and property. In any event, it would be surprising if the different preoccupations of patients had no effect on the views of teachers and practitioners on medical prognostication.

Medieval Classifications and Discussions A widespread rise of enthusiasm for judicial astrology coincided with a declining dedication to medical prognostication, and this dual development, in turn, paralleled the divergence between prediction from cosmic signs and foreknowledge from diagnostic symptoms. There were underlying tensions in the classification of prognostication, as a science or an art, as anchored in learning or produced by experience, and as autonomous or ancillary. As a rational science, which could be formulated and taught in logical terms, it aimed at transcending randomness by relying both on intrinsic universals such as the periodicity of tempora morbi (↗ Grünbart, Treatises on Predicting hora mortis) and on the extraneous regularity of cosmic influences on critical days. At the same time, it maintained flexibility by allowing for contingencies that, paradoxically, were more likely to be anticipated from experience or guessed from intuition. In another paradox, medical astrology sprang from mathematical astronomy (iatromathematics) yet it was taken over, at least in part, in empirical procedures that had more in common with ritual and drama than with a systematic knowledge or gnosis of health. The role of astrology was a topic of discussion and disagreement (↗ Burnett, Astral Sciences Western Christian World). The principal friction was between the belief that celestial influences provided more reliable predictability than immediate impressions, and the assumption that these influences were not only certain but also immutable and thereby divine. The perception of this danger exacerbated the earlier mentioned controversy about the “superstition” of astrological seals, which persisted in Montpellier and Paris from 1300 until the 1420s. Proponents of predictive astronomy ranged from Peter of Abano (ca. 1257–1316) and Taddeo Alderotti (ca. 1210–1295), who built on Hippocratic and Arabic prognostic traditions, to the unconventional Cecco d’Ascoli (1257–1327), who was accused of astrological determinism and burned for heresy. Skeptics included Cecco’s nemesis Dino del Garbo (ca. 1280–1327), and Jacques Despars (ca. 1380–1458), who criticized “some people for equipping themselves with almanacs and insisting that lunar times made certain days propitious or unfavorable for bloodletting or other purges”. Despars further proposed, “judgments in astrology are for the most part uncertain, unstable and ambiguous”. Notwithstanding his outspoken skepticism about the value of astrology to medicine, Despars conceded to the concrete power of social realities. He advised practi-

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tioners to include celestial computations in their predictions “because princes and nobles (and even common folk) like to put their trust in these judgments, even though they are often deceived by them” (Wallis 2000, 324–325). Deceptive predictions and false promises ranked high among the complaints by critics, and even in some cynical-sounding advice from within the profession. The critic John of Salisbury (ca. 1120–1180) observed that novice physicians, coming out of Salerno or Montpellier, showing off Hippocrates, and Galen, and spouting newfangled words, “are believed to be omnipotent, because they promise everything”. He asserted that physicians aimed at winning in either case, whether the outcome was good or bad; he further suggested that they lived by the adage, “collect while the patient is suffering” (Metalogicon I.4). It may be noted here that remuneration was seldom associated explicitly with prognostication, even when the association between medical attendance and remuneration became increasingly visible, in accounts as well as in comments on the physician’s obligations and rights. Henri de Mondeville wrote about fees in blunt terms and great detail, yet he alluded to prognosis only indirectly, for example when he asserted, “we are not held to deliver preventive treatment to misers, the rich, usurers, or all those who value their wealth more than their bodies” (Chirurgie, Tract. II, Doctr. II, cap. I). Another silent link between prognostication and profit lay in the concern with honesty, that the physician would not squeeze the patient with impossible promises or frightening prospects. When specialized guides or general manuals addressed deontological issues of prediction, they concentrated on unequivocal truth as the ideal standard, in principle if not in pragmatic advice. When John of Salisbury accused prognosticators of duplicity, he may have been inspired by advice from within medical teaching. According to the Salernitan tract On the physician’s approach to the patient, this is how the bedside visit should be concluded: after completing the examination, “promise health to the patient, but once you have left him, tell the members of the household that he is very ill, because then, if he recovers you will have greater credit and praise, but if he dies they will testify that you had despaired about his health” (Grensemann 1996, 245). The suggested double-dealing had a pragmatic rationale in two ageless notions, to wit, that wellbeing is more important than truth, and that a positive outlook is more vitally important for the patient than for the household. Niccolo Bertuccio (d. 1347) ignored the patient, however, when he recommended that the physician, when in doubt, “should keep the friends and bystanders in suspense with an equivocal statement, ‘I need to wait for more signs or another day’  ” (Collectorium 1537, fol. iiii). Peter of Abano (ca. 1257–1316) justified ambiguity on a more theoretical level when he argued that, because “predictions of recovery or death are not certain for any disease, especially acute ones”, the physician facing a seemingly desperate case should allow for miraculous recovery but show a gloomy face to the household, and thus secure “glory from your prognosis” in either event (“differentia 2”, Conciliator, 1520, fol. 3va). The most challenging uncertainty lay in the apparent incurability of an illness, which was associated most consistently with cancer. Henri de Mondeville, among



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others, underscored the existential gravity of the challenge by claiming that those who attempted to cure cancer, except by total and inferentially fatal excision, “gain nothing but making it ulcerous and incurable from curable, and they hasten the patient’s demise” (Chirurgie Tract. II, Doctr. II, cap. 4). Assurances of incurability, indeed, brought prognostication into hagiography, where saints’ lives and miracle narratives negated the physicians’ predictions of irreversible suffering and inevitable death. On the other side, medical authors steadily reiterated the advice that the practitioner should flee when death was certain, rather than taking the risk of being blamed. Niccolo Bertuccio urged to flee and cease applying useless remedies, “lest the art of medicine be mocked” (Collectorium 1537, fol. iiii). Gabriele Zerbi (ca. 1450–1505) warned that the physician, “if he left the patient in mortal danger, should not return to him but send a servant to inquire about his condition” (De cautelis medicorum, Venice 1495, fol. xii). These observations may sound cynical to modern sensitivities, but they should be balanced with the numerous indications of palliative care for even the most hopeless cases, such as advanced leprosy. In any event, the realization of helplessness confounded practitioners, even those who cultivated foresight, foreknowledge, and prediction. It raised the level of required responses from deontology to the level of ethics. The challenge of determining – or rejecting – incurability was not exclusive to medieval medical prognostication, as may be learned from news reports in our own time.

Selected Bibliography Archimatheus Salernitanus. Erklärungen zur hippokratischen Schrift Prognostikon. Nach der Handschrift Trier Bischöfliches Priesterseminar 76. Ed. Hermann Grensemann. Hamburg, 2002. https://web.archive.org/web/20150205032517/http://www.uke.de/institute/geschichtemedizin/downloads/institut-geschichte-ethik-medizin/ArchProgKmtRev.pdf (5 March 2020). Dell’Anna, Giuseppe. Dies critici. La teoria della ciclicità delle patologie nel XIV secolo. 2 vols. Galatina, 1999. Demaitre, Luke. “The Art and Science of Prognostication in Early University Medicine.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77 (2003): 765–788. Demaitre, Luke. “Bernard de Gordon et son influence sur la pensée médicale aux XIVe et XVe siècles.” L’Université de Montpellier et son rayonnement (XIIIe–XVe siècles). Ed. Daniel Le Blévec. Turnhout, 2004. 103–131. Fischer, Klaus-Dietrich. “Praenostica – Die Rezeption des Prognostikons im Frühmittelalter.” La Science médicale antique. Nouveaux regards. Études réunis en l’honneur de Jacques Jounna. Eds. Véronique Boudon-Millot et al. Paris, 2008. 189–226. French, Roger, “Astrology in Medical Practice.” Practical Medicine from Salerno to the Black Death. Eds. Luis García-Ballester et al. Cambridge, 1994. 30–59. Grensemann, Hermann. “Die Schrift ‘De adventu medici ad aegrotum’ nach dem Salernitaner Arzt Archimatheus, übersetzt und eingeleitet.” Würzburger medizinhistorische Mitteilungen 14 (1996): 233–251. Grensemann, Hermann. Natura sit nobis semper Magistra. Über den Umgang mit Patienten, die Diät bei akuten Erkrankungen, Sterilität von Mann und Frau, Augenleiden. Vier mittelalterliche Schriften. Münster, 2001.

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Guardo, Alberto Alonso. Los pronósticos médicos en la medicina medieval: El Tractatus de crisi et de diebus creticis de Bernardo de Gordonio. Valladolid, 2003. Hippocrates. “Prognostic.” Hippocrates, with an English Translation by W. H. S. Jones. Vol. 2. Cambridge, MA, 1981. 7–55. Hunt, Tony (ed.). Writing the Future: Prognostic Texts of Medieval England. Paris, 2013. Jacquart, Danielle. “Bernard de Gordon et l’astrologie.” Centaurus 45 (2003): 151–158. Jacquart, Danielle. “Le difficile pronostic de mort (xive-xve siècles).” Médiévales 46 (2004): 11–22. Jones, Peter Murray. “Practitioners and Prognosis in the Later Middle Ages”, Presented to the Workshop on Medical Prognosis in the Middle Ages, Royal Holloway, University of London, 26 May 2012. http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2012/05/peter-murray-jones-practitioners-andprognosis-in-the-later-middle-ages/ (5 March 2020). Liuzza, Roy M. Anglo-Saxon Prognostics: An Edition and Translation of Texts from London, British Library, Ms Cotton Tiberius A. III. Cambridge, 2010. McVaugh, Michael R. “The Nature and Limits of Medical Certitude at Early Fourteenth-Century Montpellier.” Renaissance Medical Learning: Evolution of a Tradition. Eds. Michael R. McVaugh and Nancy G. Siraisi. Osiris 6 (1990): 62–84. McVaugh, Michael. “Therapeutic Method in the Later Middle Ages: Arnau de Vilanova on Medical Contingency.” Caduceus 11 (1995): 76–86. McVaugh, Michael. “The Future of a Disease: the Impact of Galen’s De Crisi on Medieval Medical Thought.” Die mantischen Künste und die Epistemologie prognostischer Wissenschaften im Mittelalter. Ed. Alexander Fidora. Cologne et al., 2013. 131–150. Moulinier, Laurence. William the Englishman’s De urina non visa and Its Fortune. Medical Prognosis in the Middle Age. London, 2012. https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00849385/ document (5 March 2020). Nutton, Vivian (ed.). Claudii Galeni De Praecognitione in Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 5. 8. I. Berlin, 1979. Nutton, Vivian. “Beyond the Hippocratic Oath.” Doctors and Ethics: The Earlier Historical Setting of Professional Ethics. Eds. Andrew Wear et al. Amsterdam, 1993. 10–37. Paxton, Frederick S. “‘Signa mortifera’: Death and Prognostication in Early Medieval Monastic Medicine.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 67 (1993): 631–650. Taavitsainen, Irma. Middle English Lunaries: A Study of the Genre. Helsinki, 1988. Taavitsainen, Irma. “A Zodiacal Lunary for Medical Professionals.” Popular and Practical Science of Medieval England. Ed. Lister M. Matheson. East Lansing, MI, 1994. 283–300. Tavormina, M. Teresa. “The Middle English Letter of Ipocras.” English Studies 88 (2007): 632–652. Tavormina, M. Teresa. “Uroscopy in Middle English: A Guide to the Texts and Manuscripts.” Studies in Medieval & Renaissance History. 3d ser. 11 (2014): 1–154. Voigts, Linda Ehrsam. “The Latin Verse and Middle English Prose Texts on the Sphere of Life and Death in Harley 3719.” The Chaucer Review 21 (1986): 291–305. Voigts, Linda Ehrsam. “The Golden Table of Pythagoras.” Popular and Practical Science of Medieval England. Ed. Lister M. Matheson. East Lansing, MI, 1994. 123–139. Voigts, Linda Ehrsam. “Takamiya MS 60 and the Middle English Text of Bernard de Gordon’s De pronosticis.” The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya. Eds. Takami Matsuda et al. 2004. 149–160. Wallis, Faith. “Signs and Senses: Diagnosis and Prognosis in Early Medieval Pulse and Urine Texts.” Social History of Medicine 13 (2000): 265–278. Weill-Parot, Nicolas. “Astrologie, médecine et art talismanique à Montpellier: Les sceaux astrologiques pseudo-Arnaldiens.” L’Université de Montpellier et son rayonnement (XIIIe–XVe siècles). Eds. Daniel Le Blévec and Thomas Granier. Turnhout, 2004. 157–174. Weißer, Christoph. Studien zum mittelalterlichen Krankheitslunar: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte laienastrologischer Fachprosa (Würzburger medizinhistorische Forschungen 21). Pattensen, 1982.

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Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World Definitions and Terminology Several types of prognostication were practiced in Byzantine medical contexts. They included forms of prognosis by divination from natural phenomena, as well as direct inferences from the patient’s body, from physical symptoms. The former class included dream interpretation (oneirokritike) and astrological medicine (iatromathematike), the latter, pulse lore and urinoscopy. All forms of prediction were of interest to the Byzantines, who understood prophecy as part of the Christian apocalyptic narrative. Of all the types of divination and magic available to the physician, astrology and dream interpretation were most important for the practice of medicine, and so these, along with strict empirical methods, will be the focus of the present article. Both had controversial places in Byzantine Christian society, because of their pagan origins, but also because astrology in particular was embedded within a polytheistic and fate-driven cosmology, which was incompatible with the Judaeo-Christian doctrine of human free will. Astrology and its problematic place in Christian society are dealt with by other authors in the present Handbook (↗ Burnett, Astral Sciences Western Christian World; ↗ Caudano, Astral Sciences Eastern Christian World). Luke Demaitre presents a discussion of some of these techniques, along with issues with astrology and the epistemological status of prognostication within the Western Christian context. His excursus is especially important for understanding the situation in the East, because of the dearth of surviving sources from medieval Greek (↗ Demaitre, Medical Prognostication Western Christian World). Astrological medicine will be covered first, because that discipline attained a very high level of sophistication, since it was closely connected with mathematical astronomy. The technical term for medical astrology of the highest level of sophistication, which employed Galenic medicine and Ptolemaic astronomical calculations (Almagest) and astrological interpretations (Tetrabiblos), was iatromathematics. Horoscopic astrology, also known as genethlialogy or natal astrology, had reached a high level of technical sophistication and popularity by Late Antiquity, and passed into Christian Roman culture. Although officially frowned upon by the Church, it survived because of its close association with medical prognosis. For most of its history, mathematike meant primarily astrology, and mathematicians were astrologers – no doubt on account of the many calculations required to produce a horoscope. The iatro- element of the word iatromathematics means “medicine”. What few surviving Byzantine sources there are for iatromathematics give us a clue as to its longevity in that culture. For example, the first-century physician, Crinas, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-030

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is praised in a later Greek poem (sixteenth/seventeenth centuries) for his knowledge and application of medical astrology, by which he obtained great wealth. Knowledge of the stars enabled him to know when to administer drugs to patients. The appearance of this passage in such a later manuscript suggests that iatromathematics had long survived in Byzantium (see Papathanassiou, 361, n. 20). Both medicine and astrology shared a cosmology (that of Aristotle) and natural philosophy (that of the four elements and their qualities) (↗ Caudano, Astral Sciences Eastern Christian World). In addition, both disciplines produced predictions for patrons. Medicine added four humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile), which were correlated with the four elements, the four seasons, and the four ages of life. To this was added the Stoic doctrine of sympatheia, the notion that all entities, past, present, and future are connected by strands of fate, and hence, the future can be predicted from signs in the present. While Hippocrates and Galen included atmospheric conditions as significant factors in the treatment of patients, and Galen even applied astrological methods to the determining of the critical days, the explicit joining of medicine and astrology into iatromathematics may be attributed to Ptolemy. In his astrological handbook, the Tetrabiblos, Ptolemy observed that the Egyptians have joined medicine with astronomy, and they call it iatromathematika. While Egyptian astronomical methods were crude, later iatromathematicians joined Ptolemy’s precise mathematical astronomy and his systematized astrology with Galen’s art of medicine to produce a far more powerful tool, which was employed by physicians until the time of the rejection of Ptolemaic astronomy and Galenism in the seventeenth century. Pulse lore has been a part of medicine since the earliest recorded Egyptian medical works, in which it was regarded as a secret tool of the doctor. Galen reports that it was the part the medical art that he most desired to acquire, since his childhood. Both pulses and urines were used both diagnostically and prognostically. Some medieval Latin physicians were so confident in their ability to infer from urine that they claimed they did not need to examine the patient in person in order to offer an accurate prognosis. Since classical Greek times and before, dreams were an important source of insight into healing. Dream divination continued the ancient pagan practice of incubation, or sleeping in the precinct of the temple of the healing deity, Asklepios, in hopes of receiving a revelatory dream about proper therapy and the prognosis of one’s condition. Because of its origins in that pagan context, dreams were regarded with suspicion, since the dreamer could easily be deceived by demons. However, examples of important dreams from the Bible – Joseph, Solomon, and the Magi – suggested that dreams could be divine sources of prediction (↗ Oberhelman, Dream Interpretation Eastern Christian World). The incubation tradition continued, as Christian pilgrims slept near saints’ shrines in hopes of a miracle.



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Written Sources and Artifacts Medical prognostication in the Greek tradition, and especially via astrology, was based mostly on canonical ancient Greek authors, such as Aristotle, Hippocrates, Ptolemy, and Galen. The Late Antique encyclopedists Oribasius, Aetius, and Paul of Aegina provided excerpts from ancient medical writers that have not otherwise survived. The standard handbooks of dream interpretation included that of Artemidorus of Ephesus. In addition, beginning in the ninth century, Greek translations of Arabic astrological authors became popular, and the most influential of these was that of Abū Maʻshar. This influx of new ideas influenced the theory and practice of medical prognosis. With Byzantine medicine, we are faced with a dearth of medical sources of any kind, and almost nothing that could illustrate the everyday practice of medical prognostication. The task of the historian of medicine then is to attempt a reconstruction based on the ancient texts known to have been studied by Byzantine physicians, and by analogy from the Western Christian tradition, which has a wealth of surviving sources. More is known about medical institutions, such as Byzantine hospitals, since more sources have survived (see Miller 2017). Medical prognosis formed a greater part of the practice of medicine in the Hippocratic tradition than it does today, and that continued in the Eastern Christian world. The basic text was the Hippocratic Prognostic treatise. The physician was expected, after examining a patient, to describe not only the future course of the illness, especially its outcome, but everything that had transpired before he encountered the patient as well. Moreover, Hippocrates urged the physician to avoid treatment of hopeless cases, since failure to cure these would destroy his reputation. Signs that indicate a hopeless case are described: “Nose sharp, eyes hollow, temples sunken, ears cold and contracted with their lobes turned outwards, the skin about the face hard and tense and parched, the color of the face as a whole being yellow or black” (Hippocrates, Prognostic, Part 2; Edelstein 1967, 65–86). The Prognostic also described the series of critical days, which Galen developed into a widely used prognostic method. These were the days on which the patient was most likely to experience a crisis, or a heightened set of serious symptoms, which provided the doctor with additional clues about the outcome of the illness. The Hippocratic prognostic paradigm was followed in the East until the early modern period. The canonical list of the critical days, which Galen determined from the data of the Hippocratic Epidemics, is: 4, 7, 14, 17, 20 (or 21), 27, 34, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120. Medical astrologers were fond of the following quote from the Hippocratic Corpus to support their field: [For] knowing the changes of the seasons, and the risings and settings of the stars, with the circumstances of each of these phenomena, he will know beforehand the nature of the year that is coming […]. If it be thought that all this belongs to meteorology, he will find out, on second thoughts, that the contribution of astronomy to medicine is not a very small one but a very great one indeed. (Hippocrates, On Airs, Waters, Places 2, trans. Jones, 72–73)

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The latter part, while acknowledging the importance of meteorology, suggests that astronomy (i.  e. astronomy and astrology, “star lore”) should not be neglected in forming a prognosis. Note, however, that, strictly speaking, the context suggests nothing more than inferring the weather changes and seasons from the risings of the stars, so that the physician will be fully informed of all of the natural factors affecting patients. These were the sorts of phenomena described by Hesiod in the Works and Days, and were an essential part of ancient agricultural lore. Yet, many medical astrologers used this statement to justify the full scale import of astrology into medicine. The enticement to do so was great, since casting the “horoscope” of an illness provided more material to work with in forming prognoses. The influence of Galen (129–ca. 216 CE) on all aspects of medicine was profound. Here, Galen’s ideas about prognosis from medical astrology, pulses, and urines will be summarized. Both medicine and all sorts of divinatory practices, especially astrology, involved a thorough knowledge of the natural properties of things. The more the philosopher-physician understands of natural principles, the more he can, by reasoning through a chain of causes, predict a patient’s future. In particular, Galen provided medieval medicine with a popular method of prognosticating the future course of a disease by reference to the Hippocratic critical days. These he explained with reference to the lunar phases, and hence with astrological prognosis generally. This technique was developed in his treatise, Critical Days. Pulses, their causes and uses in diagnosis and prognosis occupied Galen through his career. He devoted over 1000 pages in the standard edition of his works to several treatises on pulses, which he lists along with his Crises and Critical Days in the section on prognosis in the list of his own works. They are: De usu pulsuum (“The Usefulness of the Pulses”); De pulsibus ad tirones (“Pulses for Beginners”); De differentia pulsuum (“The Distinguishing Characteristics of Pulses”); De dignoscendis pulsibus (“Diagnosing by Pulses”); De causis pulsuum (“The Causes of Pulses”); De praesagitione ex pulsibus (“Prognosis from Pulses”). The Alexandrian mathematician and astronomer, Ptolemy (second century CE), provided the cosmological framework within which medical astronomy (iatromathematics) was thought to work. The second of his pair of treatises on the complete science of astronomy, the Tetrabiblos (Greek: Apotelesmatiká; Latin: Quadripartitum) outlines how to use the planetary positions obtained through the mathematical methods and observations presented in the Almagest (Greek: Syntaxis Mathematike), the first of the two, in order to derive predictions about lives, events, etc. This treatise became the basic text of “scientific” astrology, because it presented horoscopic astrology in terms of the natural sciences as then understood: elements and influences. However, no actual detailed methods of deriving predictions are presented in the Tetrabiblos. Rather, Ptolemy’s contribution in this treatise is to set in place a natural philosophy in which astrological influences and predictions were understood to occur. The most important of these elements were: the four elements – earth, water, air, and fire and their associated qualities – hot, cold, wet, and dry, the planets with



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their qualities, and the Zodiac as a celestial coordinate system to mark the positions of the planets with its Signs and their individual qualities. In the Tetrabiblos, Ptolemy presented astrology as an approximation to the future, not as a guide to an astrally determined and fated future. He rejected all types of approaches to prediction that were not grounded in natural principles. Ptolemy was aware of the conjectural character of astrology, as well as its affinity with medicine. As noted earlier, he says (Tetrabiblos, I.3) that the Egyptians were the first to combine medicine and astrological prediction, into an iatromathematics. They set the model with regard to the decrees of the stars – if physicians thought these decrees were ineluctable, they would not have devised ways to avert the indicated outcomes through changing medical treatment. As described earlier, iatromathematics was useful for discovering additional qualities of the illness, and for discovering clues about how specific maladies should be treated. The Tetrabiblos was often resorted to by opponents of a strictly divinatory (i.  e. judicial) astrology, some of whom were practicing physicians, who nevertheless accepted the idea that celestial influences could be understood in terms of the natural elements and their qualities, rather than as the product of stellar configurations and astral influences. The principal surviving Greek medical works from Late Antiquity are encyclopedias and compilations of earlier authors, and add little that is new. Nevertheless, they were important conduits for the transmission of Greek medicine to Byzantium and Islam, in particular doctrines and practices about medical prognosis. Oribasius of Pergamum (fourth century CE) was Emperor Julian’s (361–363) physician. His Collectiones Medicae, which was popular in Arabic and Latin, contains excerpts from important Greek physicians whose complete works have been lost. Aetius of Amida (fl. 540 CE) was a military officer at the Byzantine court, who wrote a sixteen book medical encyclopedia. Paul of Aegina (fl. fourth century) spent his career in Alexandria, and remained there after the Arab conquest. Of the three compilers mentioned here, Paul was the most original, as well as the most important transmitter of Galenic medical ideas. His seven book Epitome medicae, though based mainly on Oribasius’s encyclopedia, offers new prognostic material. His most original material is in Book VII, on surgery, on which Arabic physicians built their own contributions to that subject. In Book II, which is devoted to fevers, he suggested using the duration and intensity of the fever to prognosticate the course of the disease. A high fever indicates an acute illness, which has a particular, faster developing temporal profile, and a low fever indicates a chronic illness, which has another. He also advocated the use of the pulse in prognosis, classifying 62 varieties of pulse – more than Galen’s 27. While it is true that Galen’s texts were never lost to the East as they were in the West, the medical tradition suffered other vicissitudes, which resulted in the survival of very few medical sources from the post-700 CE period, and almost nothing about the actual practice of medicine, apart from scattered references in historians, religious authors, and literary works. Those setbacks were the consequences of Iconoclasm

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(726–842 CE), when the copying and study of medical texts virtually ceased, and the conquests and ultimate destruction of Byzantine civilization (thirteenth–fifteenth centuries). Because of the dearth of later Byzantine sources, we cannot know the extent of developments in medicine in that culture. We do know, however, that Arabic astrology was very influential in Byzantium, and it would be reasonable to conjecture that Byzantine prognostic techniques owed something to Arabic authors, such as Abū Maʻshar. Since we don’t have the wealth of texts that have survived in Western Europe, which Luke Demaitre discusses in his contribution to the present volume (↗ Demaitre, Medical Prognostication Western Christian World), we must resort to reasonable conjectures about Byzantine medicine in general. Abū Maʻshar Jaʻfar al-Balḫī (787–886), the Baghdad astrologer, was significant for Byzantine culture, and medicine in particular. His work was translated into Greek under the names Albumasar or Apomasar and was very influential among Byzantine thinkers, beginning in the Macedonian Renaissance period (ninth/tenth centuries) and after. Abū Maʻshar wrote one of the most influential treatises in the history of astrology, which was very popular in Byzantium, Islam, and Western Europe. His Kitāb al‐Madḫal al‐kabīr ʻalā ʻilm aḥkām al‐nujūm (“Great Introduction to Astrology”) developed the ideas of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, and presents astrology fully consistent with the cosmology and physics of his time, as a kind of completion or fulfillment of the Greek tradition. The result was the medieval equivalent of a “unified field theory”, with astrology as a “master science”. A master science embraces all other disciplines in a two-fold way: 1) all other sciences are but preparatory for it; and 2) it offers proofs of the basic principles that are merely assumed in the lower sciences. The principles in the lower sciences are assumed tentatively, but from the vantage point of the Master Science, one can survey them all and see how the whole system fits together (Adamson 2001, 247–249). There are many noteworthy references to medicine in non-medical sources, but there are few details described. In contrast are the writings of Michael Psellos and Anna Komnene, both of whom had a grasp on the philosophy that underpinned medical treatment. In the former’s Chronographia, brief medical commentary appears when he describes the sickness and death of an emperor. Anna, however, displays a much greater knowledge and detail when she describes the death of her father, Alexios (Alexiad, Book 15, Chapter 11). Her description of the physicians’ treatment of her father in his last illness is one of the few surviving literary examples of a description of therapy. It is valuable because she was an educated woman, and had a basic knowledge of natural philosophy and medicine, enough to report the supposed cause of her fathers symptoms. However, the passage also suggests that she was excluded from the physicians’ consultations, and as a result she was in the dark as to why they apparently left him for dead. Dream interpretation was used in medical prognosis (↗ Oberhelman, Dream Interpretation Eastern Christian World), in classical antiquity as well as in Islam and Byzantium. The main ancient authority was Artemidorus of Ephesus (second century



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CE), whose five volume work Oneirocritica or Oneirokritikon (English: “The Interpretation of Dreams”) was translated by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq into Arabic in the ninth century. Byzantine dream interpretation was also influenced by the Arabic tradition, which, though originally based on Artemidorus, had undergone its own development. The Oneirokritikon of Achmet is a Greek and Christian adaptation of an Arabic tradition which, while not quoting Artemidorus directly, was clearly based on his tradition (Mavroudi 2002). From the late thirteenth century, there was a steady flow of medical, astrological, and astronomical ideas coming into the Byzantine world from the Islamic world, from both Persian and Arabic sources. Several other authors on dream interpretation are mentioned in the Souda, but none of their works have survived. There is a text by Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus (1391–1425), which Mavroudi argues was actually composed by him, not doubted as other scholars in the past. Manuel and other Byzantine authors discuss dreams in the context of the interaction between soul and body, where their prognostic value is often obscured through the interference of bodily processes, such as a full stomach, or erotic desires (for medical prognostication via dreams see also ↗ Cooper, Medical Prognostication Islamic World, 593–594, 597).

Techniques and Manifestations For the practice of medical astrology, the positions of the planets, especially the Moon, must be known with reasonable accuracy, at any point in the course of the illness (for a detailed discussion of how to cast a natal chart and how to employ it in medical prognosis, see Cooper 2018). The actual calculation of planetary positions using trigonometry was time consuming and beyond the abilities of most physicians and astrologers. Planetary tables of the sort that Ptolemy developed in the Almagest and, in a simpler form, in his Handy Tables, were used to obtain the positions of the planets at any desired time and place. These required only basic arithmetic operations of addition, subtraction, and multiplication to obtain accurate results, since the complicated trigonometry was already “built in” the tables. Thus, these tables were one of the most ingenious and useful tools in the history of science and medicine. This enabled practitioners with limited mathematical skills to benefit from the precision made possible by the full theory. Almanacs, or ephemeris books, prepared for a year or series of years, presented the planetary positions for each day of an entire year, and so there was no need for calculations. Since the lunar phases played a key role on the course of an illness, and in connection with the critical days, special lunar tables were available to physicians. Sometimes these were in a handy pocket sized format, along with other useful information for analysis of the patient’s urine (Carey 2004). Examples of these have survived from Western Europe (↗ Nothaft, Calendars and Tables Western Christian World). Their existence in the East is conjectural, but highly likely.

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As Galen had demonstrated, the astrological natal chart of the illness depends on knowing of the Ascendant (Greek: horoskopos), i.  e. the specific Zodiac sign and degree that is rising above the eastern horizon at the moment of the illness began (i.  e. its “birth”; Galen, De Diebus Decretoriis/Critical Days K 910,16 – 912,16, ed. Cooper, 338–340). A physician could use tables to determine this, or he could use a planispheric astrolabe (when these became available from the Islamic world after the ninth century; ↗ Rodríguez-Arribas, Mathematical Instruments). By merely aligning the appropriate circles and scales on the front of the astrolabe, which contains a celestial coordinate grid, he could easily read the Ascendant from where the circle representing the Zodiac intersects the arc representing the eastern horizon. From this point, the grid of astrological “houses” could be constructed, and the placement of the planets in them (derived from the tables) could be used to determine features of the illness, such as when would be the best time to let blood or induce vomiting. This system depended upon precise knowledge of the birth of the native or the beginning of the disease, for even a few minutes of error could produce a significant variation in astrological meaning. In Critical Days, Galen wrestles with the problem of determining the precise moment that an illness begins. He confronts a problem similar to that faced by astrologers who, against the majority view, insisted that the critical moment was the conception rather than birth. Galen finally settles upon the moment when the patient feels ill enough to take to his bed, the “hour of decumbiture” (Galen, De Diebus Decretoriis/Critical Days K 795,9 – 796,17, ed. Cooper, 142–144). That was the point both when one should reckon the series of critical days as well as determine the natal chart of the disease. The critical days had a prognostic use by themselves in the Hippocratic tradition; they are presented in the Hippocratic Prognostic, but without theoretical justification. Moreover, crises appear throughout the case histories of the Hippocratic Epidemics in an apparent pattern. The Epidemics taught physicians to expect changes in the course of a disease on a pattern of days. If certain symptoms appeared in the patient, such as vomiting, diarrhea, or sweating, then one could expect a crisis within a certain number of days. Crises were extreme symptoms, and in themselves were serious enough to carry the patient off. As such, they were considered to be turning points of the illness, through which the patient would either recover or die. So, if the physician was forewarned, he could strengthen the patient to face the crisis. This scheme was a rule of thumb, empirically based. Galen provided a theory that explained why the scheme worked, as well as an effective technique for employing them prognostically. He first determined a reliable set of critical days from the data of the Epidemics. Then he explained the pattern of the days, based on an underlying numerical parameter that he derived, somewhat carelessly, from the Moon’s different monthly periods. So, the physician could expect crises on these days, if all goes according to nature, and would base a prognosis on this inference. However, if the crisis comes prematurely or late, that is because someone – either doctor or patient – made a mistake in treatment that disturbed nature from her



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scheme. Galen provides the physician with tools for ascertaining the degree of error and shows how to compensate for it by adjusting his prognosis accordingly. The crises themselves had prognostic value. Galen’s treatise De crisibus deals with the empirical aspects of crises: how to identify them from their observable characteristics and to assess their danger to the patient, as well as their prognostic potential. He presents a temporal scheme for the development of the crisis with phases, which is analogous to a human lifespan. The phases, which reflect the intensity of the crisis, are: Beginning (arkhē), Rising (auxēsis), Climax (akmē), and Decline (parakmē). If the physician identifies the kind of crisis that is occurring, he could predict its course based on the standard patterns for the general types of crises. The analogy of the course of an illness with a human life Galen exploited further in order to align the basic tools of astrology – the star (natal) chart – with the “lifespan” of the disease. By so doing, a physician could cast the star chart for the inferred moment that the disease began (i.  e. its “birth”) and then interpret the chart astrologically to infer the future course of the disease, and to prepare the patient accordingly (Galen, De Diebus Decretoriis/Critical Days, ed. Cooper, 57). As I have argued (2011), internal evidence from the treatise suggests that Galen inserted this brief allusion to divinatory astrology for rhetorical reasons alone, since his main readers were Stoic-inclined Romans, who would have expected a nod to astrology. In practice, it seems that physicians were mainly concerned with tracking the lunar phases for the supposed effect of the Moon on bodily humors (on the analogy of its tidal effects on the seas). This was especially the case with physicians who were skeptical about judicial astrology. As noted earlier, the evidence from Byzantium for medical practice is virtually non-existent. It is tempting to imagine, however, that physicians employed pocket almanacs and tables, such as were in common use in medieval Europe (see Carey 2004). In his semi-autobiographical On Prognosis (De praecognitione), Galen recounts some of his prognostic exploits among the Roman elite, and employs his patients’ pulses and urines, as well as other signs, to effect amazing cures. However, reading through Galen’s extensive works on the pulse, and trying to determine how exactly to use the pulse in prognosis, is a frustrating experience, and supports the view that pulse lore was a secret of the medical trade. Galen himself notes the difficulty in teaching it, comparing skill in pulse reading to skills required in other arts: vision for painters and sculptors, taste for vintners and cooks, smell for parfumiers, and hearing for musicians. In other words, it is impossible to teach via words alone. Nevertheless, Galen offered several mutually inconsistent classification schemes based on no less than thirteen characteristics, including: size, strength, frequency, rhythmic pattern, speed, fullness, order, equality (ration of diastole to systole), and hardness. Given the difficulties of learning this from books, one must conclude that, just as with all other aspects of a subtle art like medicine, one must learn by experience, with a living teacher (if possible). The textbooks provide little, apart from the outline of a place to begin. Yet, we know from medieval Latin that physicians regularly used

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pulses, and, in the absence of medieval Greek sources, we must infer about Byzantine practice from them. There is an indication from Anna Komnene’s account that physicians were using Alexios’s pulse to obtain both diagnosis and prognosis, and that she grasped part of it. She records that she also took his pulse and concluded that he was dying (Alexiad, Book 15, Chapter 11). She was a highly educated woman and understood much philosophy, however, it appears from this account that the physicians were not sharing either their treatment plan or their findings with her. How did the physician prognosticate using the pulse? The pulse was thought to reflect the current state of the patient’s physiology: the condition of the heart and arteries, the health of the innate heat, as well as the deficiency or excess of key spirits. The blood was thought to acquire three types of spirits (pneumata) as it passed through various organs. It received natural spirit from the liver, vital spirit from its passage through the left cardiac ventricle, and psychic spirit in the brain. The arteries were thought to draw in air during diastole to cool the innate heat and to generate the spirits, and then, during systole, to expel air with residues and other waste products. So, by ascertaining the current state of the patient’s body, the physician infers the state of the disease. Knowing the usual prognosis for that particular disease in that state, and factoring in all other indicators from the urine and the natal chart of the disease, he formulates a prognosis. Urinoscopy was also employed both diagnostically and prognostically, mainly to determine the state of the disease in the patient’s body, and whether the body had concocted (“cooked”) it properly prior to expelling it via the urine, excrement, sweat, or sputum. Galen is the primary ancient source for urines (In the Crises, for example). The physician was to examine characteristics of the urine, including: color, sediment, consistency, purity, and suspension. For example, the amount and quality of the sediment indicates how much food the patient’s body has left undigested and how physically active she is, with the more active producing more yellow bile, hence a yellower urine. Lack of concoction of the disease is indicated by cloudy, yellow and thin urine, and black clouds are a bad sign. Bad sediments indicated a range of internal conditions, such as: if the sediment is like lumps of flour, this indicates feverish heat and much liquefaction; if it resembles metal flakes, this indicates that the superficial parts of the vessels have loosened; and, if the sediment is scaly and bran-like, this is the result of partially concocted humors. And many more such indicators are described. The interconnection of medicine and astrology in iatromathematics depended upon the correlations of several natural entities, including the humors, elements, planets, Zodiac Signs, bodily regions, organs, and senses, and other relevant parameters, via their qualities (hot, cold, wet, dry). Here follows a summary excursus of the elements and factors involved in iatromathematical prognostication. An accessible introduction to this subject is the still unsurpassed article by Papathanasiou (1999), which will be followed here in general outline.



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Tab. 15: Table of correlated humors and other parameters Humor

Element

Qualities

Season

Age

Temperament

Blood Yellow Bile Black Bile Phlegm

Air Fire Earth Water

hot/moist hot/dry cold/dry cold/moist

Spring Summer Autumn Winter

Childhood Youth Maturity Old Age

Sanguine Choleric Melancholic Phlegmatic

The Signs of the Zodiac are divided into triplicities of three Signs each, correlated with the four qualities, as in the chart below. Tab. 16: Table of elements and triplicities Element

Qualities

Signs of the Triplicity

Fire Earth Air Water

hot/dry cold/dry hot/wet cold/wet

Aries Leo Sagittarius Taurus Virgo Capricorn Gemini Libra Aquarius Cancer Scorpio Pisces

The planets each have a dominant quality that can affect various regions of the body. When all of these factors are taken together – and that requires a precise knowledge of the present disposition of the heavens – the philosophy of therapy was to apply opposite qualities. For example, if the patient’s temperament or the disease is cold, then a warming remedy is indicated. If the patient is under the harming influence of a hot planet, like Mars, then a cooling remedy to counteract that influence is indicated. If the disease is cold, then the influence of a cold planet, like Saturn, will exacerbate the patient’s condition. Similarly, the triplicity a planet is in at a given moment enhances or detracts from its inherent qualities. In addition, since warming and moistening are fertile and active properties, planets possessing them are termed Beneficent planets, whereas those with cooling and drying, which are destructive and passive, are termed Maleficent planets.

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Tab. 17: Table of planetary properties Planet

Qualities

Beneficent

Moon

Moistening and moderatelyheating

varies by phase: Full Moon is moistening and warming, to New Moon is drying and cooling

Sun

Heating and moderately drying

Depends on its position

Venus

moistening and moderately warming

X

Mercury

either drying or moistening

depends on situation relative to other planets

Mars

burning and drying

Jupiter

moistening and heating

Saturn

cooling and moderately drying

Maleficent

X X X

Additionally, the planets’ powers are modified by their positions relative to each other (aspect) and within the Signs. A trine (60 degree) and sextile (120 degree) angle between two planets is most conducive to harmonizing their qualities. On the other hand, square (90 degrees) and opposition (180 degrees) are least favorable, and promotes tension between the planets. Conjunction (0 degrees) varies according to the specific situation. Crucial for drawing up and interpreting the natal chart, whether of the patient or the disease, is the determining of the horoskopos, also known as the Ascendant. This is the degree and Sign rising over the eastern horizon at a given moment. It can be observed directly with a horoscopic astrolabe at night, provided there are no obstructions to the view. Or, better, it can be calculated indirectly using tables of the sort that Ptolemy prepared in his Handy Tables. The horoskopos is where one begins to count the Houses, which are the sectors of the Zodiac with specific significance to the native, when planets appear in them. The Descendant, Midheaven and Lower Midheaven are also significant in medical astrology. The Signs and the planets affect the parts of the body with the following connections, a series of analogies called “melothesia”. Conceptually, the body is placed with head at Aries, the first Sign of the Zodiac, and the feet placed at Pisces, the last, and laid across the other Signs.



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Tab. 18: Melothesia (adapted from Papathanassiou, 366) Sign

Planet

Bodily Part/Organ

Aries Taurus Gemini Cancer Leo Virgo Libra Scorpio Sagittarius Capricorn Aquarius Pisces

Mars Venus Mercury Moon Sun Mercury Venus Mars Jupiter Saturn Saturn Jupiter

head neck, throat shoulders, arms, lungs breast, ribs, stomach thorax, heart belly, bowels buttocks, kidneys genitals, buttocks thighs, liver knees legs, circulatory system feet

Additionally, the planets could affect bodily parts directly, without reference to a Sign. Tab. 19: Planetary affections on the body (table adapted from Papathanassiou, 366) Planet

Bodily Part/Organ

Sun Moon Saturn Mars Jupiter Venus Mercury

sight, brain, heart, sinews, all right hand parts (e.  g. eye) taste, drinking, stomach, belly, womb, all left hand parts (e.  g. eye) right ear, spleen, bladder, phlegm, bones left ear, kidneys, veins, genitals, organs filled with blood touch, lungs, arteries, semen, brain smell, taste, liver, flesh speech, thought, tongue, bile, buttocks

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts The history and challenges of medical prognostication via astrology and other divinatory methods follow in general the history of the reception, uses, and antagonism against astrology in Byzantine society. The basic challenge faced by those who practiced medical prognostication using astrology in Byzantium was the opposition, sometimes from emperors, and almost always from the Church, to astrology as a practice. Since the time of Augustus, Roman emperors were wary of astrologers, and sought to limit their activities through edicts. At issue was authority and knowledge. Astrologers were usually grouped with magicians and sorcerers, and when repressed, their books were burned and they could face capital punishment. After Christianity became the dominant faith, the Church

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presented the strongest obstacle, since astrology clashed with the Christian doctrine of free will. Who has the prerogative of knowing the future, God, or an astrologer? This issue was particularly sensitive where medicine was concerned, since many Christians believed that God ordained the length of men’s lives, and even that the outcome of a disease was God’s inscrutable will. The following chronological summary, adapted from Paul Magdalino, frames the reception of astrology, medicine, and iatromathematics in Byzantium in terms of a “dialogue” across the Byzantine and Islamic empires (Magdalino 2002, 40–46). In the early period of the Roman Empire, astrology was officially classed with divination, and was thus subject to persecution and legal restrictions. In the Christian Roman Empire, systematic legislation against astrology began after Constantine I’s conversion to Christianity (312 CE): government actions against astrology and Christian opposition to it tended to coincide. By 358 CE, astrology was classed with both magic and divination, which were among the five major capital offenses. The classical worldview, of which both astrology and medicine were important parts, reached a low point under Justinian I (527–565), who instigated a general persecution of pagan philosophers, and closed the Platonic Academy at Athens (529). In spite of these measures, the classical tradition of philosophy continued, as did astrology and medicine, the former at least until the career of Stephen of Alexandria. The next period began when Heraclius (610–641 CE) invited Stephen of Alexandria to the capital, ca. 617 CE, to teach the quadrivium, and to produce an update of Ptolemy’s Handy Tables, for the location of Constantinople. Among his assignments was to produce the horoscope of Islam, in order to know how long Christendom must endure the Islamic onslaught. The timing of this project, which occurred at a critical juncture of Heraclius’s protracted war with the Persians, is probably very significant. It is likely that the emperor, knowing that the Persian ruler made regular use of astrologers, especially in war, (astral symbolism was an important part of the imperial Zoroastrianism ideology), decided to become more competitive in this “star wars”. During the century and a half of Iconoclasm (726–842 CE), most intellectual activity not directly connected with this religious struggle slowed or halted. The copying of philosophical and scientific manuscripts ceased, resulting in a Byzantine “Dark Ages”. Thus, competency in the ancient Greek intellectual traditions was severely impacted, and had to be revived through competition with the Islamic world, which, through its massive Greco-Arabic Translation Movement had begun to outstrip the Byzantines in their own ancient traditions. This period of rapid and vast intellectual flowering is most closely connected with Caliph al-Ma’mun (813–833), although not begun by him, and with the ideology of the early rulers of the Abbasid Dynasty (750– 1258 CE) at Baghdad. The development of the astronomical and medical sciences under the sponsorship of the Abbasid Caliphate inspired a parallel “renaissance” in Byzantium, following the “Dark Age” and decline associated with Iconoclasm. During the revival of learning under the Macedonian Dynasty (867–1056 CE), there was much interest in astrology



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among the learned. Several diplomatic cultural exchanges between the two empires also fueled the Macedonian revival in Constantinople. New astronomical tables were produced, and court astrologers were active. There was much of the classical Greek foundation to build on, but the impetus for this renewed interest in astrology came via competition with Islam, and many medical and astrological works were translated from Arabic, such as those of Abū Maʻshar mentioned earlier. When the Komnenos Dynasty was founded by Alexios I (1081), intellectual growth continued, as did the influx of Arabic texts and ideas, although from more diverse Islamic sources, such as Fatimid Egypt. Additionally, there were intellectuals – astrologers and physicians – of eastern origin at the court. Interest in astrology and medicine culminated during the reign of Anna’s nephew, Manuel I (1143–1180), a well-educated man who not only was familiar with medicine and astrology, but was also a noted practitioner of both. He is reported to have personally treated foreign dignitaries who fell ill while under his hospitality. He is also known for a lengthy debate with a churchmen, Michael Glykas, in which he invoked the long tradition of the medical use of the stars to derive a prognosis in support of the validity of astrology. Manuel’s arguments provoked a devastating response from Glykas and the Church. Moreover, the historian Nicetas Choniates (d. ca. 1217) blamed Manuel’s interest in astrology and his love of Western Europeans for the loss of Constantinople to the Venetian led Fourth Crusade (1204). The net effect of this on Byzantine interest in astronomy – the recognizably modern part of the pair of astral sciences – was ruinous: for an entire century astronomical knowledge, and presumably medical knowledge as well, remained at a rudimentary level, and was revived during the Palaeologan Renaissance of the fourteenth century, as new discoveries and texts were imported from the Islamic East. In the final phase of the empire to 1453, there occurred a remarkable intellectual flourishing, the “Palaeologan Renaissance”. During this period, philosophy and the sciences were revived after the disastrous aftermath of the Fourth Crusade and the Empire in exile at Nicaea. Ptolemaic astronomical methods were revived and new Arabic astronomical and medical knowledge from several parts of the Islamic world, including Iran and the Mongol East, were brought back to Constantinople and to its rival Empire, at Trebizond.

Medieval Classifications and Discussions Distinguishing between licit and illicit types of knowledge included discussion of particular types of practices, similar in both the pagan and Christian contexts, yet illicit in the former and licit in the latter. For example: Magic versus Christian ritual; astrology and sorcery vs. prophecy; pagan theurgical prayer vs. Christian prayer. What makes a knowledge practice licit? What are the limits of human knowledge?

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Muslim and Christian thinkers developed distinctions in the field of astrology that eased the acceptance of certain astrological practices with their hostile religious environments. For example, Christian thinkers adopted Ptolemy’s distinction between natal astrology and universal astrology, memorably expressed by Isidore of Seville (ca. 560–636 CE) in his Etymologies, Book 3, Ch. 27, as superstitiosa vs. naturalis, or divinatory (judicial) astrology, and natural astrology, which accounted for celestial influences of all kinds, including seismic and meteorological phenomena. Because the latter was grounded in the cosmology and physics of the classical Greek natural philosophers, as a discipline of natural philosophy, astrology mixed easily with the theory and practice of medicine. Moreover, Muslim astronomers were responsible for clearly distinguishing between astronomy and astrology by inventing a new subdiscipline, theoretical astronomy, in order to distance their projects from astrology, which was suspect under Islam. This new distinction was inherited by both Eastern and Western Christendom, when the works of these Muslim astronomers were translated and studied in their respective languages (for the place of medical astrology within the Islamic cosmos, see ↗ Cooper, Medical Prognostication Islamic World). This distinction helped medical astrology to remain an acceptable practice. While crude sorts of divination, such as onomancy (“name divination”) that had no obvious connection to the natural world, were practiced, iatromathematics was rooted in both the Aristotelian and the Hippocratic-Galenic medical traditions. Both medicine and astrology shared the same natural philosophical background and underpinnings. So close were they that Abū Maʻshar (d. 886) (Albumasar in the Byzantine sources), the most important Arabic astrologer, made astrology the “master science” and suggested that it was a metaphysical source or first cause of medicine. This made explicit was had been assumed in practice, and influenced medicine and astrology thereafter. The parallels between medicine and astrology are useful to consider. Both concern the courses of individual lives, which they aim to predict from observable signs. The astrologer predicts the course of a life, from birth to death, including possible health issues, from a chart of the astral configurations as they stood at the moment of the individual’s birth. Medicine predicts the outcome of disease from patients’ symptoms, whether he will recover or die. But, in principle, medicine could do the same for a patient’s whole life, if the physician had enough data to construct a chain of causes – that would be a logical extension of Aristotelian natural philosophy. Medicine and astrology were, moreover, connected at the more practical level. Catarchic astrology aimed to determine the course of something – an activity, enterprise, agreement, contract, a life – by casting the star chart for the moment the thing begins. Galen taught physicians to do the same with a disease. After inferring when it began, which Galen said should coincide with when the patient felt ill enough to take to his bed, the physician draws up a natal chart for the disease, as if it had a life of its own, which was an additional prognostic aid.



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Emperor Manuel I Komnenos (1143–1180) presented one of the clearest and cogent defenses of astrology that has survived from medieval times. It occurred within the context of a debate with Michael Glykas, who took the Church’s position against astrology. Manuel’s arguments and the full debate are summarized from Demetra George (George 2001, 3–48). Manuel’s position was that astrology is fully compatible with the doctrines of the Church, and he cites several Church Fathers who apparently supported it, or at least did not condemn it. Manuel distinguishes between aspects of astrology, some of which are clearly heretical, and others that are compatible, not only with natural science as then understood, but also with Church doctrines. In his argument, Manuel states that God created many things that are good and useful for man, such as the agricultural cycles that are governed by the motions of the luminaries, the Sun and the Moon. If physicians use natural substances in the practice of healing, the stars could also be tools for healing, by providing deeper insight into both the nature of the malady and its future course in the patient. Manuel states further that, when a patient who has been given up for dead through the methods of medical prognosis, but who nevertheless recovers through faith and repentance, we do not condemn the medicine for being ineffective, since it was God who desired to work a miracle. In the same way, the astrological art should not be condemned, since both medicine and astrology are conjectural arts, which aim at diminishing an expected bad outcome. The good that comes, no matter how it was predicted, is the power of God and not that of the physician or astrologer. Nevertheless, neither Michael Glykas nor the Church were convinced by the emperor’s arguments.

Selected Bibliography Adamson, Peter. “Abū Maʻshar, Al-Kindī and the Philosophical Defense of Astrology.” Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 69.2 (2001): 245–270. Carey, Hilary M. “Astrological Medicine and the Medieval English Folded Almanac.” Social History of Medicine 17.3 (2004): 346–363. Edelstein, Ludwig. “Hippocratic Prognosis.” Ancient Medicine. Eds. Owsei Temkin and C. Lilian Temkin. Baltimore and London, 1967. 65–86. Cooper, Glen M. “Galen and Astrology: A Mésalliance?” Early Science and Medicine 16.2 (2011): 120–146. Cooper, Glen M. “Astrology: The Science of Signs in the Heavens.” The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World. Eds. Paul Turquand Keyser and John Scarborough. Oxford, 2018. 381–407. Galen. De Diebus Decretoriis, from Greek into Arabic: A Critical Edition, with Translation and Commentary, and Historical Introduction of Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq, Kitāb Ayyām Al-Buḥrān, by Glen M. Cooper. Ed. Glen Cooper. London, 2011. Galen. Galen On Prognosis (De praecognitione): Edition, Translation, and Commentary by Vivian Nutton. Vol. V 8, 1, Corpus Medicorum Graecorum. Berlin, 1979.

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George, Demetra. “Manuel I Komnenos and Michael Glycas: A Twelfth-Century Defence and Refutation of Astrology.” Culture and Cosmos 5.1 (2001): 3–48. Hippocrates. On Airs, Waters, Places, 2 vols. (Loeb Edition). Trans. William H. S. Jones. Cambridge, MA, 1923. Ierodiakonou, Katerina. “The Greek Concept of Sympatheia and Its Byzantine Appropriation in Michael Psellos.” The Occult Sciences in Byzantium. Eds. Paul Magdalino and Maria Mavroudi. Geneva, 2006. 97–118. Magdalino, Paul. “The Byzantine Reception of Classical Astrology.” Literacy, Education and Manuscript Transmission in Byzantium and Beyond. Eds. Catherine Holmes and Judith Waring. Leiden, 2002. 33–57. Mavroudi, Maria. A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon of Achmet and Its Arabic Sources. The Medieval Mediterranean. Vol. 36. Leiden, 2002. Miller, Timothy S. “Medical Thought and Practice.” The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium. Eds. Anthony Kaldellis and Niketas Siniossoglu. Cambridge, 2017. 252–268. Papathanassiou, Maria. “Iatromathematica (Medical Astrology) in Late Antiquity and the Byzantine Period.” Medicina nei Secoli 11.2 (1999): 291–322. Theodossiou, Efstratios, Vassilios Manimanis, and Milan S. Dimitrijevic. “Astrology in the Early Byzantine Empire and the Anti-Astrology Stance of the Church Fathers.” European Journal of Science and Theology 8.2 (2012): 7–24.

Dov Schwartz

Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World The medieval medical literature deals extensively with the causes of illnesses. Some of these causes are rooted in specific natural factors, some in diet, some in general health habits, and so forth. This literature is not defined as predictive in nature because it is a medical practice that relies on experience. By contrast, magic literature deals with medical predictions that are not inherent to medical science, focusing instead on the influence that occult elements, unrelated to medical causes, exert on medical phenomena. Medical predictions using magic can be split into two types: 1) medical phenomena that attest to the future or the occult; and 2) various non-medical phenomena that attest to medical conditions. Jewish doctors and magicians confronted the large body of Muslim literature. Until the twelfth century, many Jews in Spain and North Africa read these works in Arabic or in Arabic translations of the original. From the thirteenth century onward up until the end of the Middle Ages, when Jews were under Christian rule and the majority no longer read Arabic, they still resorted to it extensively in Hebrew translations. One example of astrological medical prediction is the commentary of Abū Jaʽfar on Centiloquium (“One Hundred Sayings”), which was translated into Hebrew as Sefer ha-Peri (“Book of the Fruit”) and significantly influenced medieval Jewish literature. On saying 5 of the Centiloquium – “He that is skilful may divert many effects of the stars when he knows their natures, and will prepare himself before their event or coming” – Abū Jaʽfar commented: At times, we find a person of balanced temperament and we know from his ascendant and his horoscope [literally, ‘the instructions of the stars’] that Mars will impinge on him. Then, before Mars’s influence affects him, we will shift his temperament from balance toward coolness in the measure of Mars’ presumed addition of heat. Mars’ effect will then be prevented before affecting his balance (Shapira 2013, 55–56).

This saying offers a prediction about an individual’s temperament, meaning the mixture of humors and elements within his body, including an intervention, meaning a cure. There follow several landmarks in the two modes of medical prediction described above: distinctly medical phenomena attesting to the future appearance in the professional magic literature, meaning literature intended for use by magicians for both diagnostic and healing purposes. One example is the Sefer ha-Pirkusim (“convulsions”) ascribed to R. Hai Gaon, who was active in Babylonia in the early tenth century (on the works ascribed to him, see Steinschneider 1862, 21). This work portrays a series https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-031

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of involuntary tremors, which attest to the future; for example, an individual who experiences an involuntary tremor on the right side of the abdomen will quickly fulfill his desire. The “correct” reading of medical conditions and symptoms, then, makes it possible to predict the future. The non-medical phenomena vary widely. Literature dealing with the magic influence of non-medical phenomena on medicine had already been available in antiquity, such as the anonymous Sefer ha-Razim (see Margalioth 1972; Rebiger and Schäfer 2009). During the Middle Ages, as noted, this type of literature developed under the influence of Muslim, and then Christian, magic literature. Two examples are: 1) The influence of chiromancy (palm reading) on medical prediction. In the early fifteenth century, R. Shem-Tov ibn Shaprut wrote a brief chiromantic tract in which he claimed, for example, that a clear, distinct head line (the line across the thumb) indicates a healthy stomach and liver. Ibn Shaprut declared that his sources were Christian (Frimer and Schwartz 1992, 107). 2) Astrological medical prediction. R. Abraham bar Ḥiyya ha-Nasi and R. Abraham ibn Ezra both presented a list of astrological casting of lots that serve to provide details of a person’s medical condition according to the celestial configuration (Sela 2017). Henceforth, the professional astrological literature dealt at length with astrological medical prediction. Within medical prediction, the border between diagnosis and intervention, at times, becomes blurred. The most significant example of this vagueness is the practice of healing by means of astral magic, mentioned briefly above. This practice lay at the core of a raging controversy at the end of the thirteenth century between Abba Mari and the Provence rationalists. Contemporaneous Provençal sages, such as Gersonides and R. Jedaiah ha-Penini from Béziers, described astral magic as unfounded and, in fact, viewed it as divination or, in other words, a product of the imagination, on the grounds that anyone who succeeds in isolating the imagination from the other psychological faculties can predict the future (Schwartz 2005, 140–148). Since the controversy centered on the use of astral magic within medicine, the assumption that these sages’ psychological interpretation was related to medical prediction also emerges. Methodologically, astral magic within medicine relies largely on the ability to make astrological predictions.



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Selected Bibliography Frimer, Norman E. and Dov Schwartz. The Life and Thought of Shem Tov Ibn Shaprut. Jerusalem, 1992 [Hebrew]. Rebiger, Bill and Peter Schäfer (eds.). Sefer ha-Razim: Das Buch der Geheimnisse. 2 vols. Tübingen, 2009. Margalioth, Mordechai. Sefer Ha-Razim. Jerusalem, 1967 [Hebrew]. English: Sefer HaRazim: The Book of the Mysteries. Trans. Michael A. Morgan. Chicago, 1983. Sela, Shlomo. Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Introductions to Astrology. Leiden and Boston, 2017. Shapira, Zohar. Sefer ha-Pri: The Book of the Fruit Centiloquium. MA Thesis, Bar-Ilan University, 2013 [Hebrew]. Schwartz, Dov. Studies on Astral Magic in Medieval Jewish Thought. Trans. David Louvish and Batya Stein. Leiden and Boston, 2005. Steinschneider, Moritz. Zur pseudepigraphischen Literatur, insbesondere der geheimen Wissenschaften des Mittelalters. Berlin, 1862.

Glen M. Cooper

Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World Definitions and Terminology Prognosis occupied an ambiguous place in Islamic civilization qua religious culture. Two general types of prognostic traditions were followed. One, divination (kihāna), comprised many techniques and had an ancient pedigree extending back beyond the earliest records of civilization, and came to Islam through several channels from the older surrounding cultures of Persia, Byzantium, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India. These cultures were also sources of much of the scientific, philosophical, and technical knowledge inherited by Islam, and upon which Islamic thinkers built. The aim of divination was to discern hidden things, such as the future, from omens or signs. The other prognostic tradition was the scientific form of medical prognosis inherited from Greco-Roman medicine (taqdimat al-maʻrifa), which traced back to Hippocrates and Galen. There, the aim was predict the future course of an illness based on signs in the body and the natural laws that described how the elements and humors should interact. This included pulse lore and urinoscopy, discussed below. While it may be easy for us to see the distinction, pre-modern peoples had a broader view of what counted as rational prognosis, and the boundary between them was blurry. Truly random divinatory methods, such as throwing dice or the geomancy described below, were rejected as superstitious by the learned, but those methods with some sense of connection to the natural world, such as physiognomy or astrology, were considered to be valid. The Stoic doctrine of sympathy, the idea that all things and events are connected, and bound by fate, imported as part of Greek philosophy, with God replacing Zeus as the upholder of cosmic harmony, resonated with Islam. In Islam, the Prophet Muḥammad was held to have ended the era of revelation, which applied a fortiori to divination. Nevertheless, the vast extant literature on divination, including handbooks and records of cases, attests to the widespread denial that God had ceased to reveal things to mankind. Indeed, divination was thought by many to be a necessary and divinely guided supplement to the august edifice of Islamic law (the Sharīʻa), even though religious scholars sought to curb these practices. Divination and prophecy were more widespread in Islamic civilization than earlier modern scholarship has indicated, because the study of divination within Islamic cultural contexts has suffered from the prejudices of post-Enlightenment Western scholars and their distaste of the irrational. Embarrassed by the ubiquity of divination in Islamic culture, modern scholars have blamed the popularity of non-rational approaches to knowledge in the Islamic world for the decline of the “real” sciences in Islam, and the occult sciences have been largely passed over in embarhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-032



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rassed silence. Moreover, modern Muslim scholars, when studying the history of their own civilization, have followed the lead of Western scholars, and have similarly been embarrassed by the irrational, and ignored it. One of the founding scholars of the history of Islamic science, O. Neugebauer, while greatly advancing our understanding of the exact sciences, contributed to this distortion. In his classic 1951 article, he grudgingly acknowledged that, while “wretched subjects” like astrology should not be completely discarded from serious scholarly consideration, their usefulness was limited to the observational and mathematical data they could supply for the study of the real sciences, such as mathematical astronomy (Neugebauer 1951, 111). However, current historiography of the pre-modern West has accepted that these occult disciplines formed an essential part of its complex cultural and intellectual history and, what was once an object of scorn, now is carefully studied. For example, L. Taub has in recent times presented a broader perspective, consonant with the wider acceptance of occult subjects as proper objects for study by Western scholars (Taub 1997, 74–87). In marked contrast, Islamic historiography has yet to catch up – crippled by the magisterial work of post-Enlightenment Western scholarship, as well as by an emphasis on those disciplines that were part of the pedigree of currently accepted disciplines in the West. Astrology has been more extensively studied, no doubt because of its association with the “real” science of astronomy. The exclusion of certain practices and beliefs of the past from serious consideration today reveals more about the prejudices and concerns of modern scholars than those of their subjects. This can be seen, for example, in the omission of divinatory literature, apart from astrology, in the multi-volume Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, a standard finding aid for Arabic manuscripts of works from before the mid-eleventh century. The title “History of Arabic Literature” would suggest a complete survey of works written in Arabic during the period concerned. However, there is no discussion of Arabic divinatory literature and no list of manuscripts, apart from astrology, in spite of its having been a significant part of the literary production of scholars writing in Arabic, from the beginning of Islam to the modern period. In spite of the fact that divinatory practices are sometimes characterized as non-rational, and thus undeserving of serious discussion along with the rational sciences, astrology and other forms of divination, for example, were anything but non-rational. Rather, they were actually, by modern standards, hyper-rational and overdetermined, drawing connections between too many things. However, these multifarious connections comprised a resource that the astrologer, for example, exploited to his advantage, by sifting through the mass of predictions and choosing those that seemed most likely to fit the client’s situation. By contrast, the more recognizably “scientific” tradition of medical prognosis is not as problematic today for scholars as it probably should be. For, anxious to trace modern medicine back to Hippocrates, scholars decontextualize and distort their subject. In truth, prognosis from signs in the patient’s body or from the natural world, including the stars, (and, for some, divinatory signs) formed a continuum of available

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information at the physician’s disposal. It was embedded within a mainly Aristotelian natural philosophy of form, agency, and purpose, which resonated with the religious cosmology of Islam. Medical prognosis, therefore, was a much broader concept than we have in medicine today. And its primary concern was to determine, by whatever means were at the physician’s disposal, whether the patient would live or die, and, if the latter, then how much longer would he live? Divination was widespread in Islam as in other cultures, and while many of its practices concerned the prediction of the future, only some of them were concerned with medical prognostication. Of all the divinatory techniques, astrology was the one that was most closely linked with medicine, because of their common conceptual and natural philosophical bases. It was also the most popular divinatory technique. In defining the relationship between divination and medicine, one must consider the distinction between two major occult practices, namely, magic and divination, and then compare them with the activities of the physician. The diviner seeks to uncover hidden things, such as knowledge of the future, lost items, or things that could not be discovered through normal means. The magician seeks to manipulate and change the world, to alter the future or the natural course of things. The physician, however, straddles divination and magic: in deriving a medical prognosis, he is analogous to the diviner attempting to discern the future. In treating patients, the physician is like the magician, as he seeks to manipulate natural elements and forces to alter the outcome of the illness, from death to recovery. Medical astrology, which incorporated astrological methods of prediction, flourished in the Islamic world, having developed from the Greek iatromathematics tradition (↗ Cooper, Medical Prognostication Eastern Christian World), but also incorporating material from Persia and India. In both divination and magic, however, the practitioners did not limit themselves to natural forces, but included the supernatural and occult forces as well. For the present chapter, discussion of medical prognostication will be limited to the divinatory disciplines of geomancy, astrology, as well as the non-divinatory tradition of Hippocratic-Galenic medical prognosis, including pulse lore, urinoscopy, and medical crisis theory.

Written Sources and Artefacts Written Sources As noted, the types of medical prediction in the Islamic world fall under two heads: medical-empirical, and divinatory, with medical astrology bridging the two classes. This section will begin with a discussion of the medical-empirical and medical astrological, and then move to the divinatory, or mantic practices.



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Pulse Lore and Urinoscopy The taking of the pulse and inspection of the urine to determine both a diagnosis and a prognosis was an important practice in Islamic scientific medicine. It was based on the Greek legacy from Aristotle, Galen, and others, but much developed, critiqued, and adapted to the intellectual world of Islam. (For a summary of the Greek background and definition of the terms “pulse lore” and “urinoscopy”, ↗ Cooper, Medical Prognostication Eastern Christian World). The Greek medical legacy entered the Islamic world through two main forms: through summaries and encyclopedias, such as those of Oribasius, Aetius and Paul of Aegina, and the Summaria Alexandrinorum, which were epitomes of the 16 principal books of Galen’s that were used as textbooks in the Late Antique Alexandrian medical schools. The other form was, of course, direct translations of complete treatises from ancient authors. Since translation requires great effort and expense, these sources were selected according to the interests and needs of patrons. The volume of Greek writings that became available in Arabic rapidly became unwieldy, and so several works appeared, such as the Firdaws al-ḥikma by Abū ’l-Ḥasan ʻAlī ibn Sahl Rabbān al-Ṭabarī (d. ca. 870), and Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyā’ al-Rāzī (d. ca. 925) that provided summaries of important medical ideas. Al-Rāzī further left a massive “commonplace book”, the Kitāb al-Ḥāwī fī Ṭibb, consisting of quotations from earlier medical authors that resembles the earlier Greek encyclopedists. The Ḥāwī contains numerous excerpts that discuss the prognostic doctrines of the crises, critical days, pulse lore, and urine inspection, which demonstrates the practical importance with which these subject were regarded. Because Galen’s writings were so voluminous and unwieldy, with no convenient index, the systematizing medical authors, such as al-Rāzī, Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), and Ibn al-Nafīs (d. 1288), “codified” medical doctrines and treatments into handy books. The physician who needed to find what Ibn Sīnā had written about medical prognosis could consult the section of the Canon that discusses this subject. So successful was the Canon as a textbook and handy reference that it even became the main medical textbook at Western universities until the seventeenth century, and is employed today in traditional Persian medicine. The main impression one has after surveying this systematizing literature is that medical prognosis is tightly integrated with the rest of medicine and with the prevailing cosmology and physics.

Medical Astrology For medical prognosis, the principal texts were the Hippocratic Prognostic, Aphorisms, and their Galenic commentaries in translation, and the tradition of commentaries that they generated in Arabic. The culminating treatise that dealt with medical prognosis in

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Arabic was the Canon of Ibn Sīnā. For medical astrological prognosis, the foundation texts were Galen’s De diebus decretoriis (“Critical Days”) and De crisibus (“Crises”), which presented a detailed method for prognosticating the course of an illness, and even imported techniques from astrology. (The present author is preparing critical editions of these treatises, for Routledge and Brill, respectively.) There were, in addition, numerous texts, not part of this learned medical tradition, that sought to predict illness outcomes using astrology alone. Representative physicians who wrote about astrological methods in medicine in Arabic were Abū l-Ḥassan ʻAlī ibn Riḍwān and Abū Naṣr ʻAdnān ibn Naṣr al-ʻAynzarbī. Ibn Riḍwān (d. 1068) began his career as an astrologer, and moved into medicine. Such a move was logical since, as previously explained, astrology and medicine had affinities. He wrote a commentary on Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos (Sezgin, vol. 7, 44. Ibn Riḍwān’s life is sketched in: Dols, Medieval Islamic Medicine, 54–66). Al-ʻAynzarbī (d. 1153), who served the Egyptian court, wrote What Every Physician Should Know about Astrology (Risāla fī-mā yaḥtāju al-ṭabīb min ʻilm al-falak), as well as devoting much of his What is Sufficient for the Medical Art (al-Kāfī fī ṣināʻat ṭibb) to astrological medicine. (The manuscript of the latter is at the National Library of Medicine MS A 25, discussed in: Savage-Smith – Islamic Medical Manuscripts; for his life and writings see Ullmann 1970, 161 and 255).

Geomancy Geomancy was a very popular form of divination whose uses overlapped with medical prognosis (↗ Melvin-Koushki, Geomancy Islamic World). Its legendary origins were traced back to the angel Jabrāʾil who taught it to the Prophet Idrīs. The fantastically long-lived Khalaf al-Barbarī (186 years!), a contemporary of the Prophet Muḥammad, was said to have travelled to India where he learned it from the writings of Ṭumṭum al-Hindī. Thence, the tradition was passed down to the Twelfth Century to Abū Saʻīd al-Ṭarābulsī, a teacher of the master of Islamic geomancy, Abū ʻAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʻUthmān al-Zanātī (before 1230). Extant manuscripts attributed to these authors are: Thamarāt al-fuʾād al-muḥaddith ʻan al-murād fī l bawāṭīn wa-l-akbād, (“The Fruits of the Core Transmitters about the Meaning of the Hidden and the Concealed”; manuscripts are extant in Paris and Madrid; see Savage-Smith and Smith, 213n.11). The two treatises of al-Zanātī: Al-Aqwāl al-marḍiya fī l-aḥkām al-ramliyya li-l-shaykh al-Zanātī fī ʻilm al-raml (“Pleasing Sayings about the Geomantic Judgments of Shaykh al-Zanāti in the Science of Geomancy”; Savage-Smith and Smith, 213n.13); Kitāb al-Faṣl fī uṣūl ʻilm al-raml ʻalā ḥukm al-qawāʼid al-aṣliyya al-idrīsiyya (“Treatise about the Principles of Geomancy based on the Authority of Idrīs’s Original Principles”).



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No less figures than the mathematician-astronomer, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 1274), and the philosopher Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1209), as well as the theologian Abū Ḥamīd al-Ghazālī (d.  1111) wrote treatises on geomancy (Savage-Smith and Smith, 216). Al-Ṭūsī’s interest may have been connected with his work for his patrons, the Isma’ili Assassins, for whom divination was a part of their mystical theology, before their defeat by the Mongols, and al-Ṭūsī’s subsequent transfer to the latter’s patronage. Many writings on geomancy, explaining how to use the figures of its tableau, have survived. Although descriptions of physicians actually employing geomancy in obtaining a prognosis are extremely rare or non-existent, there are many extant manuscript codices that bind medical, geomantic, and astrological works in a single volume. This fact strongly indicates that some physicians were practicing medicine in conjunction with these divinatory techniques. There is also the known talismanic use of magic squares (especially the budūḥ square) to facilitate childbirth, which is referred to by al-Ghazālī in his Deliverer from Error (al-munqidh min al-ḍalāl.), which is an example of a divinatory technique imported into medical treatment. So, given the popularity of geomancy in Islam, it is included in the present discussion.

Dream Interpretation Early Muslims composed as many dream manuals as they did commentaries on the Qur’an. The most famous dream manual of antiquity was that of Artemidorus of Daldis, which was translated into Arabic by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (Mavroudi 2002, 135– 142) (↗ Cortese, Dream Interpretation Islamic World). But his “translation” was more of an adaptation of the text to the Islamic context, which removed or “translated” the references to pagan deities and symbols in the reported dreams. The earliest extant texts, which were written in the early ninth century, are collections of narratives that recount the specific dreams of specific persons and their interpretation, and many of them are religious authorities. There was an overlap between the gatherers of dream data in the early centuries of Islam, and the gatherers of ḥadīths (Lamoreaux 2002, 16). The pattern of development of the dream handbooks was similar to that of the development of Babylonian omens. The dreams are like omens in the sense that they were thought to have been sent by the Gods, and to have a meaning that could be interpreted, through which the will of the deity could be discerned. At first, they recorded specific dreams experienced by particular named individuals, and gradually moved toward general principles extracted from this data (by the end of the tenth century). Early Muslim interest in dreams may be said to reflect the general interest in revelation and divine guidance. A personal inspired or “prophetic” dream was regarded by some as God communicating with the individual Muslim, although mainstream “orthodox” Islam frowned on this view, regarding prophecy as the prerogative of prophets alone, such as the Prophet Muḥammad. Consequently, dream interpretation

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tended to flourish among Sufis (Muslim mystics), who purposefully sought such individual connection with God. The modern practice of istikhara, a kind of dream incubation not unlike the ancient Greek practice, through which the subject seeks divine guidance for everything from marriage choices, to business decisions, to healing, is found among South Asian and Bosnian Muslims, and has been studied by anthropologists (Edgar and Henig 2010).

Artifacts Apart from textual artifacts, not much has survived from the actual practice of medical prognostication. Noteworthy are astrolabes, which simplified certain astrological calculations, and a device for displaying and interpreting a geomantic tableau.

Astrolabes The astrolabe (↗ Rodríguez-Arribas, Mathematical Instruments), the best known device from Islamic civilization, was an analog computer consisting of geometrically inscribed plates and pointers, for determining the time and for performing a host of other astronomical calculations, including calculating the Ascendant, the key parameter in casting the horoscope of a disease (Gibbs and Saliba 1984, esp. 1–21; King 2005, 337–402. See discussion below). The device was especially useful because it contained all of the necessary complex trigonometry in its markings and dials, so that all a physician had to do was to line up dials and markings based on a simple observation of the Sun’s elevation in the day, or that of a major star at night, and read the result from a scale on the device.

Tables and Almanacs Of supreme importance for timekeeping and medical astrology were collections of astronomical tables (zīj), very many of which have survived (↗ Gaida, Zījes). These contained tables that facilitated the calculation of astrological parameters, such as planetary positions, and were based on the approach Ptolemy employed in his Almagest and Handy Tables. To obtain a precise planetary position required complex spherical trigonometry, which was not only time-consuming to calculate, but was also beyond the grasp of nearly everyone. These zījes represent a major advance in the technology of astronomy, and contained many improvements over Ptolemy, such as the use of sines and cosines, which had been adapted from Indian mathematics. The basic idea behind the tables was to reduce this labor by reducing the calculations to simple arithmetic, performed on quantities drawn from the tables, which them-



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selves had the trigonometry already built into them. The physician’s task was further simplified by the use of ephemeris (or almanac) tables, in which the daily planets’ positions over an extended period of, say, a year in advance were already calculated and tabulated.

Techniques and Manifestations There were many types of prediction used in medical contexts, of which the most popular were: on the one hand, the system of lunar mansions, medical astrology, dream interpretation, and geomancy, and on the other, the non-divinatory pulse lore and urinoscopy.

Risings and Lunar Mansions One of the oldest predictive disciplines in the pre-Islamic Arab world was the system of lunar mansions. This was a rudimentary system for marking time and determining the seasons based on the times of risings of prominent stars. Such a system, which was also used to predict weather and guide medical regimens, was vital to a nomadic people for deciding when to move between grazing lands through the year. After the coming of Islam and the later adoption of Greek systems of time reckoning and astrology, the scheme was retained in a modified form, and was resorted to by astrologers and physicians. In this system, 28 prominent star groups served as a rudimentary calendar, called anwāʾ (pl. of nawʾ “rising”). The year was divided into 28 segments, each measured by the heliacal risings and acronychal settings of star groups, namely, those that are rising in the East at dawn and setting in the West at dusk. The stars were believed to be responsible for the weather, and were used to predict weather changes. Later, the Indian nakshatra system of lunar mansions (in Arabic: manzil “station”; manāzil, pl.), which marked the monthly progress of the Moon, was combined with the anwāʾ system. A literature developed that predicted natural, celestial, astrological, and meteorological phenomena. In addition, the number of mansions was also mystically associated with the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet, which permitted additional prognostic speculation. Astrologers assigned each mansion a good or bad quality, with an occasionally ambiguous quality, which provided an additional factor in the treatment and prognosis of diseases using the lunar motions. In time, astronomers noticed that because of the precession of the equinoxes the lunar mansions did not remain stable. The mathematician-astronomer Abū Rayḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Bīrūnī (d. 1048) proposed a modified system in his Chronology of Nations (In Chapter 21, Sachau edition; ↗ Varisco, Calendrical Calculations

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Islamic World). Each astrological House (30° segment of Zodiac) is divided into 2 2/3 mansions, which were then fixed to the stable Zodiac.

Astrology Astrology, the most popular form of divination in Islamic world, straddled divination and genuine science, as then understood. (For an overview of classical astrology and a discussion of how a natal chart was cast and interpreted, cf. Cooper, Astrology (2018)). It is, moreover, difficult to isolate medical applications of astrology from the general field. Galen provided a theoretical basis for the use of astrology in medical prognosis. (See Galen, Critical Days, K 9.912.3–16, ed. Cooper, 338–341, and discussion in: Cooper. Galen and Astrology. 2011, 131–132). The procedure was to determine, as closely as possible, the precise starting point of the illness. This was defined as the moment when the patient is so overcome by his illness that he takes to his bed. Then, the illness is treated like a living entity, and its horoscope or natal chart is cast, as if it were a person, and the beginning of the illness were the time of birth of the sickness. After knowledge of the Ascendant, namely, the degree and Sign rising over the eastern horizon at a desired moment, the course and phases of the Moon were most important in this kind of prognosis. According to Galen, the future course of the illness could be predicted by the Zodiac Signs that the Moon will pass through, as well as the contents of the Houses that are determined by the position of the Ascendant, taking into account the dominant element (of the four elements) and quality (of the four qualities) of each Sign. (Ptolemy had adapted the Aristotelian element-quality system to astrology in his influential Tetrabiblos). In addition, later practitioners developed this into a scheme whereby the Moon’s presence and phase in the Sign corresponding to a specific region of the body indicated whether or not it was safe to manipulate that body part, whether via operation or other forms of intervention. Presumably, the Moon was the most significant astral indicator in medicine because of its connection with tides, and the bodily humors as fluids, were subject to that influence. There was a range of methods from this highly sophisticated form of astrological medical prognosis, down to the very simple, which bordered on charlatanry. In general, the quality of service one received depended on how much one could afford (for more details regarding this system, see ↗ Cooper, Medical Prognostication Eastern Christian World). Yuḥannā ibn Ṣalt (fl.  870–910), working in Baghdad and an acquaintance of Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq’s (the famous translator from Greek and Syriac into Arabic), wrote the Handbook of Astrological Medicine (kunnāsh ṭibbī nujūmī), which showed how to use the astrological Ascendant along with the positions of specific planets in the Signs of the Zodiac both to diagnose an illness and to predict its course. (Klein-Franke 1984, 84; Pormann and Savage-Smith 2007, 154).



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Arabic physicians often referred to Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places, where the author states “the science of the stars is not a small part of medical science”, as justification for their use of astrological methods in medicine (Pormann and Savage-Smith 2007, 154; ↗ Cooper, Medical Prognostication Eastern Christian World, 569). Because the disease has a specific course that unfolded in time, devices for measuring time, such as sundials, planispheric astrolabes, and waterclocks are useful. Physicians need to know when to expect a critical day, or the precise moment to intervene with a drug or other treatment. More important for the medical astrologer, however, was to know the time as precisely as possible so as to be able to determine the significant factors in the natal charts of the patient or the disease, such as the Ascendant and the planetary positions. Once the time and precise location were established, a table (or zīj) would be consulted to determine the Ascendant. A physician could even use an astrolabe to find the Ascendant, though with less precision. The planets’ positions could also be determined using zīj tables, but it was simpler to use an ephemeris table, in which the daily planetary positions had already been calculated.

Dream Interpretation According to some early Muslim traditions, the Prophet Muḥammad taught his followers that after he was gone and the Prophetic Era was fulfilled, prophecy would not cease completely, but divine guidance would continue through true dreams (the definitive study of Muslim dream interpretation is: Lamoreaux 2002). Subsequently there developed a theology of dreams, which were treated seriously by orthodox scholars. Indeed, the terms waḥy and nubūwah that are used to describe the revelations of the Qur’an are also used in connection with dreams (Lamoreaux 2002, 4). However, since dreams were often symbolic, they required interpretation, and early Muslims wrote numerous manuals dedicated to deciphering their meaning. Dream interpretation occupied several thinkers, including al-Kindī, al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, and Ibn Khaldūn. This tradition was modeled after the earlier Greek tradition, but tailored for the Islamic context. A lay Muslim was advised to seek the counsel of an Islamic scholar for help in understanding the import of a dream. Presumably, if the content of the dream was medical or body-related, the advice of a scholar with medical knowledge would be sought. The Greek discipline of dream interpretation (oneirokritike) was among the legacy to Islam from the classical world. It was studied as part of a general education in the sciences, and several Muslim polymaths wrote treatises on both medicine and dream interpretation. Consequently, it is would be easy to imagine practices from the one influencing the other, and forming part of the prognostic “toolkit” for medical practice.

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Geomancy (↗ Melvin-Koushki, Geomancy; Cooper and Schmidl, Geomantic Artefacts)

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts This history of medical prognosis in Islamic civilization follows four strands. Before the import of Greek science and philosophy, divination was the method for prognosticating the outcome of a disease. Once the Greco-Arabic translations had become part of Arabic intellectual culture, they provided both a non-divinatory approach to medical prognosis, but also lent new rational tools to justify other methods of divination. In response to the popularity of the “foreign sciences” from the Greco-Roman world, which were felt by some to be incompatible with Islam the religion, Islamic scholars developed Prophetic Medicine (see below). The Islamic religious approach rejected both divination and Greek rationalism. Meanwhile, a mystical approach to divination developed in connection with Sufism, which was given a huge boost by the influential theologian al-Ghazālī (d. 1111). As noted earlier, the Lunar Mansions provided the best known pre-Islamic Arab method of divination, which also served as a calendrical and timekeeping system. The rapid conquests of the first Islamic Century, which brought many lands from Spain to western India under Islamic rule, opened up channels for additional predictive methods, mainly divinatory, to enter the Islamic world. Most important, however, for the scientific progress of medical prognostication, were the “foreign sciences”, which were mainly the Greek intellectual disciplines – philosophy, logic, mathematics, etc. – that entered Islam as a result of the Greek to Arabic Translation Movement of the ninth/tenth Centuries. The writings of Abū Maʻshar provided a comprehensive cosmology and physics for astrology, completing the project begun by Ptolemy. With Galen’s texts on astrological medicine available in translation, having been translated by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, physicians had a scientifically sound (as then understood) method of medical prognostication that ranged from the strictly mundane factors to a mixture of these with astrological methods. Galen’s writings also provided a basis for the non-astrological approach to medical prognosis. For example, the De crisibus provides a method of prognosis based wholly on mundane factors. In the work of the physician al-Rāzī we find mainly this kind of medical prognosis. Moreover, Ibn Sīnā’s writings cogently refute astro­logical approaches, and codify the mundane kind of prognosis, while admitting meteorological factors as causes of health and sickness, as Aristotle and Galen had also done. Many of the educated physicians who practiced the classic art of Greco-­ Islamic medicine , such as Ibn Riḍwān and al-Rāzī, were advocates of astrology in medicine.



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The Sabians of Harrān in northern Iraq, before being recognized by Islam as “People of the Book”, were pagan star worshippers whose practice of astrology was influential in early Islam. The literature attributed to the ancient Hermes, among which was The Book of the Zodiac (extant in the Mandaic language), which mixed Bablyonian, Hellenistic, and Sasanian Persian traditions of astrology, were also influential. The latter work also blended other forms of divination, such as onomancy (divination from names). This blending of techniques was a common feature of Arabic handbooks of astrological medicine (van Bladel 2009). Astrologers carved out a place for themselves in Islamic society, which officially discouraged the practice of their art. Its appeal was great, for astrology promised to offer additional insight into matters about which there is always anxiety, such as life and death. Moreover, since the aims of medicine were similar, plus the fact that both medicine and astrology spring from the same natural philosophical sources, it is easy to accept the additional prognostic insights offered by astrology. The place of the astrologer in the religious society of Islam in many ways reflected the position of most diviners in that society. The status of astrology also reflected upon physicians who employed astrological methods. The high form of astrology derived from Aristotelian natural principles, was articulated by Ptolemy especially in the Tetrabiblos. The highest expression of astrology as a natural science per se was by Abū Maʻshar, as has been discussed. Astrology enjoyed a status similar to that of medicine: they were both non-demonstrative branches of natural philosophy, which is to say that neither could be reduced to axioms in the way Euclid presented geometry. Astrology became associated with the foreign sciences that were infiltrating Islam, especially the Greek sciences. In spite of Abū Maʻshar’s magisterial defense of astrology, G. Saliba observes that astrology came to be seen as the “Achilles heel” of the foreign sciences, taken as a comprehensive cosmology, through which the whole edifice of the foreign sciences could be attacked (Saliba 1992). Astrology also came to be associated with schismatic Islamic sects, from the point of view of orthodox Sunni Islam, such as Shi’ism and Ismai’ilism. However, in spite of the Sunni condemnation of astrology, a wide range of people in many societal roles sponsored or practiced astrology, and it remained popular at royal courts until modern times. In later Islamic times, divination became even more popular, in association with the mystical ideologies of the Safavid and Ottoman dynasties, for example. Recent work by Melvin-Koushki and his associates has opened new avenues for research into the interconnectedness of divination, medicine, astrology, and imperial ideologies in the Islamic empires of the post-Mongol period. (Melvin-Koushki, 2017a; See especially, Melvin-Koushki, 2017c).

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Medieval Classifications and Discussions Prediction and Natural Law As a result of the translation movement from Greek into Arabic, Islam inherited several ideas about how the world is structured and unfolds. i.  e. how changes occur in a rational and orderly manner. Greek ideas on the subject ranged from the natural cosmic connectedness and determinism of the Stoics, to the randomness of the atomism of the Epicureans. According to the former view, divination and all sorts of magic were possible, simply because all things were in sympathy. Between these extremes were the views of Aristotle, who taught that everything has a rational cause that is in principle discoverable, and everything comes into existence with a rational design for its own unfolding. His ideas were the basis of the conception of natural law in the sciences, namely, that one could infer universal characteristics of particular entities through observation. Islam added its own dimensions, and the debate there concerned how much God is involved in the world. These views ranged from the rationalism of the Mu’tazilites, which resembled Aristotelianism, but with the monotheistic God, and Ash’arism, which made God responsible for everything. The latter was a result of the strict understanding of the Islamic principle that nothing is equal to God, and so the existence of independent agencies was thought to violate that idea. As has been noted above, rational prognostication of all kinds, especially medical and astrological, clashed with traditional Islamic theology. The connections between natural law and astrology were much more obvious. The heavenly bodies had observable effects on earth life, such as the Sun’s connection with the seasons, and the Moon’s tidal effect on the seas. The other planets were inferred to have subtler effects. In the Ptolemaic tradition of astrology, if the powers of the planets and their configurations were known at a given moment, then one could infer their effects on the unfolding of whatever entity was under consideration. Medicine was another field where natural law reigned. If there were no rationally discoverable connection between symptoms and disease, or if diseases did not have their own rational principles of cause and unfolding, then diagnosis and treatment would be impossible. Although Ptolemy had suggested a close connection between medicine and astrology in the Tetrabiblos, the connection was drawn in detail by the Muslim astrologer, Abū Maʻshar. In his Madhkal, his magnum opus that integrated astrology into the entire cosmology, he argued that authentic medicine is based on astrology, and that real physicians would recognize this. Astrologers were classed among physicians and scientists, and were given their own biographies in the bio-bibliographical literature that flourished in the period. (e.  g. Ibn Ṭawūs, Faraj al-mahmūn fi taʾrikh ʻulamāʼ al-nujūm (“Comfort of the Concerned Regarding the History of the Astrologers”). Abū



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Maʻshar thus showed how medicine and astrology were closely linked. Astrology was the “master science” (↗ Cooper, Medical Prognostication Eastern Christian World, 572), and medicine was the most practical application of the science of astrology. The dominant strand of thought in Arabic science became that astrology and medicine were part of the same cosmology, where natural law permits a certain degree of speculation about future outcomes, and which used some of the same methods. Many learned physicians employed occultic and divinatory practices in their medical treatises, among whom al-Rāzī, Ibn Riḍwān, and Abū al-ʻAlāʼ Zuhr (d. 1131) were the most famous (Pormann and Savage Smith, 153). Other learned physicians, such as Ibn Sīnā, wrote treatises refuting astrology (Ibn Sīnā, Avicenne: Réfutation de l’astrologie). Some physicians followed his lead and began to move away from the occult astral influences toward considering only the tangible qualities of the stars and mundane elements to be causes. Medical literature and histories contain numerous anecdotes about how astrology was unsuccessful in the treatment of patients, mocking astrologers. However, even such an influential opponent of astrology as Ibn Sīnā still held the “astrological worldview”, which acknowledges a connection between the upper and lower cosmos, even if not a precisely determinable one through the methods of astrology. Ibn Sīnā did not deny that one could use the planetary influences as factors in the prediction of the courses of illnesses, but he denied its practicability. There were far too many variables to account for in the causal web, far more than an astrologer could pretend to know with his simple star charts.

Prophetic Medicine Among the projects devised to counter the Greek-derived sciences in the Islamic world and which attempted to provide an indigenous Muslim alternative to Greek medicine was Prophetic Medicine (al-ṭibb al-nabawī), which flourished in the post-Ibn Sīnā period. It was part of a general reaction against foreign intellectual imports that had germinated in the early days of the Abbasid Caliphate, but blossomed in this later period. Principles fundamental to the advancement of natural knowledge, such as causality, were attacked along with specific practices, such as astrology. Al-Ghazālī’s (d. 1111) attack on rationalism and causation was part of this movement and in its most sophisticated form, as were the numerous polemical writings of Taqī ad-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328). There was less emphasis on prognosis per se, and more on God’s will. In fact, Prophetic Medicine developed to counter the position of those who claimed to know the future, knowledge of which belonged only to God. The founders of Prophetic Medicine scoured the Qur’an and the Prophetic Traditions for insight about Muḥammad’s personal practices for anything of medical value. The results, which were primarily preventative medicine, followed the personal dietary and regimen habits of the Prophet, and were compiled. Prognosis was frowned

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upon, and mostly excluded from this type of medicine, which left the outcomes to God’s will. Prognosis was a form of denying God’s supreme power, by mortals aspiring to attain such knowledge. For such thinkers, not only was astrology forbidden by God’s law, but even the more naturalistic medical prognosis was forbidden as well. Nevertheless, as with all forms of healing, there was some prognosis, even if derived completely from empirical observation.

Selected Bibliography Abū Maʻshar al-Balkhī. Liber introductorii maioris ad scientiam judicorum astrorum. Ed. Richard Lemay. Naples, 1995/1996. al-Bīrūnī. Kitāb al-Āthār al-bāqiya ʻan al-qurūn al-khāliya (“The Remaining Traces of Past Centuries”). Rendered in English as: The Chronology of Ancient Nations. Ed. Eduard Sachau, Chronologie orientalischer Völker von Albêrûni. Leipzig 1923 [1878] and Baghdad 1963. English translation: Eduard Sachau. The Chronology of Ancient Nations. Frankfurt am Main, 1969 [London, 1879]. Bladel, Kevin van. The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science (Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity). Oxford, 2009. Burnett, Charles. “The Legend of the Three Hermes and Abū Maʻshar’s Kitab Al-Uluf in the Latin Middle Ages.” Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages: Texts and Techniques in the Islamic and Christian Worlds. Ed. Charles Burnett. Aldershot, V (1996): 231–234. Cooper, Glen M. “Astrology: The Science of Signs in the Heavens.” The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World. Eds. Paul T. Keyser and John Scarborough. Oxford, 2018. 381–407. Dols, Michael W. “The Theory of Magic in Healing.” Magic and Divination in Early Islam. Vol. 42. The Formation of the Classical Islamic World. Ed. Emilie Savage-Smith. Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, USA, 2004. 87–101. Drower, Ethel S. The Book of the Zodiac. Oriental Translation Fund. Vol. 36. London, 1949. Edgar, Iain, and David Henig. “Istikhara: The Guidance and Practice of Islamic Dream Incubation Through Ethnographic Comparison.” History and Anthropology 21, 3 (2010): 251–262. Fahd, Toufic. La Divination Arabe. Études religieuses, sociologiques et folkloriques sur le milieu natif d’Islam. Leiden, 1966. Maḥmūd Fozūnī Estarābādī, Boḥayra, Teheran, n.d. Gibbs, Sharon, and George Saliba. Planispheric Astrolabes from the National Museum of American History. Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology. Vol. 45. Washington, D.C., 1984. Johnstone, Penelope. Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya, Medicine of the Prophet. Cambridge, 1998. King, David A. In Synchrony with the Heavens: Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization. Volume Two: Instruments of Mass Calculation. Leiden, 2005. Klein-Franke, Felix. Iatromathematics in Islam: A Study on Yuhanna Ibn as-Salt’s Book on Astrological Medicine, Edited for the First Time. Hildesheim et al., 1984. Lamoreaux, John C. The Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation. Albany, NY, 2002. Mavroudi, Maria. A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon of Achmet and Its Arabic Sources (The Medieval Mediterranean: Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400–1153). Vol. 36. Leiden, 2002. Mavroudi, Maria. “Byzantine and Islamic Dream Interpretation: A Comparative Approach to the Problem of ‘Reality’ vs. ‘Literary Tradition’.” Dreaming in Byzantium and Beyond. Eds. Christine Angelidi and George T. Calofonos. Farnham, 2014. 161–186.



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Melvin-Koushki, Matthew. “Persianate Geomancy from Ṭūsī to the Millennium: A Preliminary Survey.” Occult Sciences in Premodern Islamic Culture. Eds. Nader El-Bizri and Eva Orthmann. Beirut, 2017a. 1–46. Melvin-Koushki, Matthew. Islamicate Occultism: New Perspectives. Eds. Matthew Melvin-Koushki and Noah Gardiner, special double issue of Arabica, 64/3–4 (2017b): 287–693. Melvin-Koushki, Matthew. “Powers of One: The Mathematicalization of the Occult Sciences in the High Persianate Tradition.” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 5 (2017c): 128–199. Neugebauer, Otto. “The Study of Wretched Subjects.” Isis 42 (June 1951): 111. Pehro, Irmeli. The Prophet’s Medicine: A Creation of the Muslim Traditionalist Scholars. Helsinki, 1995. Peters, Francis Edwards. “Hermes and Harran.” Intellectual Studies on Islam: Essays Written in Honor of Martin B. Dickson. Eds. Michel M. Mazzaoui and Vera B. Moreen. Salt Lake City, 1990. 185–215. Saliba, George. “The Role of the Astrologer in Medieval Islamic Society.” Bulletin d’Études Orientales 44 (1992): 45–67. Savage-Smith, Emilie, and Marion B. Smith. “Islamic Geomancy and a Thirteenth-Century Divinatory Device: Another Look.” Magic and Divination in Early Islam. Vol. 42. The Formation of the Classical Islamic World. Ed. Emilie Savage-Smith. Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, USA, 2004. 211–276. Savage-Smith, Emilie. Magic and Divination in Early Islam. Vol. 42. Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, USA, 2004. Savage-Smith, Emilie. “Medicine.” Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science. Vol. 1. Ed. Roshdi Rashed. London, 1996. 903–962. Savage-Smith, Emilie. Islamic Medical Manuscripts at the National Library of Medicine. https://www. nlm.nih.gov/hmd/arabic/welcome.html (7 March 2020). Sezgin, Fuat. Astrologie-Meteorologie und Verwandtes bis ca. 430 H., Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. Vol. 7. Leiden, 1979. Sina, Ibn. Avicenne: Réfutation de l’astrologie. Edition et Traduction du Texte Arabe, Introduction, Notes et Lexique par Yahya Michot. Préface d’Elizabeth Teissier. Beirut and Paris, 2006. Smith, Marion B. “The Nature of Islamic Geomancy with a Critique of a Structuralist’s Approach.” Studia Islamica 49 (1979): 5–38. Taub, Liba. “The Rehabilitation of Wretched Subjects.” Early Science and Medicine 2.1 (1997): 74–87. Ullmann, Manfred. Die Medizin im Islam. Leiden and Cologne, 1970.

Calendrical Calculations Philipp Nothaft

Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World Definitions and Terminology Calendars, in the broadest sense of the term, are cyclical counting systems for days, which are being numbered and grouped into larger units such as months, years, and cycles of years, usually by reference to some astronomical phenomenon. They must not be confused with cumulative counts of years from a given starting point, also known as eras, which can be applied to years with different internal calendrical organization (statements such as “it is the year 2018 in our calendar,” though widely encountered in popular parlance, are strictly speaking category mistakes). Most calendars can be classified as either lunar or solar, depending on whether their chief astronomical principle of organization is the cycle of the Moon’s phases, in which case calendrical months correspond to lunar months, or the annual course of the Sun. In medieval Christian Europe the principal calendar for both civil-administrative and religious-liturgical purposes was the Julian calendar, which belonged to the solar variety. Its chief hallmarks included uneven month lengths (28 days for February, 30 days for April, June, September, and November, 31 days for the seven remaining months) and the use of intercalation to adjust the average calendar year to a solar year of 365 ¼ days. To this end, the Julian calendar extended the length of February from 28 to 29 days in every fourth year. Medieval sources refer to the Julian leap day as “bissextile day” (dies bissextilis), because its insertion was conceived of as the doubling of the sixth day before the Kalends of March (24 February in a common year). In addition to the Julian calendar, the medieval Church relied on a cyclical lunar calendar, the primary purpose of which was the calculation of the date of Easter and other mobile feast days. In high and late medieval written calendars (kalendaria) this lunar component was standardly represented by the Golden Number or numerus aureus, which indicated the year in a 19-year lunar cycle in which a given date of the Julian calendar would become the occasion of a new moon. The practice or method of calendrical lunar reckoning was known as computus, which was at the same time the common term used to describe books and texts dedicated to the rules of the calendar and other aspects of astronomical time reckoning. Calendars, by virtue of their cyclical nature, make it possible to conceive of a given day as a recurrent phenomenon and thereby provide a basis for imbuing it with special significance. Calendar dates can draw their significance from the past https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-033

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events that occurred on them, from religious or other types of public festivals, or from more general distinctions of days according to their lucky/propitious/favourable and unlucky/unfavourable/ominous character. The ancient practice of distinguishing or identifying propitious days in a calendar is sometimes referred to as “hemerology” (from the Greek hémera, “day”), although this term has also been applied to the study of calendars more generally. In the context of the European Middle Ages, the term “hemerological prognostic” may be used to designate those texts and practices that use the date in the Julian calendar as the sole criterion for prediction or advice. Hemerological prognostication must be distinguished from related practices that instead pay attention to the age of the Moon, which is calendrical only in so far as lunar calendars may be, but are not necessarily, involved in the determination. Apart from hemerological and lunar prognostics, medieval sources also attest to various mixed forms, which may for example use the occurrence of weather phenomena on particular calendar dates as the basis for predicting their character or outcome. I shall refer to these types of prognostic as “semi-hemerological” in what follows. Another system of counting days that is often encountered in the context of calendrical reckoning is the seven-day week or hebdomadal cycle, which has a dual origin in Judaeo-Christian religious tradition and ancient astrology. Although strictly speaking not a calendar itself, the week was very closely associated with the medieval ecclesiastical calendar and for this reason played an important role in the literature on the computus. It was also put to a variety of prognostic uses, which is why “hebdomadal” (as opposed to hemerological) prognostics will be among the types considered below. Aspects of time reckoning that fall outside the scope of calendar-based prognostication include those involving the sub-division of days into smaller units such as hours, minutes, seconds etc. They will be ignored in what follows for being the remit not of calendars, but of chronometry, horology, and mathematical astronomy.

Written Sources and Artifacts It should come as no surprise that the most common extant source type for the medieval practice of hemerological prognostication are the calendars themselves, which represent one of the predominant written genres of medieval Europe (↗ Nothaft, Calendars and Tables Western Christian World). Calendars can often be found at the start of breviaries, missals, psalters, martyrologies, and books of hours, but also as part of larger collections of computistical works and in manuscripts devoted to astronomy and other mathematical sciences. The kalendarium was a tabular list of the 365 days grouped according to the twelve months of the Julian year. In the most typical layout, one month took up an entire manuscript page, with the result that calendars usually occupy twelve pages per codex, to which could be added further pages of instructions and auxiliary tables. The first line of each month typically featured a brief sequence



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Fig. 25: Kalendarium (1–20 April), Prüm Abbey, saec. IX2/3 (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. Phillipps 1869, fol. 3v). Photo credits: Bibliotheca Laureshamensis - digital (http://bibliotheca-­ laureshamensis-digital.de/view/ sbb-pk_msphillipps1869/0010).

of letters in enlarged and oftentimes rubricated script: KAL or KL for kalendae, which in the ancient Roman system of counting the days designate the first day of the month (hence the name kalendarium). By the early ninth century, the vertical sequence of days was frequently flanked by additional columns of numbers or letters, which could be used to track the position or phase of the Moon or the day of the week. The remaining space on a calendar page served to endow the individual dates with significance by assigning to them saints, martyrs, and ecclesiastical feasts. A second class of such entries, sometimes offset from the first, provided additional information of computistical, astronomical, meteorological, or seasonal relevance (see Fig. 25). Among the latter class one standardly finds lucky or unlucky days, in particular the so-called Egyptian Days (see below). The theory behind the ecclesiastical calendar, its history, etymology, and astronomical foundations were expounded in computistical handbooks, the most influential of which was the Venerable Bede’s De temporum ratione, written in Northumbria in 725 (↗ Nothaft, Calendars and Tables Western Christian World). Bede’s doctrines became canonical for all of Latin Europe thanks to the standardization of computus during the Carolingian period, which was characterized by the production of extended computistical anthologies. The creators of such anthologies sought to synthesize the available techniques and background information in a comprehensive and didac-

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tically serviceable manner. At the same time, they regularly expanded the topic to include sections on astronomy and cosmology, thus transforming the computus into a general repository of nature knowledge. Computus manuscripts of this type may feature various types of prognostics, including lunaries and semi-hemerological or hebdomadal schemes such as the “Sphere of Life and Death” or the Revelatio Esdrae. The transfer of such prognostic texts into the vernacular enjoyed an unusually early start in Anglo-Saxon England, where monastic anthologies produced during the eleventh and twelfth centuries came to include Old English versions of texts on the Dog Days, Egyptian days, lunaries, sunshine prognostics, or wind prognostics, to name but a few relevant examples. In the late medieval period, texts devoted to (semi-)hemerological prognostication found a new home in astro-medical (or “iatromathematical”) compendia or “almanacs”, whose centrepiece was often provided by astronomically enhanced calendars and related computational tables devoted to solar, lunar, or planetary data (↗ Nothaft, Calendars and Tables Western Christian World). Examples of this general trend include a family of manuscripts in the German vernacular known as the Volkskalender, which originated in ca. 1405 and came to be integrated into larger collections of astrological and divinatory texts addressed to the needs of a lay audience. These so-called “house books” (Hausbücher) offered a comprehensive source of advice on daily regimen, hygiene, bloodletting, and other forms of activity, drawing both on medical astrology and widely known prognostic texts. A more individual testimony to the use of prognostic knowledge in this period is the personal notebook of the Venetian mariner Michael of Rhodes (ca. 1434–36), whose contents include lists of the dangerous days of the year and the daily rising of stars influencing the sea, but also Easter and lunar tables, signs of the zodiac, and a bloodletting lunary.

Techniques and Manifestations By far the most widespread way of putting calendars to prognostic use was to identify particular dates as dangerous, unlucky, or unfit for certain activities such as phlebotomy or the intake of medicine. Unlucky days of this type could be referred to by a variety of names, for instance dies aegri or dies mali, the latter being at the root of the English adjective “dismal”. The dominant medieval class of unlucky days were the Egyptian Days (dies Aegyptiaci), of which there were normally two per month, or 24 per year. The most widely attested pairings of Egyptian Days are 1 and 25 January, 4 and 26 February, 1 and 28 March, 10 and 20 April, 3 and 25 May, 10 and 16 June, 13 and 22 July, 1 and 30 August, 3 and 21 September, 3 and 22 October, 5 and 28 November, 7 and 22 December. These dates are encountered primarily as entries in calendars, although separate lists, often versified, were also produced. The most common metrical text on the topic started with the line Iani prima dies et septima fine timetur



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(“The first day of Janus and the seventh from the end are feared”), thus identifying 1 January and 25 January as Egyptian Days. Besides the frequently expressed view that one should avoid bleeding a patient on an Egyptian Day (or during a particular hour of it), or that these days spelled bad news for those who fell sick of them, m ­ edieval sources also offer more wide-ranging instructions that advise against activities such as planting, selling, or taming animals. A category of days that must be distinguished from the 24 Egyptian days, although they were usually referred to by the same label, is that of three “critical” Mondays in a year (e.  g. the first in August and the last in December), which were supposed to constitute a grave danger to those who took ­medicine, bled themselves, or ate gooseflesh on them. The flipside to such malicious days is represented by a tradition encountered in eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, which proclaims three days in a year on which only male children are born, with incorruptible bodies. Egyptian Days lacked any technical rationale that would have made it possible to reconstruct their “correct” dates against a faulty text, a circumstance that exacerbated the great variety exhibited by medieval manuscripts. They differed in this regard from the so-called Dog Days (dies caniculares), which were associated with the hottest days of summer, generally starting with the heliacal rising of the Dog Star (Sirius in Canis Major or, alternatively, Procyon in Canis Minor) in mid-to-late July and ending in late August or early September. The extreme temperature on these days was believed to render them dangerous to human health and unsuitable for bloodletting. While the Dog Days represented a fixed range of dates in the Julian year and can hence be classified among the hemerological types of prognostics, the same does not hold true for other techniques of distinguishing days according to their favourable or unfavourable character. An example of calendrical mobility are the “critical days” (dies critici) in the development of a fever, which according to Galen were governed by a medicinal month of 26 days and 22 hours. Galen’s month aligned neither with the length of the synodic lunar month (of somewhat more than 29 ½ days) nor with the months in the Julian calendar, which did not prevent individual lists of critical days or other astrologically determined unhealthy days from being replicated and treated as annually recurring. The schemes mentioned so far must be distinguished from semi-hemerological prognostics, where the date in the Julian calendar is combined with some non-calendrical parameter. Prominent among these are two types of prognostics based on the Twelve Days of Christmas, i.  e. the period between Christmas Eve and Epiphany (25 December to 5 January). One class, which makes predictions based on the occurrence of wind on the Twelve Days, tends to draw negative predictions from these correlations. The other uses sunshine as the non-calendrical criterion and draws more positive conclusions, presaging for example an abundance of milk, leaves, and produce. A unique feature of these sunshine prognostics is their emphasis on metallic resources such as gold and the likelihood of their discovery in certain years. More tenuously connected to the calendar were the so-called brontologies, which made predictions

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based on the occurrence of thunder and some other parameter (↗ Grünbart, Importance of Thunder). The latter can be the day of the week or the month in which thunder is heard, for instance: “If there is thunder in the month of March, it is to be feared, because mortality or judgement is to be expected from it” (Liuzza 2004, 8). Yet other texts from this genre, in particular ones circulating on the British Isles, use the hour of the day or the direction from which thunder is heard and hence fall outside the purview of semi-hemerological prognostication. A key source for the early insular tradition of brontologies is the De tonitruis libellus ad Herefridum, which represents the Latin translation of a lost Gaelic text, made no later than the first half of the eleventh century. Of the different types of hebdomadal prognostics that appear in medieval manuscripts, the one that enjoyed the greatest dissemination carries the title Revelatio (or Supputatio) Esdrae. It makes general statements regarding a given year’s meteorological, agricultural, and political events in dependence on the day of the week on which New Year’s Day (1 January) falls. If, for instance, 1 January coincides with a Sunday, “it will make a warm winter, a humid spring, a windy autumn; good crops, an abundance of herbs; there will be enough honey, good vintages, fruitful beans, garden crops; youths will die, there will be battle and great thefts; something new will be heard about kings or leaders” (Matter 1982, 378). The same principle could be applied to Christmas, which will always be the same day of the week as the following 1 January. Other hebdomadal prognostics make judgments on the infants born on a given weekday, often by considering the hour or part of the day during which the birth takes places. The seven-day week also plays a role in some versions of the widely copied prognostic scheme known as Sphere of Life and Death (see Fig. 26), where a numerical value assigned to the current day of the planetary week may be combined with further values derived from the age of the Moon and the letters in a person’s name in an effort to determine the outcome of an illness. Predicting the weekday of 1 January (or any other date) for any year past or future was a skill commonly taught in texts on the computus, which employed for this purpose a 28-year cycle also known as the solar cycle. This cycle was predicated on the fact that the 365 days of the ordinary Julian year comprise exactly 52 weeks + 1 day. Multiplying this surplus by the seven days of the week and the four years of the Julian leap-year cycle yields a cycle of 4 × 7 = 28 years, after which the coincidences of calendar dates and weekdays will return in the exact same order. The other cycle medieval computists standardly discussed in their writings was the cyclus decemnovenalis or 19-year cycle, which governed the shifting relation between the Julian calendar and the phases of the Moon. Although initially created to identify only a single lunar parameter, the so-called terminus paschalis for finding the date of Easter Sunday, this cycle could be expanded and fleshed out to create a full-scale lunar calendar, which mapped out the age of the Moon for any given day of the Julian calendar over a period of 19 years. The relevance of such computational techniques to prognostication consists in their applicability to lunaries and other prognostic genres



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Fig. 26: Sphere of Life and Death, England, saec. XIIin (Los Angeles, Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig XII.5, fol. 47v). Photo credits: Getty's Open Content Program.

that use the age of the Moon as their main criterion. A lunary (lunarium or lunare) is a prognostic text in list form that comments on the outcomes associated with each of the 30 days that make up the maximum period from one new moon to another. Of the various types of lunaries widely attested in medieval Latin and vernacular sources, the four most common ones deal with (1) the outcome of a disease, (2) the days favourable or unfavourable for bloodletting, (3) the character and destiny of a newly born child, and (4) dream interpretation. In addition to the “specific” lunaries devoted to only one type of prediction or outcome, medieval manuscripts also feature complex or “collective” lunaries, which combine the topics ordinarily dealt with in the former, but add further instructions pertaining to activities such as travel, trade, the possible return of a fugitive, or the prospect of retrieving lost objects. In addition, lunaries of this type may note which biblical character was born on the day of the Moon in question, placing Adam on the first, Eve on the second etc. A phenomenon independent of the standard lunaries and closer in spirit to the Egyptian Days was the identification of up to five days for each lunation of the year (identified according to the corresponding Julian month) that were supposed to be harmful or dangerous for certain activities.

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Next to the age of the Moon, other lunar parameters that could be used for prognostic purposes were the Moon’s position in one of the 28 lunar mansions or its position in the zodiac. Although zodiacal lunar prognostication does not appear to have been very widespread before the twelfth century, computistical writers as early as the Venerable Bede offered techniques to calculate the Moon’s position in relation to that of the Sun, for instance by assigning “sidereal” lunar letters from A to O to individual days in the Julian calendar. Computational schemes more openly geared towards prognostication became common from the thirteenth century onwards, once it had become customary to decide the right or inappropriate moment for letting blood from a particular body part by reference to the Moon’s zodiacal position. Among the visual manifestations of this custom is the inclusion in late medieval calendrical codices of tables that indicate the “place of the Moon” (locus lunae) as a function of its age. Another is the frequent occurrence of the “Zodiac man”, a drawing or diagram that showed the correlations between the twelve signs and the various regions of the human body.

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts The human habit of distinguishing lucky and unlucky days in the calendar has a long history, which in the case of Babylon and Egypt can be traced back to the second millennium BCE. One practice especially characteristic of ancient Rome was to assign ominous qualities to dates that had been, or were thought to have been, the occasion of historical disasters. Examples include the dies Alliensis on the 15th day before the Kalends of Sextilis (18 July in the proleptic Julian calendar), which was the anniversary of the catastrophic Roman defeat at the hands of a Gallic tribe in 390 BCE. No such historical backstories can plausibly explain the origin of the Egyptian Days or dies Aegyptiaci, whose observance is first attested in late antiquity. According to his biographer Marinus of Neapolis, the fifth-century Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus was “more careful in observing the unlucky days of the Egyptians than they are themselves” (Vita Procli, c. 19). In spite of the name, however, there is no firm historical connection between the Egyptian Days known to post-classical writers such as Marinus and the unlucky days actually observed by ancient Egyptians, of which there could be up to 15 per month. Instead, they show a close affinity with the Roman dies postriduani, i.  e. the days following the Kalends, Nones, and Ides of each month, which in imperial Rome were treated as unlucky or “dark” days (dies atri). According to an etymology that is first attested in the eleventh century, the term “Egyptian” relates to the Greek work for “darkness”, which would suggest a link to the Roman dies atri. The early-twelfth century encyclopaedist Honorius Augustodunensis (Imago mundi 2.109) asserted that the unlucky days had been discovered by the Egyptian themselves, adding that they were also called “dark” (tenebrosi) for the way they led the incautious astray and towards death.



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The medieval tradition of marking Egyptian Days in the calendar has its most important late antique precedent in the fourth-century Calendar of Filocalus (354 CE), which already lists two dies Aegyptiaci per month, plus an additional day for January (2 January). Following their (re)introduction into Latin kalendaria prior to 800 CE, the Egyptian Days gave rise to various metrical texts geared towards memorizing their dates, among them the Versus de diebus aegyptiacis composed by Hucbald of Saint-Armand (d. 930). By the thirteenth-century such aide-mémoires had come to include schemes of alphanumerical substitution, which made it possible to codify the whole set of Egyptian Days and their corresponding harmful hours in a concise verse sequence of no more than 150 characters. This was the case with the set of verses starting Armis gunfe, which makes its first appearance in the computistical treatise De anni ratione written by John of Sacrobosco ca. 1232, and which enjoyed a wide dissemination in subsequent decades and centuries. Most of the individual hemerological, semi-hemerological, and hebdomadal prognostics known from the Middle Ages have not received enough attention to allow for precise conclusions about the history of their transmission across the entire period. Among the notable exceptions is the Revelatio or Supputatio Esdrae based on the weekday of 1 January, which resembles a prognostic scheme already known to the seventh-century Coptic chronicler John of Nikiu. In contrast to the anonymous nature of most texts of this kind, the extant medieval manuscripts of the Revelatio regularly attribute it to Ezra, the Old Testament priest and scribe. Following its introduction into Latin Europe during or prior to the eighth century the text spawned a great number vernacular versions, starting with Old English in the eleventh century. A census published by DiTommaso (2010, 20–33) lists a minimum of 287 extant Western manuscripts, among them renderings into Greek, Romanian, Georgian, Old and Middle English, French, Provençal, Anglo-Norman, Italian, German, and Czech. Early modern versions of the Revelatio tend to omit the original attribution to Esdras, who in English vernacular renditions eventually turned into “Erra Pater,” supposedly a Jewish astronomer and physician born in Bethany, Judea. A roughly similar picture can be painted for the transmission of lunaries, many of which carry an ascription to some biblical figure, in particular the prophet Daniel. Lunaries devoted to nativities or bloodletting are first attested in eighth-century Latin manuscripts, but the parallel existence of such texts in later Greek manuscripts once again points to a transmission to Europe from the East, with Mesopotamia as the place of ultimate origin. The longevity of this genre, which is attested in over 250 manuscripts in Latin alone, was helped by the universal applicability of the 30 days of the lunar month, which could be appealed to independently of any specific calendar system. The physical proximity in some manuscripts between lunaries and material devoted to the ecclesiastical lunar computus would seem to indicate a functional nexus, although this is not normally made explicit in the lunaries themselves. Schemes for calculating the age of the Moon on any day of the Julian calendar can be traced back at least to the eighth century, as manifest in the works of the Venerable

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Bede, whereas tabular representations of a full-scale lunar cycle calendar first appear at the start of the ninth century. Whatever initial purchase the computus may have had on lunar prognostication was weakened over time by the diminishing accuracy of the ecclesiastical lunar calendar, whose dates gradually slipped away from the observable phases of the Moon, at a rate of approximately one day in three centuries. The resulting mismatch became especially conspicuous during eclipses of the Sun and Moon, which were understood to mark the moments of conjunction and opposition. By the end of the eleventh century, the discrepancy had reached 2–3 days, motivating some computists to seek improvements or modifications of their traditional calendrical tools. This gave rise to a system of computational techniques known as computus naturalis, which was driven by the ideal of calculating the age of the Moon “according to nature”. According to the late-eleventh century astronomer Walcher of Malvern, the main reason for attempting such a revision was to track the effects that the change in the Moon’s waxing and waning had “on human action, as it does in medical practice” (Nothaft 2017, 95). This quote suggests that lunar prognostication may have influenced attempts to improve computational schemes. Yet while it is conspicuous that the emergence of computus naturalis in the eleventh century coincides with a growing number of extant prognostic sources, especially in the Old English vernacular, the precise degree to which computus and lunar prognostication may have been interconnected in this period remains unknown. With the introduction of mathematical astronomy from Greek and Arabic sources during the twelfth century, the computational basis for lunar prognostication began to switch from the ecclesiastical computus to astronomical tables for the Sun and Moon as well as to astronomically enhanced calendars, which replaced or supplemented the traditional Golden Number with more accurately calculated new moon times. Calendars of the latter type became especially popular around 1290, starting with the Kalendarium of Peter Nightingale (or Petrus de Dacia), copies of which often attracted astrological, astro-medical, and other prognostic material (↗ Nothaft, Calendars and Tables Western Christian World). Among the target audiences of such calendar-almanacs were physicians and other practitioners of medicine, who sometimes included lunaries in their vademecum manuscripts. In the course of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries medical anthologies came to replace the monastic computus codex as the chief meeting ground for calendrical reckoning and prognostication. The widening lay audience for material of this kind is best exemplified by the German astro-medical compendia sometimes known as Hausbücher, many of which were prefaced by extended calendrical-chronological sections. Prognostics that had already been a hallmark of eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon collections reappear with little variation in these German manuscripts, as when the Tübinger Hausbuch, a richly illustrated codex from the third quarter of the fifteenth century (MS Tübingen, Universitätsbibliothek, Md 2), offers advice based on the weekday of Christmas (fols 25rb–26va) and 1 January (26va–28ra) and the weekday on which thunder is heard (28va–29rb).



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Medieval Classifications and Discussions In common with most forms of prognostication, the observance of lucky and unlucky days was not condoned by patristic authorities such as Ambrose and Augustine, both of whom ridiculed or denounced the practice in their writings. Augustine, in his commentary on Paul’s epistle to the Galatians (35.1–3), referred to the “superstitious observance of times” as posing “so great a danger to the soul that the Apostle has added at this point: I fear I may have laboured over you in vain (Gal. 4:11)” (Plummer 2003, 187). As a specific example he mentioned those who warn others “against starting work on a building or other structure on one of the days they call ‘Egyptian’  ” (Plummer 2003, 187). Augustine’s repeated criticism of such practices came to influence the medieval canon law, which took a harsh stance on divination of any kind. The twelfth-century Decretum of Gratian (pars II, causa 26, q. 7, c. 16) admonished those who had become guilty of observing Egyptian Days or New Year’s Day to do penance in order for them to be reconciled to God. It is evident, however, that such injunctions against the active observance of Egyptian Days did not inhibit their inclusion in calendars, which continued unabated throughout the Middle Ages, indicating that the Church’s policy towards this and other forms of calendrical “superstition” was on the whole a relatively tolerant one. Although frequently copied or invoked, both as part of calendars and in separate lists, the degree to which the Egyptian Days were observed in practice remains uncertain. A possible literary allusion to their influence appears in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Nun’s Priest Tale, provided the calamity that befell the rooster Chauntecleer was exacerbated by the fact that he purged himself with laxatives and herbs on the “Egyptian” 3rd of March. Similarly, medieval historians may occasionally point out the coincidence of some event with an unlucky day, as when Rolandino of Padua noted that a less than successful expedition of the Paduan army in the year 1236 began on 3 October (Cronica Marchie Trivixane 3.9; Rerum Italicarum Scriptores VIII.1, 47). Even in such cases, however, mentioning an Egyptian Day was not necessarily the same as to acknowledge its causal efficacy. A certain degree of scepticism is detectable in the Historia rerum Anglicarum (4.1) written in the late-twelfth century by William of Newburgh, who noted that the archbishop of Canterbury crowned the English king Richard I (1189–1199) on 3 September, “a day which, from the ancient superstition of the Gentiles, is called Evil, or Egyptian”. William nevertheless went on to note that the day in question proved fatal for the Jews of England, who were stricken by anti-Jewish riots in London at the time of the coronation, turning England into a modern counterpart of Pharaoh’s Egypt. One factor that may have hampered the acceptance of Egyptian Days among the learned was their lack of obvious grounding in acknowledged natural philosophy, which set them apart from other prognostic types such as lunaries or the Dog Days. The latter were tied to events in nature, i.  e. the rising of Sirius and the meteorological patterns associated with the weeks of late summer, whereas the designation of two

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calendar dates per month as dismal or unlucky lacked a discernible rationale and hence could appear entirely random. A popular stance vis-à-vis the Egyptian Days was to locate their origins not in the regular workings of nature, but in biblical history. According to a view already developed in the ninth century, the Egyptian Days had entered the calendar as anniversaries of the days on which God’s plagues afflicted the Egyptians in the days of Moses, which implied that there had been more plagues than the ten mentioned in the Book of Exodus. This assumption was made explicit in the popular twelfth-century Historia scholastica by Peter Comestor, who asserted that the plagues omitted from Scripture were “not so devastating and that is why no mention is made of them” (PL 198, col. 1152D). Comestor also emphasized that “it should not be believed that the Egyptians, experienced though they were in astronomy, considered those days as unlucky for starting a task, or a journey or bloodletting” (PL 198, col. 1153A; Chardonnens 2007, 334). A similar disclaimer was put down by Bartholomaeus Anglicus, an encyclopaedist of the mid-thirteenth century, according to whom the Egyptian Days appear in the Church’s calendars “not because something should be left undone on those days more than on others, but so that we be reminded of the miracles of God” (De proprietatibus rerum 9.20; Chardonnens 2007, 334). In all likelihood, such scripturally founded explanations for the Egyptian Days helped safeguard the ongoing practice of inserting their dates in calendars against critics of divination or superstition. In spite of their frequent appearance in calendars since the early Middle Ages, texts devoted to the computus started to pay attention to lucky and unlucky days only in the twelfth century, when the Egyptian Days became the recipients of their own mnemonic rhymes and new theories as to their origins were expressed in writing. John of Sacrobosco, in De anni ratione, affirmed the common view that the Egyptian days had been invented because of the plagues of Egypt, but added to this the claim that “some sacrificed human blood to Pluto on these days. Therefore, it is forbidden that anyone let blood on these days lest he seem to sacrifice to a demon” (Chardonnens 2007, 335). A different account was offered by the roughly contemporary commentator on a Computus ecclesiasticus closely related to Sacrobosco’s work. According to this source, some claimed that the Egyptians had originally regarded the 24 dates as propitious days that were especially suitable for the inception of certain tasks. “Yet since they believed that this happens because of the disposition of the climate or the planets, and not because of divine providence, God perverted [the days] into a bad outcome, because they attributed to the creature that which was the work of the creator. Hence, these days are named in the calendar not because they should be observed, but in order to highlight their unbelief” (MS Cambridge, Pembroke College, 278, fol. 29v). That the Egyptian Days may have originated in ancient astrological theory was also acknowledged by Bonus of Lucca, whose Computus lunaris of 1254 provided most of the material for the computistical portion of Guillaume Durand’s influential Rationale divinorum officiorum (1286). Even though Durand spoke disparagingly of the “lucky or unlucky days that certain astrologers note down,” stating that he would pass them



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over “because the Church prohibits putting any stock in such things” (8.4.21, CCCM 140B, 149), he did devote individual sections to the Egyptian Days (8.4.20) and the Dog Days (8.4.21), thus indicating that these were excluded from forbidden astrological superstitions. Apart from the familiar explanation based on the biblical plagues, Durand found it possible that the Egyptian Days may have originated as the days of harmful constellations discovered by Egyptian astrologers. The attempt, however, to determine these harmful moments by placing them on fixed days in the calendar was rendered futile by the “error in our computus,” i.  e. the incongruence between the 365 ¼ days of the Julian calendar and any of the astronomical cycles the ancient Egyptians might have used. An alternative explanation claimed that the Egyptians had been motivated to observe certain activities on these 24 days because of the beneficial character of the constellations in question. In that case, Christians had every reason to do the opposite and refrain from such activities, “lest the Church be seen to follow their error” (8.4.20, 148).

Selected Bibliography Brévart, Francis B. “The German Volkskalender of the Fifteenth Century.” Speculum 63 (1988): 312–342. Cesario, Marilina. “The Shining of the Sun in the Twelve Nights of Christmas.” Saints and Scholars: New Perspectives on Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture in Honour of Hugh Magennis. Ed. Stuart McWilliams. Cambridge, 2012. 195–212. Cesario, Marilina. “Weather Prognostics in Anglo-Saxon England.” English Studies 93 (2012): 391–426. Cesario, Marilina. “An English Source for a Latin Text? Wind Prognostication in Oxford, Bodleian, Hatton 115 and Ashmole 345.” Studies in Philology 112 (2015): 213–233. Chardonnens, László Sándor. Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, 900–1100: Study and Texts. Leiden, 2007. Chardonnens, László Sándor. “Hemerology in Medieval Europe.” Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China: The Daybook Manuscripts of the Warring States, Qin, and Han. Eds. Donald Harper and Marc Kalinowski. Leiden, 2017. 373–407. Cuissard, Charles. Étude sur les jours égyptiens des calendriers. Lectures et mémoires de l’Académie de Saint-Croix, 5. Orléans, 1882. DiTommaso, Lorenzo. The Book of Daniel and the Apocryphal Daniel Literature. Leiden, 2005. DiTommaso, Lorenzo. “Pseudepigrapha Notes III: 4. Old Testament Pseudepigrapha in the Yale University Manuscript Collection.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 20 (2010): 3–80. Förster, Max. “Die Kleinliteratur des Aberglaubens im Altenglischen.” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, n.s., 10 (1903): 346–358. Förster, Max. “Beiträge zur mittelalterlichen Volkskunde,” pts. I–III, VI–VIII, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, n.s., 20 (1908): 44–52, 296–305; n.s., 21 (1908): 30–46; n.s., 28 (1912): 55–71, 285–308; n.s., 29 (1912): 16–49. Förster, Max. “Die altenglischen Verzeichnisse von Glücks- und Unglückstagen.” Studies in English Philology: Miscellany in Honor of Frederick Klaeber. Eds. Kemp Malone and Martin B. Rudd. Minneapolis, 1929. 258–277.

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Förster, Max. “Vom Fortleben antiker Sammellunare im Englischen und in anderen Volkssprachen.” Anglia 67 (1944): 1–171. Grafton, Anthony, and Noel Swerdlow. “Calendar Dates and Ominous Days in Ancient ­Historiography.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988): 14–42. Keil, Gundolf. “Die verworfenen Tage.” Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin und der ­Naturwissenschaften 41 (1957): 27–58. Hunt, Tony. Writing the Future: Prognostic Texts of Medieval England. Paris, 2013. Juste, David. “Comput et divination chez Abbon de Fleury.” Abbon de Fleury: philosophie, sciences et comput autour de l’an mil. Ed. Barbara Obrist. Paris, 2004. 95–127. Juste, David, and Hilbert Chiu. “The De Tonitruis Attributed to Bede: An Early Medieval Treatise on Divination by Thunder Translated from Irish.” Traditio 68 (2013): 97–124. Liuzza, Roy M. “Anglo-Saxon Prognostics in Context: A Survey and Handlist of Manuscripts.” Anglo-Saxon England 30 (2001): 181–230. Liuzza, Roy M. “What the Thunder Said: Anglo-Saxon Brontologies and the Problem of Sources.” Review of English Studies 55 (2004): 1–23. Liuzza, Roy M. Anglo-Saxon Prognostics: An Edition and Translation of Texts from London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius A.iii. Cambridge, 2011. Long, Pamela O., David McGee, and Alan M. Stahl (eds.). The Book of Michael of Rhodes: A FifteenthCentury Maritime Manuscript. 3 vols. Cambridge, MA, 2009. Matter, E. Ann. “The ‘Revelatio Esdrae’ in Latin and English Traditions.” Revue bénédictine 92 (1982): 376–392. Nothaft, C. Philipp E. Walcher of Malvern: “De lunationibus” and “De Dracone”; Study, Edition, Translation, and Commentary. Turnhout, 2017. Plummer, Eric. Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Notes. Oxford, 2003. Skemer, Don C. “Armis Gunfe: Remembering Egyptian Days.” Traditio 65 (2010): 75–106. Svenberg, Emanuel. De latinska lunaria: text och studier. Gothenburg, 1936. Svenberg, Emmanuel. Lunaria et zodiologia latina. Gothenburg, 1963. Taavitsainen, Irma. Middle English Lunaries: A Study of the Genre. Helsinki, 1988. Weißer, Christoph. Studien zum mittelalterlichen Krankheitslunar: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte laienastrologischer Fachprosa. Pattensen, 1982. Wistrand, Erik. Lunariastudien. Gothenburg, 1942.

Jean Lempire

Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World Definitions and Terminology Time reckoning is a fundamental procedure with regard to the organization of human societies. From a technical perspective, calendars are mathematical systems that were invented to track the periods of time (year, month, day) involved in the major astronomical phenomena. As sun and moon movements cannot be defined (and even less related to each other) by whole numbers, the challenge is to find a system which combines exactness with practicality. Multiple responses have been made to this issue and historical calendars present a variety of patterns (lunar, solar or lunisolar form). The Eastern Roman Empire had a significant number of various calendars (regional practices), and it was not until the sixth century that the Julian calendar became the standard dating system. This calendar is based on the solar tropical year, whose length (365.2422 days) is approximated by an average year lasting 365.25 days. Its main feature is the addition to the 365-day year of an extra day (Latin dies bissextilis, Greek bisexton) every four years (this period is called the “Julian tetraeterid”). Unlike the original Julian year, the Byzantine year began, not in January, but in September. The Greek word hêmerologion, meaning literally “the count of days” and commonly used today to designate a calendar, is attested since ancient times (Herodot, I, 47; Plutarch, Caesar, 59; Ptolemy, Phases, 11) but the simple terms “years” and “months” were far more widely employed; for example “years according to Romans”, “Egyptian years” or “Hebrew months”, respectively designating the Julian, Egyptian and Jewish calendars. Two words were used to name the year: etos for the calendar year, and eniautos indicating more specifically the sun’s revolution around the zodiac. The name of the month, mên, recalls its lunar origin since it was formerly used (in Homer, for instance) to designate the moon itself. The day is usually referred to by the term hêmera but can also be designated by the more technical term nychthêmeron, which means the day-and-night period during which the sun rotates visibly around the Earth. Late Antique and Medieval calendrical practices made extensive use of the significant 19-year and 28-year cycles. These periods of time proved useful tools for predicting dates depending on the moon or sun’s course, and were the roots of the Easter computus, which means the calculation of the moveable date of Easter. The 19-year cycle, or enneakaidekaetêris, is based on the astronomically very close equivalence between 19 solar years and 235 lunations. The combination of this cycle with the Julian calendar yields a period of 6939.75 days, at the end of which the lunar phases (new and full moons) consecutively return https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-034

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to the same Julian dates. Since it facilitates the control and prediction of the moon’s course, the 19-year period is called “the moon cycle” (selênês kyklos). The 28-year cycle, or oktokaieikosaetêris, is the cycle of the weekdays. This periodicity is called “the sun cycle” (hêliou kyklos) because it is built on the sequence of weekdays in the Julian calendar and is therefore ordered by the annual course of the sun (↗ Nothaft, Calendrical Calculations Western Christian World, 606). The modus operandi of both of these cycles is based on a key element, the epact (epaktê [hêmera]), which means “the day to be added”. The number of epacts indicates the age of the moon in days according to a fixed Julian date (“lunar epacts” in the 19-year cycle) or the weekday of the first day of any Julian year (“solar epacts” in the 28-year cycle). The epact is, therefore, the fundamental component of the predictive procedures that relied on these cyclical calendars. The combination of these periods yields a 532-year cycle (28×19) which provides a perpetual calendar for the Easter date. Byzantine datings have extensively used the system of indiction (indiktiôn or epinemêsis). It is a 15-year cycle attributed to Constantine the Great (originally a fiscal period) with a starting point in September 312 CE. Every year of the indictional cycle is numbered from 1 to 15, but the cycle itself is usually not indicated. That is why the indictional datings are commonly followed by a reference to an emperor and/or a world era (for example “indiction 14, year 31 of Heraclius, year 6133 from the Creation” = 640/641 CE). From the reign of Justinian, the use of the indiction in official documents became obligatory (starting in 537 CE; see Justinian, Novella 47). In addition to using calendars as chronological tools based on a cyclical pattern, time reckoning also relies on the system of the era, which numbers the years that have elapsed since a specific starting point. Civil eras usually began with the reign of a king or emperor. The so-called “world eras” numbered the years from the Creation of the world, based on the mystical idea that the length of the world is equivalent to the biblical week of Creation, with a ratio of 1 day = 1,000 years, and that Christ was born in the middle of the sixth millennium. The concept of millenia is important in Byzantium because many eschatological texts are grounded on the fact that the world must last 6,000 years, after which the Sabbatical rest of eternity (end of the world, last judgment) will occur. The Alexandrian era, in which Christ’s birth is commonly placed in the cosmic year 5501, had a commencement corresponding to the year 5492 BCE. The era of Constantinople (the so-called “Byzantine era”), starting in 5509 BCE, is more important for Byzantine documents since it became, from the seventh century, the most widely used. The designation of eras is inextricably linked to their starting points: “years from world creation”, “years from Diocletian”, “years from the divine Incarnation”, and so on.



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Written Sources and Artifacts Byzantine (un)edited texts provide abundant calendrical material, available in varying forms. Calendars often appear in the technical literature, especially that involving the practice of mathematical astronomy and chronology. Greek astronomical texts in particular develop many methods for calendrical conversion. Alexandrian and Byzantine commentators of Ptolemy used to switch from the old Egyptian calendar employed by Ptolemy (in his Almagest or Handy Tables) to the Alexandrian or Julian calendar that was commonly used in their time. The adaptations by Byzantine scholars of foreign (Arabic, Persian, Latin, Jewish) astronomical texts implied also the use of the associated calendars. Treatises drawn up for the Easter date computation and, more generally, the calendrical lunar and solar reckoning (computus literature) extensively used and analyzed calendar cycles. Chronological tables provide important material, focusing on the numerical values of calendars: the purpose of a tabular arrangement is to provide any data matching the entries in the table (contained in the first column). Such practical documents abound in the manuscripts. A relevant calendrical table from the Eastern Late antique world is the Hemerologion of Months of Various Cities which is preserved in early medieval manuscripts dating from the ninth and tenth centuries (MSS Florence Plut. XXVIII.26, Leyden BPG 78 and Vatican gr. 1291). This hemerologion (“count of days” or calendar) provides the equivalence between a dozen ancient local calendars – provinces and cities of the Oriental Mediterranean region – and the Julian calendar (placed in the first column of the table) as of January. In this table, each month takes up an entire manuscript page, with the result that the calendar occupies 12 pages. In the margins of numerous manuscripts, chronological scholia also provide useful evidence of calendar handling by the (mostly anonymous) readers of the texts. These notes frequently deal with the conversion of the calendrical data given in the text to the usual calendar used by the reader. Christian Oriental liturgical books should be noted here. Some of these focus on the fixed dates of the liturgical calendar: tables of scriptural readings arranged according to saints’ days during the months of the year (gr. mênologion); and liturgical books containing fixed-date services in one of the twelve months of the year (gr. mênaion). Other books follow the mobile liturgical year, centered on Easter: a saints’ feasts book (gr. synaxarion), a ceremonial for the Lent period (gr. triôdion), and a postEaster service book (gr. pentêkostarion). Evangeliaries follow the mobile year (temporal cycle) or fixed year (sanctoral cycle, as of September 1st in Byzantium). Unsurprisingly, calendrical prognostication is found in astrological predictions and divinatory notes, and this kind of text claims to announce, fairly precisely, future events. Byzantine astrology particularly flourished and astrological manuscripts provide numerous thematia or horoscopes. Calendrical diversity is attested in this field as, for example, by the Byzantine ephemerides (astronomical tables for each day) for the year 1336 CE. They provide, in the margins of the manuscript in which they are preserved (MS Munich gr. 525), highly attractive predictions for the region

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of Trebizond. Preceded by a themation (horoscope) for March 12 1336, the tables are arranged by month, with Julian and Arabic names, and surrounded by predictions that are distributed according to the decans of the calendar (10-day intervals). One prediction is given for the “Rat year of Tatars” (= 1336–1337 CE) which corresponds to the first year of the 12-year animal cycle of Tatars (Mercier 1994). In addition, these rich ephemerides provide the dates for the moveable Christian feasts for the year. Greek Medieval divinatory notes supply plenty of calendrical prognostications, chiefly affirming which days are unlucky or on which days it is appropriate or not to engage in activities. A whole stream of such texts is attributed to the prophet Ezra. Other pseudo-scientific texts devoted to the interpretation of thunder (brontologia) or earthquakes (seismologia) or presenting weather forecasts include also calendrical predictions. Health and wellness were the subject of intense predictive practices, especially since Galen himself (De diebus criticis) related diseases to the course of the sun and moon. He stated that chronic diseases follow the course of the sun and acute diseases that of the moon, proposing the calculation of a “medical month” based on astral data to predict critical days. The medical-astrological (“iatromathematical”) literature of the Middle Ages includes numerous prognostical instruments, like the “life or death” table (see below). Another genre of medical literature including calendrical data is the iatrosophia (“wisdom of healing”) which contains recipes and therapeutic advice regarding daily medical practice as well as food calendars. Alchemical receipts may also include calendrical information on the number of days within which the alchemical work must be completed. The specific month(s) of the year concerned by the alchemical manipulations can also be stated.

Techniques and Manifestations Calendars and Astronomy Astronomy is recorded in a timeframe and calendars are also applications of mathematical astronomy. On the one hand, the time units (day/night, month, year) derive from the apparent movements of the sun and moon. On the other hand, all astronomical phenomena must be measured over time. Therefore, the astronomical calculation and the tables on which it is based require above all a starting point in time: a precise date for which are known the positions of the sun, moon and the five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). Such a starting date marks the commencement of the “era” used by the astronomer. This information is needed also to measure the amount of time that has elapsed from that origin to any date for which he wants to calculate the astral positions. He uses then a subdivision of time, or periodization, which includes different periods of time, such as cycles of years, simple years, months,



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days, and hours. These so-called “chronological sections” (gr. kephalaia) necessarily imply the use of a calendar. Within the Greek astronomical tradition, the reference for using Ptolemy’s tables (Almagest and Handy Tables) was the ancient Egyptian calendar, the simple and regular structure of which (12 months of 30 days + 5 additional days = 365 days) facilitated the astronomical calculation. The astronomer thus had to convert Ptolemy’s calendrical data into his usual (Alexandrian or Julian) calendar; for example, the conversion of the Egyptian calendar into the Julian one requires the difference between the Egyptian and Julian years to be taken into account (a quarter of a day per year) and the structural discrepancy of the months (Egyptian months = 30 days, Julian months = 28–31 days). In order to avoid this kind of calendrical difficulty, sets of tables were purposefully set out; for instance, the Handy Tables for the sun and moon mean motions and “syzygies” (new and full moons) table of the Almagest were adapted to the Julian calendar and the meridian of Constantinople by the Byzantine scholar Isaac Argyros in about 1367 CE: the 24-year cycle used by Argyros for the chronological sections was slightly imprecise from an astronomical perspective but well reflected the desire to integrate the Julian calendar and its “problematic” leapyear into the astronomical reckoning. The trend of importing foreign astronomical texts into Byzantium allowed astronomers and astrologers to manipulate various other calendars. The Greek adaptations of these texts included rich calendrical material: descriptions or explanations of the calendars in question (Arabic, Persian, Jewish, Egyptian, Coptic, and Mongol) plus numerous tables and methods for date conversion. The Persian tables proved highly successful during the fourteenth century, especially since the Persian calendar, similar to the ancient Egyptian one used by Ptolemy, was very convenient: the most common starting date for the Persian tables was the year 632 CE (“Yezdegerd era”, ↗ Varisco, Calendrical Calculations Islamic World, 644). During the fifteenth century, amateur astronomers had to get used to the more complex Jewish calendar (of the luni-solar type). At this time, indeed, several Jewish treatises were adapted into Greek, these Judeo-Byzantine texts providing technical introductions about calendrical issues. The most original calendar that one can identify in Byzantium history is undoubtedly that of Georgios Gemistos Plethon (1360–1452). Better known as a neo-Platonic philosopher, Plethon developed the original idea of reverting to pagan antiquity. Within this context, he conceived a new calendar that imitated that of the ancient Greeks and Romans (“according to most Greeks and Romans before Caesar”) but with its own festival dates. This calendrical system is briefly explained in Plethon’s Treatise on Laws and especially used in his astronomical treatise. In this luni-solar calendar, the year consists of 12 or 13 lunar months, every month including 29 (a hollow month) or 30 (a full month) days. The day begins at midnight, the month at the new moon, and the year at the new moon following the winter solstice. As they had already been justified by Plutarch (Aetia Romana, 268), these starting points are consistent with nature and mark the return of light to us. Plethon’s astronomical tables were set up for the longitude of Mistra (Peloponnese), stating the astral initial positions for December

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13 1433 (the new moon falling at the winter solstice). The chronological sections are a highly original construction. Indeed, Plethon used the 19-year cycle (well-known in the Easter dating but not in purely astronomical Byzantine texts), which is a feature of the Jewish astronomical tables, and a 497-year period, that is unattested elsewhere. The sections of simple years, months and days comply with the rules of the luni-solar calendar: simple years, consisting of 12 or 13 lunar months, are counted from 1 to 18; the increment of the monthly table is half of a mean lunation (29.5308 days/2); and days are successively counted in the fortnight from 1 to 14 (Tihon 1998). Although a highly original creation, the difficult Plethon’s calendar proved, nevertheless, relatively unsuccessful (see below).

The Variety of Calendrical Practices The Julian calendar was the standard system of the Roman and then Byzantine Empire. Nevertheless, documents like the hemerologia attest to a certain diversity of practices, especially for the period preceeding the Arab conquest (seventh century). The hemerologion of months of various cities thus informs us about particular calendars that were used in various locations within the ancient Roman Eastern Empire: Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Tyre, Arabia, Sidon, Gaza, Ascalon, Heliopolis (Baalbek), Lycia, Cappadocia, Bithynia, Seleucia, Pamphylia of Asia, Ephesus, Cyprus, and Crete. These local calendars varied considerably, depending on the date of the new year, and on the sequence and the length of the months. The hemerologion offers an equivalence with the Julian (“Roman”) calendar as of January 1, as this date corresponds to the Alexandrian date of Tybi 6, to Audynaios 1st of Hellens (Antioch), to Apellaios’ 15th in Tyre, to Audynaios’ 16th of Arabs, to Dios 1st in Sidon and Lycia, to Thorin’s 10th in Heliopolis, etc. In this tabular document, one regularly finds the names (or some graphic variants) of the months of the Macedonian calendar (Hyperberetaios, Dios, Apellaios, Audynaios, Peritios, Dystros, Xanthikos, etc.), which were widespread in the Near East during the Hellenistic period. Originally specific to the ancient Roman Empire, these epichoric calendars were in for a relatively long time, even when they competed with the Julian one (Stern 2012). Besides the calendar as such, the calculation of the world era gave rise to various practices. During the Byzantine seventh century, the traditional Alexandrian reckoning of years (year 1 = 5493/5492 BCE) was challenged by a new calculation of the years, the so-called “Byzantine era” (year 1 = 5509/5508 BCE). There were other numerous reckonings of the years current in Byzantium (eras of astronomical calculation, civil eras of emperors, cities or provinces, world and Christian eras), but these lie outside the framework of our current focus (cyclical calendars). The ancient Greek calendar was revitalized by Byzantine scholars of the Paleologan period, such as George Pachymeres and Theodore Gaza. These humanists replaced the classical names of the Roman (Julian) months with those of the ancient



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Attic months: Hekatombaion, Metageitnion or Lenaion (non-Attic), Boedromion, Maimakterion, Pyanepsion, Anthesterion, Poseideon, etc. Theodore Gaza’s tract On the Months (1470 CE), in which the author furthermore mocks Plethon’s simple designation of the months by their ordinal numbers (PG 19, 1168B), had a considerable influence: his archaic use of the Attic months’ names was taken up in numerous letters and copists’ subscriptions dating to the late-fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The Easter computus The Easter date calculation is based on many calendrical questions that form relevant material called a computus. The main parameters involved are the date of the spring equinox, the “Paschal full moon” which means the 14th lunar day following the spring equinox, and the sequence of the weekdays. Technically, the successive dates of the Paschal full moon (March or April) are provided by the 19-year cycle, an equivalence period between the solar and lunar motions: since the year of 12 lunar months (354 days) is shorter than the solar year by approximately 11 days, the counting of these cumulative 11 differential days (lunar epacts) make it possible to follow the moon’s phases throughout the 19 years of the cycle. As the Easter celebration falls on the Sunday immediately following the Paschal full moon, the calculation finally involves the course of the days of the week. These are controlled by the 28-year cycle, indicating the weekday which begins every year of the cycle and thus the weekday of any day of the same year: the weekday that marks the beginning of the year is signified by the solar epacts, whose number (1–7) expresses the difference in days compared to Sunday (the first day of the week); for instance, a year with one epact begins on a Monday, while one with six epacts starts on a Saturday. In liturgical calendars, the date of Easter controls those of all other moveable feasts which are simply calculated based on their relative position with respect to Easter; for example, the Orthodox Church festival of Apokreo (or kreophagia), which is supposed to be the last day on which meat is eaten until Easter (a festival known in the West as Carnival), is the eighth Sunday before Easter. For all Christians, the Pentecost festival falls, as its name (gr. pentêkostê [hêmera]) suggests, on the 50th day after Easter.

Predicting the Future The prediction of eclipses was an important topic for Byzantine scholars and astronomers. Announcing eclipses was a symbol of intellectual prestige, and it was acknowledged that their prediction was a “fashionable” activity, especially in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Eclipses were subject to highly detailed pronostications, with each phase of the phenomenon (three phases for partial eclipses, five for total eclipses)

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being calculated to the minute. Besides these pure demonstrations of mathematical astronomy, eclipses also had important astrological meanings. They were supposed to announce a baneful event on earth, such as the death of a leader. On a larger scale, from Antiquity, astronomical tables were widely and continually used by astrologers to cast an astral theme (gr. themation) or “horoscope”, which provides in a codified form the positions of sun, moon and the five planets, as well as the 12 “places” of the astrological doctrine, for any given time (the time of a birth, for instance). These astronomical data are the technical elements on which the astrologer then bases his interpretations and predictions. Most of the ancient horoscopes are Greek documents from the first five centuries CE (Neugebauer and van Hoesen 1959; Baccani 1992). Byzantine astrology was also highly dynamic in nature, especially in the field of political horoscopes (Pingree 1973/1976; Pingree and Kazhdan 1991). Lunar prognostication was also a very widespread predictive technique, as one can observe in the texts dealing with the course of the moon in the zodiac (selenodromia). Structured according to the 12 signs of the zodiac, in which the moon is found, these texts offer predictions on various aspects of daily life. An original ancient and medieval prognostical practice is found in the “brontoscopic” calendars or brontologia, which are documents devoted to the interpretation of thunder (gr. brontê; ↗ Grünbart, The Importance of Thunder). In his famous antiquarian treatise “On Celestial Signs” (De Ostentis), John the Lydian (sixth century) reproduced in Greek brontoscopic documents of Etruscan and Roman origin: the monthly predictions depend on the position of the sun or moon in the zodiac while the daily divination is based on the age of the moon (days 1–30) as shown in the “Etruscan brontoscopic calendar”. Byzantine manuscripts present many similar brontologia, some of which are attributed to famous figures such as the prophet David, the prophet Esdras, Hermes Trismegistus or Emperor Heraclius; for example the zodiacal brontologion of the latter comprises two sections. Firstly, the 12 months of the year have an astrological division according to the zodiac pattern (April: 1–2 Aries; 3–4 Taurus; 5–6 Gemini; 7–9 Cancer…26–27 Pisces; 28–30 Aries / May: 1–2 Taurus; 3–4 Gemini; 5–6 Cancer; 7–9 Lion…26–27 Aries; 28–31 Taurus/June: 1–2 Gemini; etc.). Next, beginning in Aries, the horoscopic symbols are related to their brontological omens; for instance: “If Aries thunders, it means that the Orientals will perish and, around the city, there will be many wolves for the ruin and instability of the inhabited world and the loss of bodies; but if there is also an earthquake, it will be fruit-bearing” (MS Paris suppl. gr. 1191). Such standard predictions are very frequent and can be found in other texts interpreting lightning and earthquakes (seismologia): these prognostic texts usually follow the position of the sun or moon in the 12 signs of the zodiac. A different genre relates to weather predictions: “astrometeorological” parapegmata (daily almanacs) describe relevant stellar phases (the annual rising and setting of stars) as well as the weather which is associated to those phases. Ptolemy’s Phases of the Fixed Stars and Collection of Weather Changes, referring to ancient Greek astronomers (Hipparchus, Eudoxus, Callippus, etc.), offers predictions for every day of the



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Alexandrian calendar. The ephemeris of Clodius the Tuscan, reproduced by John the Lydian (De Ostentis), includes a description of the different winds for every day of the 12 Roman months. Excerpts from Lydus’ De Mensibus also provide weather (wind, sun, rain, etc.) predictions. Many Byzantine manuscripts preserve similar parapegmata, that forecast the weather for farmers or sailors, the division of the year (seasons), etc. The rich tenth-century collection of the Geoponica (“agricultural pursuits” in the broadest sense) blends the genders: the first chapter deals with the stars (rising and setting), seasons and winds, and includes prognostications regarding fair or tempestuous weather as well as predictions of events due to thunder (after the rising of Sirius and according to the position of the moon in the zodiac); the third chapter provides a diary in which are recommended the duties for agricultural production in every month of the year. Many manuscripts present texts of a divinatory nature, attributed to the prophet Esdras “to whom God revealed omens (or days)”: predictions based on the weekday (from Sunday to Saturday) on which falls January 1 (MS Paris gr. 2286), similar to the Revelatio or Supputatio Esdrae in the Latin tradition (cf. III.7.a); a calendar of unlucky days (two days per month) starting in September or January (MSS Montecassino 431, Paris gr. 22 and 2286); a similar calendar of conflicting days (MS Paris suppl. gr. 636); and a double calendar of lucky and unlucky days (up to six per month) starting in September (MS Paris gr. 2149). The “Diagnosis of the prophet Esdras concerning sick people” (MS Paris gr. 2992) is a monthly calendar (31 days) which gives, according to the day when the disease is declared, a prognostication regarding its happy or fatal evolution. The same text sometimes appears under the title “Menologe About Life and Death”. Predictive practices are uncountable in the medical field. A frequent prognostic instrument (gr. organon) is the “life or death” (or “useful for life”) table, a short tract attributed to Nechepso-Petosiris (MSS Paris suppl. gr. 446, suppl. gr. 637, gr. 2426) or said to have been copied from an Egyptian book (MS Paris gr. 2992). Its circular diagram should be compared with the similar medical-astrological Sphere of Life and Death and with the Apuleian Sphere that one finds in the Latin tradition. The principle of the “life or death” table, based on numerological criteria, is to combine values calculated based on the letters of the patient’s name and the age of the moon, and transfer the final result to the table, which indicates at what degree (small, medium, large) of life or death the patient is. Food or dietary calendars were also successful in Byzantium, among which the “Cycle of food” of the sophist Hierophilus appears the most complete. This document does not give any drug indication but indicates, month after month (according to the Julian calendar), the foods that should be eaten or abstained from as well as the life practices (hygiene, sleep, physical exercise, sexual practices) to adopt. Hierophilus’ prescriptions end on the constellation that can be observed at the end of the month. The author does not dwell on principles – which date back to Hippocratic theories – but limits himself to practical advice.

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Developments, Historical and Social Contexts The Julian calendar inherited by the Western and Eastern Middle Ages is the Roman calendar that originated from the reform of Julius Caesar in 46 BCE (“Julian tetraeterid”) and the intervention of Augustus in 8 BCE (correction of the intercalation). It has spread less easily in the East than in the West, where it never encountered any obstacles. The cities and provinces of the Near East had their own calendars, which remained in use for a long time in parallel with the Julian calendar. When the Roman Empire became Christian under the reign of Constantine the Great (fourth century), the use of the week (Oriental inheritance transmitted by the Jewish tradition) became widespread. By the mid-fifth century, the weekdays, initially named after a pagan deity (for instance “Zeus’ day”, designating Thursday), were replaced by a simple numbering. Only three days received a special denomination: Sunday (Kyriakê, “Lord’s day”), Friday (Paraskeuê, “preparation”), and Saturday (Sabbaton). From about the fifth century onward, the Byzantine calendar gradually replaced the ancient local calendars, but some, such as the Gaza or Cyprus calendars, were used up until the start of Arab domination (seventh century). Only the Syrian Christian calendar of Antioch, used among others by Eusebius of Caesarea, survived as the official Patriarchate calendar – it is still used today in Syria by Christian communities. The Julian calendar was adopted by the Armenians who needed it, after their conversion to Christianity (fourth century), for the church year. However, they kept for common (civil) use their own solar calendar (a 365-day “mobile” year) which was reformed around 1116 by John the Deacon (the introduction of the leap-year intercalation in a fixed calendar). The Georgians adopted the Julian year under Roman influence: in the seventh century, the ancient names of months that were of pagan origin were replaced by the names of the Roman months, and the beginning of the Georgian year was placed in September, as in Byzantium. The Julian calendar extended also to the Slav nations who had been Christianized by Byzantium. In terms of calendrical calculations, the Eastern Christian world was characterized by a real diversity of practices. The chronology of world history has specifically given rise to many researches guided by a concern for perfect accuracy. After the fundamental works of Panodorus and Annianus of Alexandria (early fifth century), intense activity marked the seventh Byzantine century, the reign of Heraclius (610– 641) in particular. At that time, the Byzantine Empire had an eventful history (war and victory over the Persians followed by the Arab conquests, religious polemics), and several documents (cf. Part 3: Repertoire) reflect chronological preoccupations. It appears that the debates around the nature of Christ (the monothelism controversy) provoked a particular interest in the human life of Christ, and that the enquiry on the messianic chronology (Passion and Resurrection dates) had repercussions for the Easter computus and the world eras. In any case, various calculation methods were then proposed to determine the Easter date. The traditional world chronology of Alexandria was also gradually starting to compete with the new Byzantine era: this system



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was built more on historicizing Christ’s chronology and had the practical benefit of corresponding with the 15-year civil cycle of the indiction; it became the most widely-used means of dating in Byzantium. However, the Alexandrian era continued to be used, especially in monastic milieus, during the iconoclastic period (George the Synkellos, Theophanes the Confessor) and again in the eleventh century (Typikon of the Evergetis Monastery). Byzantium’s frequent contact with foreign nations also had an impact on the diversity of the calendars circulating there. Concerning predictive practices, Byzantine astrology had an undeniable Oriental influence, due to its both Chaldean and Egyptian origins  – it is tempting to relate also the medical-astrological prognosis attributed to Nechepso-Petosiris to the Egyptian tradition  – and by the reputation for excellence in this field of their Arab and Persian neighbours. It was from the eleventh century onward that Byzantium became exposed to Arabic influence, the Empire having particularly frequent contact with Fatimid Egypt. The eleventh and twelfth centuries texts show that Byzantine scholars had access to the knowledge of Arab physicians and astronomers – the polymath Symeon Seth (ca. 1035 – ca. 1110) was the great figure who characterized this movement of introducing the novelties of Arabic thought into Byzantine culture. At this time, the adaptation of Arabic astronomical tables (those of Ibn al-Aʽlam) implied knowledge of the calendar associated with them. Arabic influence is also found in astrology (thematia), which was an area of keen interest in Byzantium in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, including in ecclesiastical milieus. During the Paleologan period (1261–1453) foreign astronomical tables, carrying with them methods of calendar conversion, were widely circulated in Byzantium. Thus, the use of Persian and Jewish calendars left many traces in a series of fourteenth and fifteenth century manuscripts. Around 1380, Demetrios Chrysoloras also created a Byzantine adaptation of Latin astronomical tables: several manuscript scholia suggest that Latin astronomy entered Byzantium via the island of Cyprus (at that time ruled by the French Lusignan family). This diversity in astronomy and calendar practices shows how Byzantium was, at that time, a real crossroads of influences between East and West.

Medieval Classifications and Discussions Astronomy and astrology have been widely practiced in Byzantium. Although closely related, they were regarded as two distinct astral sciences: astronomy was the calculation of celestial phenomena, with astrology its interpretation. This distinction dates back to Ptolemy himself, who exposed his astronomical system in the Almagest and reserved his Tetrabiblos for astrology. Even if, initially, astrology was strongly condemned by the Fathers of the Church (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa), the attitude of the emperors and Church toward it was variable, and astrologers gener-

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ally took advantage of a certain tolerance. In the sixth century, when Justinian significantly legislated against astrologers who claimed to predict the future (Procopius, Anecdota, XI, 37), John the Lydian made it clear in his treatise on Celestial Signs that these did not cause events but merely prefigured them, as expressions of divine providence (pronoia) – the biblical tradition was actually not offensive to the stars and heavenly phenomena, since they were present in the Old and New Testaments, indicating negative and positive developments. This argument, frequently repeated subsequently, transformed astrology into a legitimate subject of study and reconciled it with Christian thought. Under Heraclius (seventh century), astrology seems to have acquired an important political dimension. The emperor who ardently sought to defend it was Manuel I Komnenos (twelfth century) whose apology of astrology, testifying to the seriousness of the intellectual claims of the Byzantine astrologers, caused a fierce controversy. During the Paleologan period, many Byzantine scholars opted for a soft, reasoned astrology. Byzantine astrological texts essentially tend to show that astrology was more a practical reality than a theory that distinguished itself through the services it could offer (Magdalino 2006). Ecclesiastical chronology, especially the Easter computus, also provoked in-depth discussions throughout Byzantine history, and even later if one thinks of the controversies aroused in the Orthodox world by the reform of the calendar by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. The discordance from the later second century around the date of Easter led, after the Council of Nicaea (325 CE), to compromises between the Churches of Rome and Alexandria and, finally, to the decision to rely on the Alexandrian 19-year cycle. In the seventh century, the chronological systems and methods of Paschal computation were extensively discussed in Byzantium. In the fourteenth century, when the precision of the traditional computus had been strongly altered by time, the Easter date once again became the subject of intense debate. Indeed, the dates of the Paschal full moon stated in the Easter tables had slowly drawn back from the real full moons, and the date of March 21, fixed in the past (on the basis of Ptolemy’s value of the tropic solar year) for the spring equinox, no longer coincided with the astronomical phenomenon. Several Byzantine scholars then each composed a Paschal treatise, in which the exactitude of the 19-year cycle and the spring equinox time were questioned, but these scholars diverged regarding which course to take. While Barlaam of Seminara advised that the usual Paschal canon should remain unchanged, his opponent, Nicephorus Gregoras, proposed to Andronikos II a reform which the emperor praised but which he finally decided not to apply for fear that greater confusion and division would result within the Church (Nicephorus Gregoras, Historia VIII, 13). Matthew Blastares also wrote a chapter in which he presented the calendrical problems of the classical computus. Isaac Argyros (a disciple of Gregoras) more accurately questioned the traditional Paschal canon but did not claim to introduce anything new, well aware of the troubles that such a change might produce. Nicholas Rhabdas devised a short method of paschal calculation whose purpose was to avoid taking into account the legal (Jewish) Passover. The work of these scholars did not, therefore, lead to real



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innovation, but these discussions must be considered as important efforts foreshadowing, more than two centuries before, the Gregorian reform of the calendar (1582). In the late-fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, many copyists of manuscripts had the fantasy of dating their work by the Attic months. Such a practice is not unlike Plethon’s original attempt to create a calendar inspired by pagan Antiquity, in view of the affiliation between the Byzantines and the Ancient Greeks. In a humanist context, this tendency toward “antiquarianism” is laudable but, in fact, raised several practical objections. Plethon’s calendar was inadequate, therefore, since, firmly focused on the revival of Antiquity, he failed to relate his chronological system to the usual calendar of the time, the Julian one. Cardinal Bessarion, a former student of Plethon who was well-known for his interest in astronomy, wrote to him about this unusual aspect: “We can’t use the astronomical treatise you wrote. Indeed, we don’t calculate continuously and consecutively as you do, and can know neither the end of the previous year nor the commencement of the next one […]. Please send me this information and offer me a method for finding it.” Plethon immediately responded to Bessarion’s request by providing a more practical explanation and revised tables but, apart from Bessarion’s calculations, Plethon’s system suffered due to being outdated.

Selected Bibliography Baccani, Donata. Oroscopi greci: documentazione papirologica. Messina, 1992. Bandy, Anastasius C. The Works of Ioannes Lydus, vol. 1–4. Lewiston, 2013. Bouché-Leclercq, Auguste. L’astrologie grecque. Paris, 1899. 363–364. Delacenserie, Emerance. “Le traité de diététique de Hiérophile.” Byzantion 84 (2014): 81–103. Grafton, Anthony T., and Noel M. Swerdlow. “Calendar Dates and Ominous Dates in Ancient Historiography.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988): 14–42. Grumel, Venance. La chronologie. Paris, 1958. Kuzenkov, Pavel. “Correction of the Easter Computus: Heresy or Necessity? Fourteenth Century Byzantine Forerunners of the Gregorian Reform.” Orthodoxy and Heresy in Byzantium. Eds. Antonio Rigo and Pavel Ermilov. Rome, 2010. 147–158. Lehoux, Daryn. Astronomy, Weather, and Calendars in the Ancient World. Cambridge, 2007. Magdalino, Paul. L’orthodoxie des astrologues: la science entre le dogme et la divination à Byzance (VIIe–XIVe siècle). Paris, 2006. Mercier, Raymond. An Almanac for Trebizond For the Year 1336. Louvain-la-Neuve, 1994. Mosshammer, Alden A. The Easter Computus and the Origins of the Christian Era. Oxford, 2008. Neugebauer, Otto, and Henry B. Van Hoesen. Greek Horoscopes. Philadelphia, 1959. Noret, Jacques. “Ménologes, synaxaires, ménées. Essai de clarification d’une terminologie.” Analecta Bollandiana 86 (1968): 21–24. Pingree, David. “The Horoscope of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 27 (1973): 217, 219–231. Pingree, David. “Political Horoscopes from the Reign of Zeno.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 30 (1976): 133, 135–150. Pingree, David, and Alexander Kazhdan. “Astrology.” The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, vol. 1. New York and Oxford, 1991. 214–216.

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 Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages: Calendrical Calculations

Stern, Sacha. Calendars in Antiquity: Empires, States, and Societies. Oxford, 2012. Tihon, Anne. “The Astronomy of George Gemistos Plethon.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 29 (1998): 109–116. Tihon, Anne. “Numeracy and Science.” The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies. Oxford, 2008. 803–819. Tihon, Anne. “Les sciences exactes à Byzance.” Byzantion 79 (2009): 380–434. Turfa, Jean M. Divining the Etruscan World. The Brontoscopic Calendar and Religious Practice. Cambridge, 2012. Worp, Klaas A. “Remarks on Weekdays in Late Antiquity Occurring in Documentary Sources.” Tyche 6 (1991): 221–230.

Ortal-Paz Saar

Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World The notion that every day of the week, month, or year contains intrinsic qualities, which influence the outcome of any actions undertaken therein, dates back over several millennia. Egyptian calendars from the New Kingdom mention the lucky or unlucky character of every single day and its constituent parts (Leitz 1994); ancient Mesopotamian texts specify which dates are suitable for which action (Livingstone 2014); and Greek and Roman authors relate the qualities of days to mythological events (Hesiod, Works and Days 765–828; Ovid, Fasti). Early Judaism, despite its interest in divining the future, left no evidence of elaborate hemerologies. An exception may be found in a rabbinic discussion about the connection between one’s day of birth and one’s character, for example: “One who was born on the fourth day of the week will be a wise and enlightened person. What is the reason? Because the heavenly lights were hung (in the heavens) on that day” (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 156a–b). Similarly, the rabbis discuss the propitious times for bloodletting, relating them to astrological features: “And Shmuel said: The times for bloodletting are the first day of the week, the fourth, and Shabbat eve. However, the second and the fifth (days of the week), no […] because the planet Mars rules at even numbered hours of the day” (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 129b). Eventual exceptions occur when the fourth day of the week falls on a particular date within the month, for instance: “Shmuel says: On the fourth (day of the week) that is the fourth (day of the month) […] it is dangerous (to let blood)” (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 129b). In later periods, more detailed attempts appear, connecting the calendrical position of a day with its favorable or unfavorable nature and the events that are likely to occur on it. These texts go beyond mere hemerologies, which refer to the days of a single lunar month (Shaked 1992; Leicht 2006, 59–63; Bohak 2016, 208–209). Instead, they consider the different months of the year and their constituent days. Broadly speaking, the calendrical prognostications found in medieval Jewish writings derive from non-Jewish sources, as may be seen in the Latin or vernacular terminology they employed, translated or transliterated into Hebrew. This article will survey some of the attempts to obtain calendrical foreknowledge of the future in the context of medieval Judaism (for general information on Jewish calendars in the pre-modern period, see Stern 2001 and Carlebach 2011). Jewish calendars – much like their Christian and earlier, polytheistic counterparts – occasionally contained information that may be termed prognostic, listed alongside each day. Additionally, some calendar treatises (sifrei evronot) incorporated astrological, divinatory and prognostic sections (Leicht 2006, 109–119, and 2013, 212–215). A https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-035

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distinct type of calendar-related prognostication is that referring to the New Year or the four seasons (tkufot) (Bohak 2016, 209–211). This category was intended to predict the nature of a year based on the specific time when it began, or the qualities of each of the four seasons based on the day and hour when they started. In both cases, these predictions relied on astrological considerations. Different forms of prediction can be distinguished within the Jewish calendars. First, one may find therein the notion of propitious and unpropitious days, in which one’s actions are more or less likely to succeed. This concept is related to that of Egyptian Days (dies aegyptiaci), which dates back to Late Antiquity and can be found in polytheistic, Christian, and Islamic sources alike (for recent overviews, see Chardonnens 2007, 330–392; Skemer 2010). These were days on which bloodletting and the ingestion of particular foods, such as goose flesh, were considered dangerous. They appear in medieval Jewish manuscripts from Italy, France, and Ashkenaz, variously termed ‫ימים מצריים‬, which is a direct translation, ‫אוזיאגי‬, a modified transliteration of dies aegyptiaci, and ‫ ימים איגושיאלש‬or ‫יום אגרישיאל‬, derived from the Latin for “bitter days”, dies agri (Leicht 2006, Chapter 4; Nothaft and Isserles 2014, 24–30; Isserles 2017). Other problematic days for bloodletting were termed Dog Days (dies caniculares), literally translated in Hebrew manuscripts as ‫( ימים כלביים‬Isserles 2017). Jewish calendars designated such days with the warning words “one should not let blood” (‫ קשה להקיז‬,‫)לא יקיז‬, or the abbreviation ‫ק‘‘ל‬. Additionally, several Jewish calendars preserved in manuscripts from Italy, France, and Ashkenaz contain prognostications of a medical nature. These texts combine prescriptive with prognostic guidelines. They primarily recommend medical procedures or regimens, but also specify the reasons for these recommendations: particular dates or periods in the calendar are known to have particular qualities. For instance, a late thirteenth-century compendium (Oxford Bodleian MS Michael 569, fol. 95v) advises (Isserles 2014, 290–291, my modified translation): And from the 8th of Sivan to the 8th of Av one should not engage much in sexual intercourse and in fasts, and should limit oneself from drinking much wine, because it is damaging for a person’s blood; since during that time the blood increases and the bile becomes red.

Compared to the elaborate prognostications found in Christian calendars from the Middle Ages, it seems that the Jewish material is limited. More Jewish hemerologies have survived than full-scale calendars embedding prognostic information. One reason for this may be practical, and lie in the difference between the Jewish and the Julian calendars, which made the adaptation of calendrical prognostic knowledge more difficult.



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Selected Bibliography Bohak, Gideon. “Manuals of Mantic Wisdom: From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Cairo Genizah.” Tracing Sapiential Traditions in Ancient Judaism. Eds. Hindy Najman, Jean-Sébastien Rey, and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar. Leiden, 2016. 191–216. Carlebach, Elisheva. Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, MA, 2011. Chardonnens, Lásló Sándor. Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, 900–1100. Leiden, 2007. Isserles, Justine. “Some Hygiene and Dietary Calendars in Hebrew Manuscripts from Medieval Ashkenaz.” Time, Astronomy, and Calendars in the Jewish Tradition. Eds. Sacha Stern and Charles Burnett. Leiden, 2014. 273–326. Isserles, Justine. “Bloodletting and Medical Astrology in Hebrew Manuscripts from Medieval Western Europe.” Sudhoffs Archiv 101 (2017): 2–41. Leicht, Reimund. Astrologumena Judaica: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der astrologischen Literatur der Juden. Tübingen, 2006. Leicht, Reimund. “The Reception of Astrology in Medieval Ashkenazi Culture.” Aleph 13 (2013): 201–234. Leitz, Christian. Tagewählerei: das Buch ḥ3t nḥḥ pḥ.wy d̲t und verwandte Texte. Wiesbaden, 1994. Livingstone, Alasdair. Hemerologies of Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars. Bethesda, MD, 2014. Nothaft, Philipp, and Justine Isserles. “Calendars Beyond Borders: Exchange of Calendrical Knowledge Between Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe (12th–15th Century).” Medieval Encounters 20 (2014): 1–37. Shaked, Shaul. “A Palestinian Jewish Aramaic Hemerologion.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 15 (1992): 28–42. Skemer, Don C. “‘Armis gunfe’: Remembering Egyptian Days.” Traditio 65 (2010): 75–106. Stern, Sacha. Calendar and Community: A History of the Jewish Calendar, 2nd Century BCE to 10th Century CE. Oxford, 2001.

Daniel M. Varisco

Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World Definitions and Terminology There is a rich tradition of time-telling and calendars in the history of Islamic civilization. This builds on local knowledge in the Arabian peninsula, folk and formal astronomy and a wide range of borrowed calendars as Islam spread. In addition to its pragmatic function, knowledge of time was very important within Islam for determining when to pray and certain rituals. Knowledge of time, especially in relation to celestial phenomena, was an important component of astrological prognostication. Predicting when an event is likely to be auspicious (saʻd) or inauspicious (naḥs) was a widespread practice in the past. Much of the hemerological material by Muslim authors was borrowed from earlier Sassanian and Indian sources.

Time The Islamic notion of time starts with the principle that Allāh is eternal, the “eternal refuge” (ṣamad) who neither gives birth nor is born (Surat al-Ikhlāṣ 112). In the pre-Islamic era, according to Islamic teaching, time was seen as fatalistic without hope in an afterlife. Following the Judaic and Christian traditions, the Qurʼan teaches both a paradise for believers and eternal damnation for unbelievers. The pagan notion of an uncontrolled fatalism was replaced by the sense of Allah as all powerful and all-knowing, thus determining everything that happens in the world and in a person’s life. The term dahr, originally used in the sense of fate, came to refer to the stretch of time from the beginning of the world to its end or into eternity. Islam teaches that the first man created was Adam, although it does not indicate a specific time for this event. The early Biblical teachings about creation, the antediluvians, Noah and the early patriarchs are taken as part of Allah’s plan with numerous references in the Qurʼan and the traditional (ḥadīth) literature attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad. Another important time marker was the era of Alexander the Great, especially in Egypt (Taqizadeh 1939, 115–130). A discussion of most of the known time reckoning systems in the Islamic world by the eleventh century is provided in detail by al-Bīrūnī (1879/1923). In pre-Islamic Arabia there were also major events that defined epochs, such as the famous “Days of the Arabs” (ayyām al-ʻArab), which mostly consist of famous legends about raids and other conflicts, as well as days set aside for fairs in famous cities (Meyer 1970). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-036



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Time Units Arabic has a variety of terms for time and its various parts. The most general term is zamān for a period of time of any length, with ʻaṣr used for an era and waqt for a specific point in time. Specific units of time in Arabic are noted in Tab. 20. For some units there are specific names for each part of the unit, such as parts of the day, the week and the month. The days of the week, for example, start with numbers: aḥad (one) for Sunday, ithnayn (two) for Monday, thalātha (three) for Tuesday, arbaʻa (four) for Wednesday, and khamīs (five) for Thursday. Friday is jumʻa in reference to the gathering for Friday prayer and Saturday is sabt, borrowing from the Hebrew. There are also alternative terms for days of the week, no doubt reflecting earlier dialectical differences. The Iraqi al-Farāʼ (1980, 37) in the mid-eighth century recorded the following: awwal for Sunday, ahwan for Monday, jubār for Tuesday, dubār for Wednesday, muʼnis for Thursday, ʻarūba for Friday and shiyār for Saturday. Tab. 20: Arabic Terms for Lengths of Time English moment second minute Hour Day Week month Year decade century millennium

Arabic laḥẓa thāniya daqīqa sāʻa yawm usbūʻ shahr sana ḥiqba qarn alf

Written Sources and Artifacts There is an extensive literature in Arabic and Persian sources on time-telling and calendrical systems. Apart from the standard early lexicons, such as the late thirteenth century Lisān al-ʻArab of Ibn Manẓūr, a primary source is the thesaurus (Kitāb al-Mukhaṣṣaṣ) of the eleventh-century Andalusian savant Ibn Sīda. The most important source for Islamic scientific treatment of time-telling is the work of the eleventh-century scholar al-Bīrūnī, whose Kitāb al-Athār al-bāqiya is available in Arabic (1923) and English translation (1879). Details on time-telling and astronomy are also provided in al-Marzūqī’s (1914) Kitāb al-Azmina wa-l-amkina. The formal genre regarding time-keeping was ʻilm al-mīqāt, such as the text by the thirteenth-century

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 Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages: Calendrical Calculations

scholar Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī (al-Qarāfī, al-Yawāqīt, ed. 2007). For information on local seasonal reckoning on the Arabian Peninsula, the literature on weather lore is important, especially the Kitāb al-Anwāʼ of Ibn Qutaybah. Almanacs were compiled for the solar calendar throughout the region, including Egypt (Pellat 1986), Syria (al-Qazwīnī 1849), and Yemen (Varisco 1994). There is an extensive corpus of astronomical tables, especially the genre known as zīj tables (Kennedy 1956; King and Samso 2000). These often provide details on conversion between calendars. Correlation tables of the many calendrical systems used in the region were compiled by Ferdinand Wüstenfeld in 1859, later updated in 1961, and Freeman-Grenville in 1977. In recent years digital conversion calendars have become widely available on the Internet. Before this it was necessary to resort to published tables or apply a calendrical conversion formula.

Techniques and Manifestation Astronomical Reckoning Time reckoning during the Islamic era was derived from pre-existing systems. The local calendrical systems were primarily based on seasons according to movements of the moon, sun and certain stars. Islamic scholars borrowed much of their material from Greek and Indian sources. As noted by the early eleventh century scholar al-Bīrūnī (1879, 12), the moon and sun were also important for time-reckoning because their movement was considered to be directly related, as in Greek science, to changes in the air, weather, plants and animal life.

Moon One of the earliest time reckoning systems on the Arabian Peninsula would have been based on observations of the moon. The phases of the moon yielded the lunar calendar of twelve months based on the visibility of its waxing and waning, as noted in the Qurʼan: “They ask you about the waxing and waning phases of the crescent moons, say they are to mark fixed times for mankind and Hajj” (Surat al-Baqara 2:189). In Arabic there are terms for every three nights of the lunar month, from the new or crescent moon (hilāl) to the full moon (badr). It was also possible to observe the position of the moon during its sidereal orbit of 27.3 days. This was essentially a lunar zodiac, since the moon’s orbit has only about 5° difference from the ecliptic; thus it revolves through the solar zodiacal constellations. During the Islamic era this lunar zodiac was borrowed from India via Sassanian Iran and became known as the manāzil al-qamar, i.  e. the lunar stations or lunar mansions (Varisco 1991). It appears that the major application of this lunar zodiac was in astrology, with prognostications for each of the 28



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nights of the moon’s orbit (Varisco 2017). However, use of the lunar stations as a grid could be used as a marker of time at night. Another early calendar was based on the conjunction of the moon and the Pleiades (thurayyā), pivoting on the unique annual conjunction of the Pleiades and the new moon in the spring (Varisco 2000, 632–634).

Sun The sun could be used as a marker of time in relation to the time of day from its rising to its setting by the shadow lengths cast daily and seasonally. The time between the rising and setting of the sun was known as yawm or nihār in Arabic; the time when the sun was not visible was referred to as layl. The daily timing of the sun’s positions was important in Islam as a major marker of the five daily prayers. The pre-dawn fajr prayer begins when light is diffused across the horizon before the actual visibility of the rising sun. The ẓuhr prayer is at midday when the sun reaches its zenith. The prayer at ʻaṣr is during the afternoon, often calculated as the time that a shadow length is the same length as the object casting the shadow. At sunset is the maghrib prayer. There is also a prayer during the night, generally halfway between sunset and sunrise. An important marker of these times in the past was use of a gnomon or a standing person to measure the length of the shadow length. In folk measurement it was often assume that the ratio of a man’s height was equivalent to 6 or 7 times that of his foot (qadam). This allowed for an approximate measure of the midday or ʻaṣr prayer. Muslim scholars also developed formal mathematical formula for calculating the shadow lengths in different seasons (King 1990 and 2004). Such calculations were often noted in almanacs.

Stars and Asterisms Time units could also be reckoned from the dawn rising or setting of a star at the same time as the rising of the sun. This was the bases of the anwāʼ stars, adapted from the lunar zodiac to form a solar-based calendar of 365 days. As described by Ibn Qutaybah (d. 276/889) in his Kitāb al-Anwāʼ, the setting of one of the 28 lunar stations at dawn was said to last for 13 days (with an exception of one period of fourteen days) to form an annual cycle. While there are rhymed sayings and some early poetry that mention weather and other lore for these anwāʼ stars, there is no evidence that it was used as a formal system before the Islamic era. In Yemen a sequence of 28 agricultural marker stars evolved from this formal system (Varisco 1993). Other fragmentary anwāʼ star systems are recorded and these are similar to seasonal star sequences used in Arabian Peninsula folklore. The unique rising of a star could also serve as a seasonal marker. Ibn Qutaybah (1956, 100) reports that the midsummer dawn rising of Canopus (suhayl) signaled the start of taking animals away from water sources for new pasture.

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 Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages: Calendrical Calculations

The solar zodiac has been used throughout the Islamic era both as a grid marker along the ecliptic and for astrology. The most common Arabic term for these zodiacal houses was burūj, which connotes a fortress, unlike the original Greek usage. This is the term used in the Qurʼān. Although borrowed from earlier Greek sources, it was soon adapted in formal Islamic astronomical texts. The common Arabic terms were translations from the Greek, such as ḥamal (lamb) for Aries, thawr (bull) for Tauris, etc. Each of the 28 lunar stations were said to comprise 12° 51' arc along the ecliptic. The first lunar station, sharaṭān (α β Arietis) coincided with the start of the zodiacal house of Aries (ḥamal). The vernal equinox was an important reference point; it became the start of the Persian calendar reform ordered by the Seljuk sultan Jalāl al-Dīn in 471/1079 and became known as al-nayrūz al-sulṭānī. This was an attempt to align the Persian calendar with the solar cycle as measured against the sequence of the zodiacal houses. Since the ecliptic of 360° was not far off from the solar year of about 365 days, some Arab almanac compilers have calculated zodiacal months. The fourteenth-century Rasulid sultan, al-Malik al-Afḍal al-ʻAbbās, is credited with a perpetual almanac based on the timing of the zodiacal sequence rather than the existing solar or lunar calendars.

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts Seasonal sequence Before Islam a major time reckoning system in the Arabian Peninsula was based on the pastoral cycle. Although the four-season model came into use, it appears to be mainly a scholarly system of reference relating to the equinoxes and solstices. Ibn Qutaybah (1956, 108) related that the Arabs did not use the formal model starting in spring, but reckoned seasons according to the start of heat and cold and the state of pasture. The most important seasonal markers for both pastoralists and farmers related to the weather, comprising specific periods of rain, wind, heat and cold. Some Arabs were said to divide the year into two seasons: shitāʼ in reference to the cold and characterized as masculine, and ṣayf in reference to the heat and seen as feminine. Others added an intensely hot summer season known as qayẓ. The first rain of the yearly cycle came after the heat of summer subsided and animals could be taken to pasture. This was called wasmī, so-named because it literally marked (yasimu) the ground with plants. This was also the autumn time for ploughing and planting grain in Syria, according to the fourteenth-century scholar al-Nuwayrī (al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-ʻArab fī funūn al-adab, VIII, 255–256). The major times when rain or wind were expected received names and were often cited in almanacs. Periods of cold and heat were also recognized. One of these was the “Nights of the Old Woman” (layālī l-ʻajūz) said to occur in the last three days of February (shubāṭ) and first four days of March



Daniel M. Varisco 

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(ādhār). Among the legends regarding this period was the story of an old woman who warned people not to shear their sheep because a cold spell was still coming. There were also terms for the intense heat of summer. One of the terms for this was ḥamārrat al-qayẓ, usually in June or July, which occurred during Ramaḍān in the lunar-solar calendar of the pre-Islamic Arabs.

Calendars Most of the major calendars that were used in the Islamic era were borrowed, and at times updated, from cultures outside the Arabian Peninsula. The notable exception was the Islamic lunar or hijrī calendar. Formal solar calendars were encountered in Byzantine Syria, Coptic Egypt, Sassanian Iran and Christian Andalusia. The Gregorian reform in 1582 CE did not immediately affect existing calendars used in the Middle East. Calendars were the basis for the almanac genre, which was flourishing in Arabic sources by the third/ninth century, notably the texts of the Iraqi physician Ibn Māsawayḥ, the lexical scholar Abū Ḥanīfa Aḥmad al-Dīnawarī and the well-traveled Calendar of Córdoba (Dozy 1961). Hundreds of almanacs have survived from Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and the Maghreb. No single term defines the genre, although the Arabic terms taqwīm, natīja and Persian rūznāma are frequently used. It is useful to note that the English term “almanac” does not derive from the Arabic term manākh, a contemporary term for climate, but is probably from the Greek in reference to astrological calendars. Arabic almanacs contain a range of information beyond time-telling and astronomy. Based largely on experience, most predict seasonal weather, especially rain, wind, heat and cold, as well as changes in the environment, such as the appearance of certain animals and plants. The humoral system of Islamic medicine is referenced, including times for certain diseases, use of medicine and even when to refrain from sex. Some almanacs have details on local agriculture, including the time for floods along the Nile River. Almanacs often record religious festivals, especially Christian, and those correlated with hijrī dates mention events in Islamic history.

The Lunar Hijrī Calendar The Islamic lunar or hijrī calendar began on July 16, 622 CE, in the Julian reckoning. It is generally indicated by A.H., standing for anno hegirae. Correlation dates are generally rendered with hijrī or A.H. date first, followed by the Christian solar (CE) date, which may be Julian or Gregorian depending on the source consulted. Islamic sources usually attribute the start of this calendar to the rule of ʻUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (13–23/634–644), but it may have been in use earlier. Since a lunar year is about eleven days shorter than the solar year, it cannot be used consistently for seasonal events

642 

 Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages: Calendrical Calculations

but is primarily for liturgical purposes. In practice the lunar month began with the observance of the new moon, which could differ slightly from the formal calendar. Thus correlation of a hijrī date through use of tables may be off by a day. The fasting month of ramaḍān is recognized as beginning with the observation of the new moon (Sura al-Baqara, Q. 2:185). During the fasting month, the fast each day begins when a person is able to distinguish a white thread and black thread at the break of dawn (Sura al-Baqara, Q. 2:187). Arab almanacs that cite the lunar calendar always link it to a given solar year. Because the lunar calendar was based on observation of the moon, Arab reckoning of the day began at sunset rather than sunrise. Until the recent appearance of digital measures for correlating the hijrī date to the Julian and Gregorian reckonings, there were a number of formula applied. The month names are muḥarram, ṣafar, rabīʻ al-awwal, rabīʻ al-thānī, jumādā al-ūlā, jumādā al-ākhira, rajab, shaʻbān, ramaḍān, shawwāl, dhū l-qaʻda, dhū l-ḥijja. Before Muḥammad, an intercalary month (nasīʼ or kabīsa) was apparently used by an Arab tribe to regulate the seasons around the pre-Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca but not elsewhere on the peninsula. In Sura al-Tawba (Q. 9:36–37) this usage of postponing the timing of a new month was forbidden. The origin of these month names reflect the earlier lunar-solar system. The term jumāda, for example, refers to the time when water freezes (jumūd al-māʼ) and ramaḍān is for the vehement heat and intensity of the sun during it (rumūḍ al-harr wa-shiddat waqʻ al-shams fīhi). In addition there were several alternative month names now obsolete, as recorded by al-Farāʼ (1980, 49–53). As was the case in the Christian calendar, specific days of the Muslim calendar commemorated events in the early history of the faith. A list of several of these events is provided in Tab. 21. Tab. 21: Selected Events on the Islamic Calendar (al-Bīrūnī 1879, 325–334) Month

Day

Religious Event

muḥarram

10 16

ʻAshūra: commemoration of death of Ḥusayn ibn ʻAlī among Shiʻa Jerusalem made the qibla

rabīʻ al-thānī

1 12 15

Death of Muḥammad Birth of Muḥammad on a Monday Birth of ʻAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib

jumādā al-ūlā

3

jumādā al-ākhira

2 4 27 15 10

Battle of the Camel in November, 656 CE between forces loyal to ‘Alī and forces loyal to A‘isha Death of Abū Bakr, first Caliph Birth of Fāṭima, daughter of Muḥammad Night of Ascension Mecca made the qibla Death of Khadija, wife of Muḥammad

19 21

Conquest of Mecca Death of ʻAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib

ṣafar rabīʻ al-awwal

rajab shaʻbān ramaḍān



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Tab. 21 (continued) Month shawāl

dhū l-qaʻda dhū l-ḥijja

Day

Religious Event

27 17 19 29 5 1 9 17 25

Laylat al-Qadr (Sura al-Qadr, 97) Battle of ʻUḥūd Death of Abū Ṭālib Jonah (Yūnis) swallowed by the giant fish Kaʻba sent down to earth Fāṭima marries ʻAlī Abī Ṭālib Pilgrimage to ʻArafa ʻUthmān ibn ʻAffān killed ʻUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb killed

The Christian Solar Calendar There were two primary solar calendars in use during the Islamic era. In the east and the heartland of Islam the earlier Syriac calendar was used and in the West, especially Andalusia, the Roman Julian system was in vogue. The Syriac month names in Arabic are: tishrīn al-awwal (October), tishrīn al-thānī (November), kānūn al-awwal (December), kānūn al-thānī (January), shubāṭ (February), ādhār (March), nīsān (April), ayyār (May), ḥazīrān (June), tammūz (July), āb (August) and aylūl (September). These month names are derived from earlier calendrical systems in Hebrew and Aramaic, with links to earlier Semitic languages in the region. Al-Bīrūnī (1879, 70) suggests that this system continued to be used in the same region after Islam because it was so well known and fitted well with the seasons. From the start of the Islamic era the Julian reckoning was used. The Gregorian reform of 1582 only gradually came into use in a number of countries in the Middle East. It was introduced into Turkey in 1926 after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, it is important to know if a recorded historic solar date refers to the Julian or Gregorian system. Like the Islamic hijrī calendar, the Christian solar calendars served a liturgical purpose in identifying feast and martyr days as well as famous biblical events. The almanac of Ibn Māsawayḥ and the Calendar of Córdoba are two of the most important examples. But many of these Christian events were widely reported, such as in the thirteenth-century cosmology of Zakariyā al-Qazwīnī in his almanac for the Byzantine months (shuhūr al-Rūm). In tishrīn al-thānī al-Qazwīnī noted the following: 5th, Festival of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem when a fire comes down from heaven and lights a candle; 10th, journey of patriarch Abraham to sacrifice his son; 26th, head of John the Baptist displayed in his tomb. Al-Bīrūnī (1879, 282–313) provides a list of how Christian timing of Easter was recognized as different from the reckoning of Jewish Passover.

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The Persian Calendar The pre-Islamic Zoroastrian Persian calendar consisted of twelve months with thirty days each, followed by an extra period of five days. It was introduced around the first half of the fifth century BCE due to Egyptian calendrical influence, with later changes introduced by the Sassanians. It began on the vernal equinox, when it was believed that the first man had been created. At the end of the Sassanian era the main calendar use was based on the ascension to the throne of Yazdegird III on June 16, 632 CE. The month names adopted into Arabic were: farwardīn, urdībihisht, khurdādh, tīr, murdād, shahrīwar, mihr, ābān, adhar, day, bahman, and isfandārmūdh, with an epagomenai of 5 days. The Persian calendar had spread to neighboring areas and survived in Sogdiana and Khawarizm, as described by al-Bīrūnī (1879, 56–58). Al-Bīrūnī (1879, 36) suggests that the popularity of the Yazdegird calendar in Iran stemmed from the fact that he was the Sassanian monarch that fought with the Muslim conqueror ʻUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb. After the arrival of Islam the kharājī calendar, based on the earlier Yazdegird system, was established in order to correct the problem of dates of the land tax occurring earlier than the harvest due to the lack of a leap year in the Persian calendar. The Caliph al-Muʻtaḍid tried to rectify the slippage in the Persian calendar by postponing the nayrūz or start of the year from April 12 to June 11 in 282/895 and introducing an intercalation every four years. The Seljuk Sultan Jalāl al-Dawla Muʻizz al-Dīn (d.  585/1092) introduced the jalālī calendar that fixed the start of the solar year at the vernal equinox. In this reckoning the first day of the year occurred when the sun entered Aries before noon. The date of its adoption was correlated to Friday, 9 ramaḍān 9, 471, March 15, 1079 and farwardīn 19, 448 in the earlier Yazdegird system. Given the arrival of the Abbasid court to Iraq, it is not surprising that a number of Persian festivals survived into the Islamic era. One of the most popular was celebration of the new year (nayrūz in Arabic and nawrūz in Persian). Early governors in the former Sassanian empire encouraged continuation of this major festival time, which also coincided with a tax period. This festival usually coincided with the vernal equinox. In Abbasid Iraq sweets were given and people lit fires in the streets. Al-Bīrūnī (1879, 258) said that at this time the residents of Baghdad would “splash in the water, strew about in the dust, and play other games.” Muslims as well as Zoroastrians held the festival in great esteem, despite periodic attempts to ban celebrations in Baghdad. There were also nayrūz celebrations in India and the East African coast. Several almanacs mention Persian festivals known as mihrajān. Al-Mas‘ūdī in his geographical text said one mihrajān in the month of mihr celebrated the autumnal equinox at a time when gifts were exchanged. Medieval navigators used a calendar throughout the Red Sea/Indian Ocean network based on the number of days elapsed since the start of the Persian year (Varisco 1994, 73–74). Since it shifted over time, it was only useful as an approximate calendar and had to be updated over time.



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The Coptic Calendar The Coptic calendar evolved in Egypt from earlier month names and had been fixed to the Julian reckoning by the time Islam arrived (Wasser 1991). The start of the calendar is linked to the time of Augustus in 29/30 BCE, but there were several reforms, including during the era of Diocletian in 284 CE. It served both as a seasonal marker system, especially for the agricultural cycle along the Nile, and a liturgical calendar of feast and martyr days. The calendar consists of 12 months of 30 days each followed by an intercalation or epagomenai of five or six days. Although there were slight variations, the correlation to the Syriac calendar is shown in Tab. 22. Tab. 22: Correlation of Coptic and Syriac Months Coptic Month

Syriac Month

1 tūt 1 bābih 1 hatūr 1 kiyaḫ 1 ṭūba 1 amshīr 1 baramhāt

29 āb 28 aylūl 28 tishrīn al-awwal 27 tishrīn al-thānī 27 kānūn al-awwal 26 kānūn al-thānī 25 shubāṭ

1 barmūda 1 bashans 1 baʼūna 1 abīb 1 misrā 1 nasīʼ

27 ādhār 26 nīsān 26 ayyār 25 ḥazīrān 25 tammūz 24 āb

Medieval Classifications and Discussions Calendars and Prognostication Prognostication in the medieval Islamic world was often based on calendrical systems. These exist for all units of time, as well as seasonal events that occur in generally recognized time periods. Knowledge of the location of stars and planets and their conjunctions was necessary for most astrological purposes. Casting a horoscope depended on knowledge of time and place in relation to celestial events. It is reported that astrologers prognosticating through elections (ikhtiyārāt) were consulted by Islamic rulers, especially for timing of wars (Saliba 1992, 58). There is a wide literature available on prognostication, but the following represent examples.

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Days of the Week The thirteenth-century cosmographer al-Qazwīnī (1959, 65–67) noted things suitable to do or not to do for certain days of the week. Sunday was a good time to begin an activity, especially planting or building. Fasting on Monday and Thursday was said to be the best time for spiritual benefit. Little good happened on Wednesday, so it was best to stay at home and rest and not to make requests. Thursday was a good day for making requests for needs and starting a journey; it is said that the Prophet Muḥammad always started a major trip on a Thursday, which was also a good day for the medicinal practice of cupping (ḥijāma). On Saturday one should be aware of deception and double crossing. If dates were harvested on a Saturday, some said that the palm tree would not bear the following year. Al-Qazwīnī also lists the best and most beneficial days of each lunar month, which were related to the phases of the moon, usually because of something the Prophet Muḥammad was said to do on that day. A hemerological text attributed to Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq noted that the second day of the month was a propitious day for marriage, since this was the day that God created Eve from Adam (Ebied and Young 1976, 304).

Weather Stars (anwā’) The information recorded for the star periods known as anwā’ is based on the seasonal sequence during the year. Early sources suggest that pre-Islamic Arabs believed the rising and setting of certain stars determined rain, a practice of divination condemned by the Prophet Muḥammad (Ibn Qutayba 1956, 14). The eleventh-century astronomer al-Marzūqī (1914, vol. 1, 178) suggested that the early Arabs deluded themselves into attributing good or bad fortune, profit or loss, to the anwā’ stars. The formal model of twenty-eight anwā’ indicates whether each star period was commendable (maḥmūd) or not. The most favorable star was the Pleiades (thurayyā), because its dawn setting marked the arrival of the autumn wasmī rains. Aldebaran, the following star period, however, was not considered commendable and was said to be inauspicious in the Arabic poetry quoted by Ibn Qutaybah (1956, 37–38). This may be due to the fact that it was associated with a pagan rain invocation (Varisco 1991, 23).

Lunar Stations (manāzil al-qamar) Prognostication of elections (ikhtiyārāt) as well as of auspicious (saʻd) and inauspicious (naḥs) days for activities was made according to the stationing of the moon in each of the 28 lunar stations. This hemerological system was ultimately of Indian origin with influence from Sassanian and Hermetic sources. In Shams al-maʻārif, attributed to the thirteenth-century astrologer Aḥmad ibn ʻAlī al-Būnī, advice is given for



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esoteric work, such as making amulets and love charms, medicine, travel, marriage, commerce, making requests to rulers, etc. For the station of the Pleiades (thurayyā), the text reads: “When the moon stations in the Pleiades, which has a mixed nature (mubahraj al-jawhar), spiritual agency descends to the world. It is mixed hot and cold. It is suitable for making talismans and actions suitable for women, as well as appropriate, curative, cold medicines. It is safe during it for those traveling, who will make a great profit. It is acceptable for meeting rulers and corresponding with them. It is suitable for marriage, buying female and male slaves. Everything that is planned during it will be excellent because the moon is nearer to the earth than the sun. Everything made during it has a good outcome. Whoever is born during it will be prosperous, detest immorality, be lovingly respectful [of God] and dwell with the righteous and the scholarly. As for its incense, it is flax seed and ‘black cumin’ as God the Most High knows the right” (Varisco 2017, 506–507).

Prognostication for Various Times One of the most important Arabic astrological texts, with numerous popular editions, is the ninth century CE Kitāb mawālīd al‐rijāl wa‐l‐nisāʼ attributed to Abū Ma‘shar Jaʻfar ibn Muḥammad al-Balkhī (Abū Maʻshar, Kitāb mawālīd al‐rijāl wa‐l‐nisāʾ, ed. 1916–1917), known as Abumaser in Latin, a Persian astrologer in the Abbasid court. The attribution raised some doubts in recent research due to its complicated text tradition. However, the work provides details on the future character of a person based on the time of birth during the day. Someone born in the morning (ṣabāḥ), for example, would be successful in all that he does; an individual born at sunrise will become a student; one at the setting of the sun will be easy to please but full of anger. Another celebrated Abbasid astrologer was Māshā’allāh, who discussed ways to predict the amount of rain in a given year by looking at the location of the sun in relation to the zodiac and planets (Fahd 1966, 496). Arabic almanacs often indicate that flour kneaded with rain falling on the first day of Nīsān (April) will rise in the least amount of time.

Influence on Medieval Europe The primary influence of the Islamic sciences on Europe was in astronomy and astrology. Although the lunar calendar was limited to areas with Muslims control, as in Andalusia and Sicily, calendrical almanac lore did spread to Europe. The most famous example is the Calendar of Córdoba (Dozy 1961), translated as Liber Anoe by Gerard of Cremona (d. 1187 CE), who was also familiar with earlier Arabic astronomical texts. The original text appears to have been written by a Mozarab bishop in 961 CE, but it is also attributed to a certain ʻArīb ibn Saʻad (d. around 370/980). This calendar has the full

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range of almanac lore, with a focus on agriculture in Andalusia. Although written for the Western Christian calendar, it is correlated to the Syriac and Coptic ­reckoning. The Arabic manāzil al-qamar entered into Latin as mansiones lunares. These are described in the tenth-century Picatrix (↗ Otto and Heiduk, Prognostication in Learned Magic, 955–956), the tenth century Alchandreana and other Latin and Hebrew works, primarily for astrological rather than calendrical reckoning (Jiménez 2014).

Selected Bibliography Abū Maʻshar, Abū Maʻshar al-falakī al-kabīr. Kitāb mawālīd al‐rijāl wa‐l‐nisāʼ. Cairo, 1916/1917. al-Bīrūnī, Abū al-Rayḥān Muḥammad. The Chronology of Ancient Nations (al-Āthār al-bāqiya). Trans. Carl Eduard Sachau. London, 1879. al-Bīrūnī, Abū al-Rayḥān Muḥammad. Chronologie Orientalischer Völker von Alberuni. Ed. Carl Eduard Sachau. Leipzig, 1923. Bowering, Gerhard. “The Concept of Time in Islam.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 141/1 (1997): 55–66. Dozy, Reinhard. Le Calendrier de Cordoue. Ed. Charles Pellat. Leiden, 1961. Ebied, Rifaat Y., and Michael J. L. Young. “A Treatise of Hemerology Ascribed to Ğaʻfar al-Ṣādiq.” Arabica 23 (1976): 296–307. Fahd, Toufic. La Divination Arabe. Leiden, 1966. al-Farāʼ, Abū Zakariyā Yaḥyā ibn Ziyād. Kitāb al-Ayyām wa-l-layālī wa-l-shuhūr. Cairo, 1980. Freeman-Grenville, Greville Stewart Parker. Muslim and Christian Calendars. London, 1977. Ibn Qutayba, Abū Muḥammad ʻAbd Allāh. Kitāb al-Anwāʼ. Hyderabad, 1956. Ibn Sīda, Abū al-Ḥasan ʻAlī. al-Mukhaṣṣaṣ. 17 vols. Beirut, 1965. Jiménez, Aurelio Pérez. “Las mansiones lunares. Adaptación árabe de una doctrina astrológica antigua.” El Cielo del Islám. Ed. Fátima Roldán Castro. Seville, 2014. 239–264. Kennedy, Edward Stewart. “Survey of Islamic Astronomical Tables.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 46, 2 (1956): 123–177. King, David A. In Synchrony with the Heavens – Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Islamic Civilization. Vol. 1: The Call of the Muezzin. Studies I–IX. Leiden, 2004. King, David A. “A Survey of Medieval Islamic Shadow Schemes for Simple Time-reckoning.” Oriens 32 (1990): 191–249. King, David A., and Julio Samso. “Astronomical Handbooks and Tables from the Islamic World (750–1900): An Interim Report.” Suhayl 2 (2000): 9–105. al-Marzūqī, Abū ʻAlī. Kitāb al-Azmina wa-l-amkina. 2 vols. Hyderabad, 1914. Meyer, Egbert. Der historische Gehalt der Aiyām al-ʻArab. Wiesbaden, 1970. Al-Nuwayrī, Aḥmad ibn ʻAbd al-Wahhāb. Nihāyat al-ʻArab fī funūn al-adab. Cairo, 1923. Pellat, Charles. Cinq calendriers égyptiens (= Textes Arabes et Études Islamiques 26). Cairo, 1986. al-Qarāfī, Shihāb al-Dīn. al-Yawāqīt fī aḥkām al-mawāqīt. Saudi Arabia, 1428/2007. http://b7oth. com/?p=7765 (11 May 2020). al-Qazwīnī, Zakariyā ibn Muḥammad.ʻAjāʼib al-makhluqāt wa-gharāʼib al-mawjūdāt. Ed. Ferdinand Wüstenfeld. Leiden, 1849. Saliba, George. “The Role of the Astrologer in Medieval Islamic Society.” Bulletin d’études orientales 44 (1992): 45–67. Taqizadeh, Seyed Hassan. “Various Eras and Calendars Used in the Countries of Islam.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies 10/1 (1939): 107–132.



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Varisco, Daniel M. “Illuminating the Lunar Mansions (manāzil al-qamar) in Shams al-maʻārif.” Arabica 64 (2017): 487–530. Varisco, Daniel M. “Islamic Folk Astronomy.” Astronomy Across Cultures. Ed. Helaine Selin. Dordrecht, 2000. 615–650. Varisco, Daniel M. Medieval Agriculture and Islamic Science: The Almanac of a Yemeni Sultan. Seattle, 1994. Varisco, Daniel M. “The Agricultural Marker Stars in Yemeni Folklore.” Asian Folklore Studies 52 (1993): 120–142. Varisco, Daniel M. “The Origin of the Anwāʼ in Arab Tradition.” Studia Islamica 74 (1991): 5–28. Wissa-Wassef, Cérés. “Months of Coptic Calendar.” The Coptic Encyclopaedia 2 (1991): 438–440. Wüstenfeld, Ferdinand. Vergleichungs-Tabellen der Muhammedanischen und Christlichen Zeitrechnung. Leipzig, 1854. Wüstenfeld, Ferdinand, Eduard Mahler, Bertold Spuler, and Joachim Mayr. WüstenfeldMahler’sche Vergleichungs-Tabellen zur muslimischen und iranischen Zeitrechnung mit Tafeln zur Umrechnung orient-christlicher Ären. Wiesbaden, 1961.

Weather Forecasting Barbora Kocánová

Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Western Christian World Definitions and Terminology Weather forecasting is designed to predict the likely state of atmospheric conditions for future periods of various lengths. Thanks to its vital importance for humankind, it has always enjoyed a privileged position within future telling, although it has never reached the desired level of dependability. Already in Antiquity, we can trace several methods of weather forecasting which were further developed during the Middle Ages. The majority of the evidence from the western Christian tradition relates to forecasts based on astrological principles and calculations, which are today labelled astrometeorology. The method built on the heritage of Ptolemy and Al-Kindī can be considered scientific, because it includes both a theoretical explanation of the discipline, and its practical principles; namely, specific guidelines for weather forecasting. Also, it uses scientific language which reflects the transmission of knowledge and theories from various cultures; e.  g. terms of Arabic and Greek origin. Astrological forecasts could predict weather for any future moment, even for longer periods and the distant future. The calculations were facilitated by various tables and almanacs. The introduction of printing boosted the popularity of annual predictions (iudicia anni) which habitually included meteorological forecasts. Printed prognoses and calendars seem to have encouraged the more regular recording of daily weather observations, which could have been used to verify and increase the dependability of long-term weather forecasts (Pfister et al. 1999, 112). This kind of source can also be found in the vernacular versions; for instance in the so-called Volkskalender (↗ Nothaft, Calendars and Tables Western Christian World), where the user had, inter alia, information regarding weather prediction (Brévart 1988, 335). Celestial bodies played a crucial role also in forecasts related to astronomic time measurement; namely, in the predictions based on the rising and setting times of specific constellations. In practice, they were initially facilitated by publicly displayed tablets called parapegmata (the term is derived from inserting, παραπέγνυμι, as the

Acknowledgement: The research for this contribution received financial support from the Czech Science Foundation (GA ČR) project “Historical development of meteorological theories and terminology in the Czech Lands”, grant n. 19-03834S, carried out at the Institute of Philosophy and at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-037

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tablet featured holes in which a peg was inserted to indicate the current date). Parapegmata contained calendric and astronomical data, and some featured also data of a meteorological nature. The tablets later developed into literary works. Calendar-based forecasts offered no rationale for their assertions, and during Antiquity were accepted as virtually official prognoses. Parapegmatic literary texts were produced also in the Middle Ages. Several researchers include this type of forecast in astrometeorology, since some include forecasts based on the appearance of celestial bodies, which were determined by meteorological conditions. Observations of the appearance of heavenly bodies (a red rising moon, etc.) allowed only for short-term weather forecasts (the weather would be windy, or it would rain for 15 days). These weather signs arose from empirical observations and date back as far as Antiquity. The category included also other empirical signs, such as the behavior of animals, etc. Jean-Marc Mandosio (2013, 167–176) labelled the whole category “meteorognomical signs”. Few of these signs are in any way rationally related to the conditions which they were supposed to indicate. In addition to scholarly treatises, we encounter them in historiographical texts, in which they were often seen as portents (↗ Lehner, Prognostication in Latin Historiography). Given the current close relationship between weather forecasting and meteorology, it might seem surprising that the work which served as a base for all preinstrumental meteorology, Aristotle’s Meteorology, barely touches on weather signs. The few exceptions that are mentioned in the book are signs that could be logically explained, using Aristotle’s definition of meteorological phenomena, as largely irregular conditions created in the sublunar sphere from the dry and wet exhalations released from the surface of the earth as a result of solar activity (for instance, dry exhalations cause wind and lightning, while wet ones develop into precipitation; another group includes atmospheric phenomena, such as the rainbow or halo, caused by the reflection and refraction of light rays on exhaled particles). Aristotle’s Meteorology identifies only a handful of phenomena as weather indicators: fog, comets and the solar halo. Aristotle touches on the signs indicating changes in weather in his explanatory passages about meteorological phenomena, mainly as arguments to support his meteorological theories. When explaining the halo, for example, Aristotle noted that it is generally a sign of rain because it occurs under specific circumstances due to the reflection of our vision on condensed vapor which later develops into rain (Aristotle, Meteorologica III, 3 372b16–34). Although Aristotle had no intention of discussing weather signs in his Meteoro­ logy, let alone providing a list of them, his premise that the movement of celestial bodies (more precisely their effect of heating the surface of the earth and producing exhalations) affects sublunary phenomena (Meteorologica I, 2 339a23–24, ibid 28–33, I, 3 341a17–24) played a crucial role in the discipline until the invention of the thermometer and barometer. Arab scientists combined this tenet with Arabic astrological principles and the teaching taken from Persian and Indian sources (e.  g. the doctrine



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of “opening of the doors”), providing theoretical grounds for numerous authors of texts about astrological weather forecasting. Gradually, new sets of signs emerged, usually as a consequence of finding fallacious relations between various phenomena. These included simple forecasting rules which enabled long-term forecasts based on the month in which thunder occurred (“brontologion”, “tonitruale” or brontology, ↗ Grünbart, Importance of Thunder) and the day of the week of the January kalends or of Christmas Day (“kalendologion,” “Revelatio Esdrae” or calendology). Divinatory forecasting methods included the study of marks (depressions, lines, discolorations, etc.) on various parts of the right shoulder-blade of a sheep, today called scapulimancy (lat. scapula = shoulder-blade, ↗ Rapisarda, The Shoulder-Bone as Mantic Object), or identifying the rainiest month of the year from the reaction of salt with moisture on the first night of January, while the names of all months were recited.

Written Sources and Artefacts Judging from the number of extant or transmitted texts, the most popular type of weather forecasting literature was “bare” lists of rules. A prominent position in the manuscripts was granted to texts regarding the long-term prediction of weather conditions and related phenomena based on the month in which thunder occurred (e.  g. “If thunder is heard in January, it portends a strong wind and abundance and war in that year”; Cesario 2018, 71) and the day on which the January kalends fall (e.  g. “If the kalends of January occur on the Lord’s Day, it will make a warm winter”; Matter 1982, 378). The rules typically have a simple, clear structure: phenomenon– (rule) – outcome, or “if…then.” Texts known as the Revelatio Esdrae, written from the eighth to sixteenth centuries in various languages (including minor languages such as Czech), survived in hundreds of copies (DiTomasso 2010, 20–33). Similarly, brontological treatises were soon translated into vernacular languages (enjoying a rich tradition in the Anglo-Saxon milieu). Unlike in the case of astrological forecasts, there is no extant prognosis or report testifying to the success or failure of any specific forecast. Moreover, unlike medical treatises, which are often found in the same manuals and bear traces of intense usage, these passages contain no glosses or similar additions (Cesario 2018, 63–66). Various medieval texts were composed as lists, including literary parapegmata recording the risings and settings of certain constellations during the year and their effect on the sublunary world (“On the 21st day of November, the Hyades set in the West in the morning causing storms to form the next day”; cf. Burnett 2006, 358); series of astrological rules, for example the list of planets in the zodiacal signs and in relation to the Sun which was believed to indicate their effect on the weather and on people’s health, included in the anonymous translation from Arabic known as

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Saturnus in Ariete (Bos and Burnett 2000, 460–466); or sets of rules for short-term forecasting (e.  g. the text entitled De praesagiis tempestatum, which forms a passage in Pliny the Elder’s Historia naturalis XVIII, 340–365, and which was widely circulated in the Middle Ages, contained rules for forecasting weather based on clouds, fog, the propagation of sound in the mountains and forests, animal behaviour, the appearance of plants, and the degree to which objects become damp). Short sections with summarised contemporary knowledge of short-term forecasting based on ancient sources and references to the Bible can be found in the encyclopaedias of Isidore of Seville (De natura rerum 38) and his successor, Bede the Venerable (De natura rerum 36, De temporum ratione 25). Rare references to weather forecasting can be found scattered across the works of the early Church Fathers, specifically in commentaries to the Book of Genesis, with some attention paid also to cosmology. Within the explanation about the six days that it took to create the world, the exegetes mentioned the weather signs related to meteorological phenomena and animal behaviour. Ambrose of Milan (Hexameron V,13,40) mentioned the kingfisher who uses the opportunity of the two-week interruption in the winter to hatch its eggs within the first seven days and lets its young grow during the second week, before the winter returns. The Church Fathers did not understand this to be the product of a special instinct possessed by the kingfisher, who could sense the windless conditions and respond in this way, but rather as a manifestation of God’s will to allow the kingfisher females lay their eggs. Ambrose argued that sailors used this as a singular weather sign (indicating a deviation from the general weather trend) and knew that they need not fear storms during that period of time. Whether bare rules or lengthy manuals, sometimes including theoretical explanations, whether complete works of various extents or only excerpts, Latin texts about weather forecasting were never associated with Aristotelian Meteorology. They were usually coupled with computistic, medical, astrological and astronomical treatises. With the exception of pieces about forecasting from thunder and Revelatio Esdrae, such texts were habitually entitled “On Rains” (De pluviis), “On the Phenomena in the Air” (De impressionibus aeris), “On the Changes in the Air” (De mutatione temporum, De mutationibus aeris), “On the Weather” (De aura) or “On the Disposition of the Air” (De dispositione aeris). Many of the texts were not original Latin works, but rather translations, especially from Arabic, which enriched the Western Christian culture with new astrological methods that were instrumental in weather forecasting – lunar phases, lunar mansions, “opening of the doors” (apertio portarum), or the “lot of rain” (pars pluviarum). Texts which address these methods are far more complicated and demanding for the reader, not only in terms of their astrological and astronomical expertise, but also their linguistic skills, because they combine astrological and meteorological terminology and use numerous borrowings from foreign languages which entered medieval Latin vocabulary through translations. To compose horoscopes for astrological predictions, one could observe the sky, use the available rules, and also work with tables, which are found in manuscripts in



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large numbers. Certain types of tables of lunar mansions, or the 28 or 27 sections of the orbit of the Moon, were intended specifically for weather forecasting. Such tables listed the features of individual mansions in relation to atmospheric conditions (rainy, dry or moderate), sometimes including their names (translated into Latin or transcribed from Arabic) and identification against fixed stars in their vicinity. When forecasting weather using astrological methods, one could rely on examples of forecasts which were incorporated in certain of the works. Extant specific forecasts include especially annual predictions, usually composed by university professors of astronomy or astrology. These iudicia anni offered information about the astronomical phenomena, disasters, economic and social trends, religious events, and military and political affairs to be expected in the respective year, but not each and every one of them included prognoses of meteorological conditions, although weather forecasts could boost the interest among some readers (Tur 2015, 278–296). Other extant forecasts were deduced from special events, such as the prospect of mainly bad weather implied by the conjunctions of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars recorded in a letter written by Reginald Lambourne, one of the Merton fellows in Oxford, in 1367 (Thorndike 1934, 346). A few reports revealing the practice of weather forecasting in the Middle Ages can be found in the literary sources. The Monk of St Denis (Chronique du religieux de Saint Denys, contenant le règne de Charles VI de 1380 à 1422, I, 394–396) relates the tragic story of an unsuccessful forecast of weather suitable for a duel which presumably took place during the reign of Charles VI of France. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale (l. 3513–3521) tells of an Oxford student who predicted a flood based on observing the moon (Jenks 1983, 185–186).

Techniques and Manifestations We can presume that the oral tradition mainly concerned generally-accepted weather signs deduced from natural observations. The written evidence from the Middle Ages contains many thunder prognostics and Revelatio Esdrae texts. Then there were longer theoretical treatises and specific forecasts, which demonstrate the belief that the seasons, storms, rain, etc., depend on the movements of the planets and the moon, and should therefore be predicted by astrologers. Astrological forecasts had influential advocates in the universities, courts and monasteries. The oldest astrological forecasting instructions (including some of the rationale behind it) can be found in Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, written in the second century CE. The 13th chapter of Book II presents the procedure for forecasting weather in various seasons: one needs to compose horoscopes for the new and full moon (or conjunctions and oppositions of the sun and moon) which immediately precede the equinox and solstice. If we know the time of the new or full moon, we can draw a map of the sky for

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that point in time and analyse the sun and moon, their positions in the zodiac, their positions against the horizon (houses, i.  e. ascendant, zenith, etc.) and their aspects to other planets. Information related to the zodiacal signs, houses or aspects enables us to predict the nature of the weather in the following three months. Ptolemy provided his readers with instructions on how to forecast the weather for individual months, weeks (the four phases of the moon) or days (based on the rising and setting of bright stars). The final section of Ptolemy’s work focuses on short-term forecasting based on the brightness and color of the sun and moon, halo, nebula, comets, meteors, clouds and rainbows. In the Christian western tradition, Ptolemy’s methods were combined with the knowledge mediated by translations from Arabic. In addition to the above-mentioned lunar mansions, these included concepts such as the “opening of the doors”. This apertio portarum happens, for example, when a lower planet (in current terminology, the inner planet, the one that orbits the sun under the path of the earth, i.  e. Mercury, Venus and formerly also the moon) is in conjunction or another aspect to an upper planet (or outer: Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) and their houses (or the 12 sections of the zodiac, each associated with an element – the ruling element of the respective sign) are in opposition. Such a situation indicates a change in weather, determined by the different effects of the respective planets, by the signs and houses in which the planets are positioned, and by the direct or retrograde motion of the planet (↗ Burnett, Traditions in the Islamic World). Generally, astrological prognoses take account of certain specific moments in which celestial bodies are in specific positions, mostly the great conjunctions, the beginning of the year, etc. Forecasts could be composed using simple manuals – one that was easy to understand even for inexperienced people was ascribed to the thirteenth-century theologist and Chancellor of Oxford University, Robert Grosseteste. The account De impressionibus aeris seu de prognosticatione featured a brief introduction to astrology, necessary for determining the future state of the atmosphere. Its method is applicable to any day of the year; it is based on calculating a certain number of influences (testimonia) of the planets, determined by the relation of the planets to the signs in which they are currently positioned, the mutual positions of the planets, and their movement on the epicycle (for more details, see Jenks 1983, 190–191). The method does not require any difficult techniques of eastern origin, such as lunar mansions or apertio portarum. Three examples of forecasts for a particular day, month, and season (15 April 1249, July 1249, and the autumn of 1255) are included. On 15 April 1249, for instance, the sun was supposed to be the strongest (“in exaltation”, which gained it four testimonia, and in its triplicity, which meant an additional three testimonia), without being subjected to a harmful aspect by another planet. It could therefore be expected that the sun would control the weather on that day due to its nature, which is mild or slightly warm and dry. The simplicity of this process is also striking in comparison with later compilations, which aspired to embrace as many forecasting methods as possible, such as the



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section on weather forecasting in Leopold of Austria’s thirteenth-century astrological manual, which contained not only astrological rules but also brontology and calendology, forecasting from atmospheric phenomena, lunar mansions or the “opening of the doors.” Another example is the fourteenth-century work by John Ashenden which appends each phenomenon with a list of astrological rules, a meteorological explanation, and related weather signs and also includes a parapegma. While the above-described astrological techniques were intended for educated readers who were expected to understand complex terminology, the Revelatio Esdrae prognostication and thunder prognostics, which focused on longer periods of time, especially in relation to climatic extremes and related events (mortality, crops, etc.), required little expertise; their transmission necessitated a good deal of memorising instead. Thunder prognostics involved paying attention to the direction from which the thunder was coming, the month of the year, the day of the week and the time of day when it could be heard. The oldest extant Latin work encompassing all of these aspects, entitled De tonitruis libellus ad Herefridum, was written in the eighth century and was based on an Irish source. The most promising were the rules based on the occurrence of thunder in the individual months of the year – the constituent element of the oldest brontologies, which survive from Antiquity. The role of the months of the year could be ascribed to the zodiac signs which host the moon or sun when the thunder is heard. Predictive agents can include the nature of the weather on certain days or during certain periods of time, e.  g. a rainy January indicates a dry winter (Flajšhans 1928, 142). Events and conditions which depend on the weather, such as crops, drought, mortality, or “human affairs”, were indicated by the weather on the 12 days after Christmas (Cesario 2018, 59) or on the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle (Flajšhans 1928, 142). Much could be foretold also based on an observation of the wind on the 12 nights after Christmas or on the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ (e.  g. when the wind blows from the North on the Feast of the Circumcision, the year will be unfruitful, Cesario 2018, 59–60, 68). On the first night of January, the reaction of salt to moisture indicated in which month of the year it would rain the most (Cesario 2018, 68), as mentioned in a text known from a single fifteenth-century manuscript of German origin. A wide bowl or log was placed in a cellar or another concealed place and the depressions in the dish or log were filled with 12 small piles of salt while the names of the months of the year were recited. In the morning, the pile which produced the most moisture matched the rainiest month of the year, while that produced the least moisture indicated the driest one. As noted by Marilina Cesario (2018, 61–62), “due to its hygroscopic nature salt dissolves when exposed to the air or humid weather”, and in fact “the amount of water absorbed will depend on the amount of salt in each heap; the more salt the more moisture will appear.”

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A completely different method was used when predicting matters of state, crops, wealth and weather from marks, hues and depressions on the shoulder-blade of a boiled sheep. Evidence of scapulimancy comes from various places and times – from China in the third millennium BCE, Africa, America, or medieval Europe, which imported the tradition from the Arabic world. The rules included predicting at­mo­ spher­ic and related phenomena; e.  g. if the “interval” on the blade is cloudy, the cloudiness “spreading over the whole area (or nearly), it indicates plentiful rain and a fertile year, especially when it appears in the spring” (Burnett 1995, 78). As far as we know, such rules would not form separate texts in Latin; instead, they were incorporated in manuals on scapulimancy.

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts Various ancient cultures acknowledged the same presumptions about the cyclic pattern of certain meteorological phenomena and their connection to the celestial bodies. In Ancient Greece, these assumptions engendered the prediction of at­mo­ spher­ic conditions based on the phases of the stars, or the rising and setting of the stars immediately before sunrise or after sunset. Stellar phases were used to determine the time of day or night, which could be used by farmers to manage field labor; Hesiod, for instance, argued that the setting of the Pleiades heralds a windstorm (Opera et dies 618–621). When reading Hesiod, to forecast weather, one must observe the sky and the movements of the brightest stars. In the fifth century BCE, a new method was invented which no longer required direct observation (largely dependent on favorable weather), as it enabled weather forecasting from astronomical calendars. Epigraphic parapegmata with information about the expected weather were placed in public places and made available to the general public probably as early as the fifth century BCE, although the oldest extant parapegma with information about weather is found in the third-century BCE text known as P. Hibeh 27. Latin parapegmata continued the tradition. Daryn Lehoux (2007, 153– 168) mentions almost 20 ancient parapegmata with information about the weather. This type of text, connecting calendric and meteorological data, was still read even in the Middle Ages, as evidenced by two Latin translations of parapegmata from the twelfth (De temporum mutatione, ed. Burnett 2006, 348–354) and fifteenth centuries (Stelle fixe aerem turbantes, ed. Burnett 2006, 354–359). Greek and Roman sources also influenced short-term forecasting in Western Christian Europe. Changes in the weather were deduced from the phenomena and natural events observed at a certain place and at the moment immediately preceding the change. The most influential source was the above-mentioned passage from Pliny’s Historia naturalis and a didactic poem entitled Phaenomena, in which Aratus (ca. 310–245 BCE) acquainted his readers with fixed stars, the rising and setting of constel-



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lations instrumental in determining the time of day and season of the year, and with signs indicating weather. One should observe the behavior of various animals and certain atmospheric phenomena, such as fog on the hills, the gathering of clouds, etc. Aratus’ poem was translated into Latin, at the turn of the era also probably by Germanicus Caesar. Codices appended the paraphrase of the first part of Aratus’ poem (Phaenomena) with fragments about the weather which replace Aratus’ prognoses with astrological ones. Weather forecasts were derived from the qualities attributed to the planets and zodiacal signs, which were believed to cause certain types of weather (for more details, see Caldini Montanari 1973). The trend of astrological forecasting which allowed predictions for any moment, even in the distant future, continued. In the second century CE, Ptolemy was the first to offer detailed instructions, which were forgotten together with their author after the fall of the Roman Empire. When learning became controlled by the monasteries, and from the early twelfth century by the cathedral schools, ancient learning continued in a considerably reduced form. The early medieval evidence for weather forecasting is scant and limited to simple predictions, e.  g. based on the lunar cycle, meteorological phenomena, or animal behavior. The monastic milieu is connected with the origin and production of prognostic texts, both of the Revelatio Esdrae type and ones that identify thunder, wind and the sun as prophetic signs revealing the future, including the weather. From the eleventh century onwards, such texts formed larger collections incorporated in manuscripts. In his study on brontology, Roy M. Liuzza (2004, 4) argued that the texts were “somewhere in the scholarly no man’s land”, between popular culture and science, medicine and monastic computations, classical learning and the vernacular traditions, and that they did not fit the modern system of categorization. The texts were included in scientific manuscripts together with computistic and theological works, lapidaries, vocabularies, herbaria, various medical treatises, and even, occasionally, other texts about predictions. These types of prognostic accounts seem to have originated in the monasteries, in highly-learned communities. For Revelatio Esdrae, this assumption was proved by Marilina Cesario (2012, 391–426). The same is definitely true of brontological texts, which were included in calendars or in extenso in astrological summas. A brontological passage is incorporated in the Compilatio de astrorum scientia (Augsburg 1479), written by Leopold of Austria in the thirteenth century, as well as in the Summa iudicialis de accidentibus mundi (Venetiis 1489), composed by John Ashenden in the fourteenth century. When the works of Aristotle and Ptolemy were rediscovered and translated into Latin together with related Arabic and Hebrew treatises in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the whole discipline shifted toward predictions based on astrological calculations. The first medieval treatises dedicated exclusively to weather forecasting and written in Latin were translations from Arabic, and were also the most widely circulated of all Latin texts about weather forecasting. Influenced by Arabic authors, Latin scholars, both translators from Arabic (Hermann of Carinthia, John of Seville) and other writers, soon penned their own works.

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Weather forecasting manuals and rules were collected and copied by scholars in the universities, monasteries and courts (where astrological manuals containing sections on weather forecasting were written by Leopold of Austria, Guido Bonatti and Firmin de Beauval in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries). A large group of Western Christian authors who focused on expert weather forecasting worked in England, specifically at the University of Oxford. Weather forecasting was of particular interest to the fellows of Merton College, such as Robert Perscrutator, Richard Wallingford, John Ashenden, or the author of one of the oldest weather observation records, William Merle, who created a list of weather signs of all kinds. The unique concentration of weather forecasters in one place is often attributed to the changeable character of English weather. Although there were, at times, reservations concerning astrology in England, the interest in weather forecasting seems to be in line with a general interest in predictions of any kind, as evidenced by numerous prognostic texts written in England, in both Latin and English. A second centre of astrological and astronomical studies which paid considerable attention to weather forecasting was the University of Krakow in the fifteenth century. This interest can hardly by ascribed to the exceptionally varied weather conditions there. The question regarding the extent to which weather forecasting was studied at other universities within the discipline of medicine or astronomy remains to be answered. Still, the currently available analyses of the works included in the same manuals as forecasting texts imply that they were collected by astrologers (both academic and non-academic), physicians and monks who were mainly interested in the theoretical background of the works. The popularity of the texts is evidenced by their translations into vernacular languages; for example, John Ashenden’s extensive treatise, Summa iudicialis, was translated into English, and in the fifteenth century also into Dutch. Several works were also published in print. Despite the wide circulation and potential benefit of weather forecasting for agriculture, it seems unlikely that these works ever reached farmers and, although John Ashenden wrote about floods, famine, and plague, the information was intended chiefly for his colleagues. Farmers probably never read any predictions, not even the annual ones written in vernacular languages which could have been of much interest to them. Disregarding the low literacy level that prevailed in the Middle Ages, the farmers probably favored the oral tradition with its generally accepted simple weather signs which developed into our popular weather lore.

Medieval Classifications and Discussions In the medieval classifications, unlike today, weather forecasting was not an integral part of meteorology. The discipline was, rather, determined by astronomy, astrology and popular cosmology. Derived from the Aristotelian tradition, medieval me­te­o­



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ro­lo­gy studied the material and efficient causes of meteorological and similar phenomena (wet and dry exhalations occurring in the sublunary world composed of four elements), with little consideration for the original causes of the exhalations, i.  e. the movements of the celestial bodies. Writers on meteorology only paid marginal attention to weather signs, and only when such signs could be related to the theory of exhalations. That does not necessarily mean that they had not respect for forecasting by the celestial bodies. A fourteenth-century commentary ascribed to John Duns Scotus addressed some of the signs using the theory of exhalations (e.  g. explaining some of the rain indicators, such as the sound and movement of leaves on trees in calm weather, in accordance with the contemporary meteorological ideas about the presence of a large volume of vapors in the air, which rise and form rain; donkeys were reported to wiggle their ears before rain, because their nerves reacted to the thickening of the air). For further study of rain signs, which are also causae effectivae pluviarum, such as constellations, the commentary (Ps.-Scotus, Quaestiones meteorologicae 24,1) refers to the astrologia de iudiciis addressed in the treatises entitled De impressionibus aeris. This shows that the writers on meteorology recognised astrological weather forecasting but did not include it in meteorology. It was considered a part of mundane or general astrology, which predicted the future, not for individuals, but for groups of people (nations or towns), mainly crops, plague, war or weather. Passages on astrological weather forecasting were incorporated into astrological summas, for example, by Guido Bonatti. The use of astronomical phenomena as a weather predictive tool enjoyed within astrology a special position. Astrologers faced criticism already in Antiquity, but those who predicted weather based on the stars were exempt from this, because they used direct observations, not solely the presumption of “stellar causality”. Otherwise highly critical, Sextus Empiricus (Adversus mathematicos, V,1–2) respected the predictions of drought, plague, earthquake and other natural events based on celestial bodies as being fully in line with the laws of nature, unlike the composition of birth horoscopes. He regarded weather forecasts and other predictions as the products of observation, rather than theoretical inference (Taub 2003, 39–40). The main argument was the obvious link between the sun and the seasons of the year, the moon and the tides, the rise of certain stars and certain natural events (e.  g. the rise of Sirius as the Nile began to flood). Understandably, that encouraged the conjecture that the celestial bodies influenced sublunary life. The same premise also provided grounds for the whole understanding of the effects of the celestial bodies on earthly events, as outlined by Ptolemy in the second century. Observations of these signs seemed partly acceptable, even to the Church Fathers. Isidore of Seville (Etymologiae III, 71,5–38) mentions several stars that cause rain or heat, but cautions Christians against taking an interest in such learning, as it is entirely improper. The fiercest fourteenth-century opponent of astrology, Nicole Oresme, recognized some role of astrology in medicine and weather forecasting (see e.  g. his Questiones in Meteorologica secundum ultimam lecturam, II,5; the new critical

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edition of the Questiones I,1–II,20 by Aurora Panzica is soon to be published), but noted that sailors produced more reliable forecasts (Nicole Oresme – Livre de divinacions, ed. Coopland, 56). Apart from theological postulates, the reservations regarding astrological forecasts concerned the limited knowledge about the celestial bodies, or their excessive distance from the sublunary sphere, which makes the relations too vague and difficult to match with specific meteorological phenomena (Mandosio 2013, 172). Therefore, some favored the weather signs determined by empirical observations, such as those mastered by farmers, sailors, physicians and natural scientists. Even the advocates of astrological predictions appreciated the benefits of common weather forecasting. The meteorognomical signs were mentioned not only by Ptolemy but also, for example, by Firmin de Beauval (fl. 1338–1345), who concluded his big summa with a section listing the signs established in meteorology (signalia superiora per methaurorum scienciam), and generally accepted signs approved by the common people (signalia vulgariter approbata). None of the manuals made any mention of scapulimancy, which developed independently along with other divinatory arts. Although the approaches described above are drawn from different traditions and pose different requirements regarding the education of the potential forecaster, they all share the same purpose and were not seen as mutually contradictory. Notwithstanding vigorous encouragement from its later advocates, the astrological method of weather forecasting has eventually become outdated. Still, its influence on the development of meteorology should not be underestimated. In the mass-produced astronomical calendars in the age of printing, regular records of weather conditions came to be inscribed. Observation, forecasting, and meteorological theories were thus interconnected: one small step to a more reliable forecast.

Selected Bibliography Bos, Gerrit, and Charles Burnett. Scientific Weather Forecasting in the Middle Ages. The Writings of Al-Kindī. Studies, Editions, and Translations of the Arabic, Hebrew and Latin Texts. London, 2000. Brévart, Francis B. “The German Volkskalender of the Fifteenth Century.” Speculum 63 (1988): 312–342. Burnett, Charles. “An Unknown Latin Version of an Ancient Parapegma: the Weather-Forecasting Stars in the Iudicia of Pseudo-Ptolemy.” Making Instruments Count: Essays on Historical Scientific Instruments Presented to Gerard L’Estrange Turner. Eds. Robert G. W. Anderson, Jim Bennett, and William F. Ryan. Aldershot, 1993. 27–41. Burnett, Charles. “The Scapulimancy of Giorgio Anselmiʼs Divinum opus de magia disciplina.” Euphrosyne 23 (1995): 63–79. Burnett, Charles. “Late Antique and Medieval Latin Translations of Greek Texts on Astrology and Magic.” The Occult Sciences in Byzantium. Eds. Maria Mavroudi and Paul Magdalino. Geneva, 2006. 325–359.



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Burnett, Charles. “Lunar Astrology. The Varieties of Texts Using Lunar Mansions, with Emphasis on Jafar Indus.” Il sole e la luna. The Sun and the Moon (= Micrologus, 12). Florence, 2004. 43–133. Burnett, Charles. “Weather Forecasting, Lunar Mansions and a Disputed Attribution: The Tractatus Pluviarum et Aeris Mutationis and Epitome Totius Astrologiae of ‘Iohannes Hispalensis’.” Islamic Thought in the Middle Ages: Studies in Text, Transmission and Translation, in Honour of Hans Daiber. Eds. Wim Raven and Anna Akasoy. Leiden and Boston, 2008. 219–265. Caldini Montanari, Roberta. “L’astrologia nei Prognostica di Germanico.” Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica 45 (1973): 137–204. Carey, Hilary M. Courting Disaster. Astrology at the English Court and University in the Later Middle Ages. New York, 1992. Cesario, Marilina. “Weather Prognostics in Anglo-Saxon England.” English Studies 93 (2012): 391–426. Cesario, Marilina. “An English Source for a Latin Text? Wind Prognostication in Oxford, Bodleian, Hatton 115 and Ashmole 345.” Studies in Philology 112 (2015): 213–233. Cesario, Marilina. “Knowledge of the Weather in the Middle Ages: Libellus de disposicione totius anni futuri.” Aspects of Knowledge. Preserving and Reinventing Traditions of Learning in the Middle Ages. Eds. Marilina Cesario and Hugh Magennis. Manchester, 2018. 53–78. DiTommaso, Lorenzo. “Pseudepigrapha Notes III:4. Old Testament Pseudepigrapha in the Yale University Manuscript Collection.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 20 (2010): 3–80. Ducos, Joëlle. “Astrométéorologie et vulgarisation, le livre VI de Li compilacion de le science des estoilles de Léopold d’Autriche.” Par les mots et par les textes, mélanges en l’honneur de C. Thomasset. Eds. Daniéle James-Raoul and Olivier Soutet. Paris, 2005. 239–256. Ducos, Joëlle. La météorologie en français au Moyen Age (XIIIe–XIVe siècles). Champion, 1998. Flajšhans, Václav (ed.). Klaret a jeho družina. I (Praha 1926), II (Praha 1928: Bartholomeus de Solencia dictus Claretus, Astronomicus, on pp. 96–152). Hellmann, Gustav. “Die Wettervorhersage im ausgehenden Mittelalter (12. bis 15. Jahrhundert).” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Meteorologie, 3 vols. Berlin, 1914–1922. 167–229 (vol. 2). Hermann, Marek. “Zur Astrometeorologie bei römischen Autoren.” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, n. F. 148 (2005): 272–292. Hoffmann, Immanuel. Die Anschauungen der Kirchenväter über Meteorologie. Munich, 1907. Hübner, Wolfgang. “L’astrométéorologie dans l’Antiquité classique.” La météorologie dans l’Antiquité: entre science et croyance. Actes du colloque international interdisciplinaire de Toulouse, 2–3–4 mai 2002. Ed. Christophe Cusset. Saint-Étienne, 2003. 75–93. Jenks, Stuart. “Astrometeorology in the Middle Ages.” Isis 74 (1983): 185–210, and 562. Juste, David, and Hilbert Chiu. “The De Tonitruis Attributed to Bede: An Early Medieval Treatise on Divination by Thunder Translated from Irish.” Traditio 68 (2013): 97–124. Kocánová, Barbora. “Latein als Sprache der Schriften über Wettervorhersage.” Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi 71 (2013): 237–248. Lawrence-Mathers, Anne. Medieval Meteorology. Forecasting the Weather from Aristotle to the Almanac. Cambridge, 2020. Lehoux, Daryn. Astronomy, Weather, and Calendars in the Ancient World. Parapegmata and Related Texts in Classical and Near Eastern Societies. Cambridge, 2007. Liuzza, Roy M. “What the Thunder Said: Anglo-Saxon Brontologies and the Problem of Sources.” The Review of English Studies 55 (2004): 1–23. Low-Beer, Sheila. Herman of Carinthia: The Liber imbrium, The Fatidica and the De indagatione Cordis. New York, 1979. Mandosio, Jean-Marc. “Meteorology and Weather Forecasting in the Middle Ages.” Die mantischen Künste und die Epistemologie prognostischer Wissenschaften im Mittelalter. Ed. Alexander Fidora. Cologne et al., 2013. 167–181.

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Martin, Craig. Renaissance Meteorology: Pomponazzi to Descartes. Baltimore, 2011. Matter, E. Ann. “The ‘Revelatio Esdrae’ in Latin and English Traditions.” Revue bénédictine 92 (1982): 376–392. Nicole Oresme. “Livre de divinacions – Tractatus contra astronomos judiciarios.” Nicole Oresme and the Astrologers. A Study on his Livre de divinacions. Ed. George W. Coopland. Liverpool, 1952. Nicole Oresme. Questiones in Meteorologica secundum ultimam lecturam, recensio parisiensis. Study of the Manuscript Tradition and Critical Edition of Books I–II.10. Ed. Aurora Panzica (in print). Pfister, Christian, Rudolf Brázdil, Rüdiger Glaser, Anita Bokwa, Franz Holawe, Danuta Limanówka, Oldřich Kotyza, Jan Munzar, Lajos Rácz, Elisabeth Strömmer, and Gabriela Schwarz-Zanetti. “Daily Weather Observations in Sixteenth-Century Europe.” Climatic Change 43 (1999): 111–150. Röhr, Julius. “Beiträge zur antiken Astrometeorologie.” Philologus 83 (1928): 259–305. Scofield, Bruce. A History and Test of Planetary Weather Forecasting. Ph.D. Diss. University of Massachusetts. Amherst, 2010. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/ 221 2010 (10 March 2020). (Pseudo-)Scotus. Quaestiones meteorologicae. Joannis Duns Scoti Opera omnia, vol. 4. Eds. Luke Wadding and Ludwig Vives. Paris, 1891. 3–263. Sider, David, and Carl Wolfram Brunschön (eds). Theophrastus, On Weather Signs (Philosophia Antiqua, 104). Leiden and Boston, 2007. Taub, Liba. Ancient Meteorology. London and New York, 2003. Thorndike, Lynn. A History of Magic and Experimental Science, vol. 3. New York, 1934. Tur, Alexandre. Hora introitus solis in Arietem, Les prédictions astrologiques annuelles latines dans lʼEurope du XVe siècle (1405–1484). Ph.D. Diss. Université d’Orléans, 2018. Tur, Alexandre. “Hartmann Schedel, collectionneur et copiste de prédictions astrologiques annuelles.” Bulletin du bibliophile, 2015, 278–296.

Ioannis G. Telelis

Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Eastern Christian World Definitions and Terminology Observing weather and its changes is an essential aspect of modern meteorology. This aspect has its distant roots in two different traditions of pre-instrumental meteorological inquiry, dating back to ancient times. With regard to Greek and Roman antiquity, i.  e. the cultural background of the medieval Eastern Christian world (330–1453), observing weather was, on the one hand, part of the philosophical-scientific discourse that posed theoretical questions about the nature of weather phenomena and their causes. On the other hand, the observation of certain meteorological phenomena was oriented toward prognostication and aimed at constructing weather forecasting techniques, useful for assessing and preventing implications of weather for various aspects of economic and social activities. Therefore, knowledge of the weather, that included beliefs and ideas about the nature of meteorological phenomena, as well as the correlation of weather with different processes of the physical world in various parts of daily, monthly, or seasonal cycles, enabled weather prediction and constituted a significant part of ancient and medieval weather forecasting. In ancient Greek and Roman culture, observing meteorological phenomena was a significant part of the so-called “natural” divination, i.  e. the kind of divination that was based on the observation and interpretation of processes and changes belonging to the physical world. Observation of the state of being and acting of inanimate and animate objects within nature (e.  g. celestial bodies, atmospheric phenomena, striking terrestrial phenomena such as earthquakes, the behavior of birds and animals, the phenology of plants, and accounts of divinatory objects) offered various tokens from which prognostic meanings with socio-cultural significance could be deduced. Specifically, observing meteorological phenomena was important because these functioned as a predictive device for natural divination and vice versa; the observation of different portents of natural divination offered tokens that were useful for predicting certain weather events and enabled the construction of prognostic weather patterns. The hybrid conception of meteorological phenomena, both as portents of natural divination and as objects for applying the techniques of weather forecasting, may explain the absence of a specific technical term for defining weather prognostication as a self-contained discipline compared with ancient or medieval meteorology. While the Greek term “meteorology” (μετεωρολογία) defined the field of natural philosophy, that focused – inter alia – on investigating the causes of meteorological phenomena, weather prognostication was an inquiry of a less theoretical and more practical character, both in the ancient Greco-Roman and the medieval Eastern Christian worlds. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-038

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In Byzantium, weather forecasting was the result of interpreting various natural portents. Therefore, a specific terminology was developed to express the process of observing the relevant prognostic signs and extracting meteorological forecasts from them. Both the techniques for weather forecasting, as well as the terminology for describing the relevant practices were inherited from Hellenistic and Roman antiquity. The observation of astral tokens (i.  e. the rising and setting of celestial bodies), of specific natural occurrences (e.  g. meteorological phenomena or earthquakes), or of the state of being and acting of animate and inanimate objects within the natural world, offered signs (σημεῖα), which were interpreted as denoting (ἐπισημασίαι/ ἐπισημαίνειν principally, in the case of astral tokens) future changes in weather conditions. Overall, weather predictions included in texts from the Byzantine period are usually formulated through brief textual entities structured as conditional sentences, which correlated the prognostic signs in the protasis with coming weather changes in the apodosis: “If [x] sign happens, then [y] weather occurs.” The overall lack of a distinctive terminology for defining weather forecasting as a separate philosophical-scientific discipline in Byzantium is also reflected in the literature of the Slavic world. Since meteorological theories regarding the explanation of weather phenomena recorded in Byzantine texts were transmitted to the Bulgarians, Serbs and Rus through being translated into Slavonic, there is no textual evidence in early Slavic culture indicating the approach of weather prognostication as a separate field of philosophical-scientific inquiry. Nonetheless, weather predictions had a significant presence in Slavic popular divinatory books, which included weather omens formulated within protasis-apodosis (“if…, then…”) conditional clauses, as was also the case in the popular Byzantine divinatory texts.

Written Sources and Artifacts Weather forecasting in the Byzantine and Slavic world was a system of empirical knowledge, represented by theories and practices rooted in Hellenistic and Roman Antiquity and transmitted through various textual and oral traditions. During those periods, the knowledge and interpretation related to weather signs became crystallized through the application of weather prediction techniques that exploited two broad, distinct categories of tokens, according to Greek cosmological geocentric concepts: i. supra-lunar tokens, which resulted in weather forecasting based on the observation of celestial bodies outside the lunar sphere (defined in modern terms as astrometeorology); and ii. sub-lunar tokens, which resulted in predictions that depended on an empirical knowledge of the signs linked with atmospheric and terrestrial phenomena or living organisms (defined in modern terms as meteorognomy). Hellenistic and Roman weather prognostics, based on the observation of supra- and sub-lunar tokens, left significant imprints of various kinds on the Byzantine and subsequent



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Slavic literature over time. In turn, Byzantine and Slavic weather forecasting practices are reflected in the oral traditions of the Greek and Slavic world after the fifteenth century, some of which still survive in the Balkans in modern folklore and popular weather lore. The weather prognostics of the Byzantine period are documented in various Greek texts. The main textual agents for weather forecasting in Byzantium are diverse types of calendars, which included forecasts derived from various kinds of tokens. Regarding weather prognostication from supra-lunar tokens (astrometeorology), astral calendars were the dominant type of texts. The Greek tradition of astral calendars, known as parapegmata, which listed the phases (heliacal risings and acronycal settings) of important stars and constellations to tell the time of the year and – in most cases – to function as reminders of the annual revolution of the seasons and the associated normal weather, was continued also in Byzantium. To the tradition of about 20 extant astrometeorological parapegmata in literary form dating from the early third century BCE to the fifteenth century CE, the Byzantines contributed the following texts: i. Antiochus’ Parapegma (fourth century), which correlates stellar phases with changes in weather conditions; ii. The Parapegma of Clodius Tuscus, as quoted and translated from Latin into Greek in its entirety in John Lydos’ anthology On Omens (543 CE), which correlates dates with stellar phases, weather, the sun’s entry into the zodiacal signs, the beginnings of the seasons, as well as certain bird behaviors (sub-lunar tokens); iii. The Parapegma included in John Lydos’ anthology On Months (sixth century), which is a collection of dated astronomical and astrometeorological predictions, and includes quotations of ancient sources (Demokritos, Caesar, and Eudoxus) for both stellar phases and weather predictions regarding mainly the activity of the winds and stormy weather; iv. The Aetius Parapegma, included as a chapter in Aetius of Amida’s medical work, Tetrabiblos (sixth century), containing stellar phases, weather predictions, and certain medical information directly associated with the weather; in many cases, the phase of a star is associated with the weather several days prior to the occurrence of the phase; v. The Quintilius Parapegma, which is appended to ch. 1.9 of the tenth-century farming manual Geoponica, and shows similarities to that of Aetius, correlating the beginning of the prominent winds and seasons with dates and the sun’s position in the Zodiac; vi. The Florentinus Parapegma, a brief list in ch. 1.1 of the Geoponica, which correlates the beginnings of the prominent winds and seasons with the sun’s position in the Zodiac; vii. The Parapegma of cod. Marcianus gr. 335 (fifteenth century), published in the Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum (CCAG – see Appendix no. 6), focusing mainly on storms at sea and offering astral weather signs useful for tenth-century sailors; viii. The Parapegma of cod. Parisinus gr. 2419 (fifteenth century), comparable with that of Clodius Tuscus, but including differences about the stellar phases; and ix. The Parapegma of cod. Matritensis gr. 110, known also as P. Iriarte parapegma (1474 CE), which correlates certain stellar phases with weather predictions and dates. To this list of Byzantine parapegmata, the Almanac of Trebizond for 1336 should be added (see Appen-

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dix no. 24), because it includes detailed astronomical data together with astrological and weather predictions referring to seasonal climatic conditions. The parapegmata of the Byzantine period evidently form part of a traditional group of texts, the roots of which are identified in the Hellenistic astrometeorology. For instance, Hellenistic treatises on astral science, such as Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos and Phases of the fixed stars or Geminus’ Introduction to the phenomena, offered the computational basis for the parapegmata of later centuries. Furthermore, these treatises subscribed to the ancient belief that the stars are either the agents of weather change or the passive indicators of such. Such beliefs, but without any clear distinction regarding the nature of the stars’ influence on weather changes, were transmitted into the above-mentioned Byzantine parapegmata. Apart from the parapegmata, which dealt with meteorological prognoses deduced from the observation of stellar phases, weather forecasts are also encountered in further calendrical texts that exploited supra-lunar tokens and time reckoning to achieve divination according to the months of the calendar or position of the sun and/or moon in the Zodiac. Lunar calendars (selenodromia; see Appendix, entries indicated as “selenodromion”) offered predictions and instructions on human activities depending on the age of the moon, its position in the Zodiac, its brilliance and its shape; weather forecasts were included. Zodiacal calendars (zodiologia; see Appendix, entries indicated as “zodiologion”) offered prognoses based on the zodiacal sign under which one was born, prognostications for a period of twelve years based on the dominant Zodiac of a given year (e.  g. dodecaeteris of the Chaldeans), or descriptions of the nature, power, and affinity of the planets, including meteorological qualities and influences. Additionally, the kalandologia (see Appendix, entries indicated as “kalandologion”) were calendrical documents that described the crude meteorological characteristics of the coming year’s months based on the weather conditions of the days during the week in which New Year’s Day or Christmas Day fell. Astrometeorological knowledge in Byzantium was supplemented by several technical texts that exploited the evaluation of sub-lunar tokens (meteorognomy). Various Byzantine – mostly anonymous – miscellanies offered detailed weather forecasts derived from the observation of atmospheric and terrestrial signs, including the attitude of living organisms. Thunder and/or lightning calendars (brontologia; ↗ Grünbart, Importance of Thunder) were used to interpret thunder and/or lightning in order to deduce predictions of future events that were of public interest, e.  g. agricultural concerns, health conditions, the political and spiritual state of humankind, etc.; weather conditions stand as a further important field of public interest. Earthquake calendars (seismologia; see Appendix, entries indicated as “seismologion”) offered divination obtained from the correlation of earthquake occurrences with qualifiers like zodiacal signs, lunar phases or the time of day. Predictions deduced from earthquakes included famines, crop failures, harm to animals or people, occasional abundances of crops and animals and socio-political changes. Future weather events or the meteorological character of the whole coming seasons were among the predic-



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tions deduced from earthquakes in the seismologia. Several calendars of this category were of a hybrid character, because they combined earthquake and thunder omens arranged in daily prognoses according to the months of the calendar or the position of the sun and/or moon in the Zodiac. The observation of the visual characteristics of specific atmospheric phenomena, such as the sun’s visibility (in combination with clouds), moon’s visibility (e.  g. the brightness, color, and shape of the crescent and halos), mist, rainbow, clouds and wind, offered signs for meteorological prognoses. Such weather prognostics are often encountered in texts specifically dedicated to weather forecasting. The collection of atmospheric weather signs included in texts of this kind is supplemented by compilations of weather forecasts based on the observation of terrestrial signs. To this category belong forecasts deduced from the behavior of birds, animals, and plants (see Appendix, entries indicated accordingly). Moreover, there existed texts of a mixed type, which compiled forecasts derived from weather signs from different categories. A striking example of a mixed type text is a collection of prognostic notes on the future condition of the atmosphere included in cod. Laurent. gr. 28.32, ff. 12–14 (fifteenth century), which offers weather signs based on the sun, moon, solar and lunar eclipses, days of the month, meteorological phenomena and animal behavior. Many of the signs encountered in this text are drawn from ancient sources. The classic textual ancestors of this collection regarding weather forecasts based on atmospheric and terrestrial signs are Theophrastus of Eresus’ On weather signs (fourth/third century BCE), Aratus’ Phenomena (third century BCE), Vergil’s Georgics, Varro’s On agriculture (first century BCE), Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, and Columella’s On agriculture (first century CE). The widespread dissemination of the Byzantine parapegmata, selenodromia, brontologia and seismologia is verified by the fact that certain scholarly texts from the Byzantine literature incorporated weather-related evidence that was derived from these. Apart from the parapegma of Clodius Tuscus, John Lydos’ survey of classical divination On Omens (543 CE) also contains the only extant coherent text of an Etruscan brontologion, previously published in Latin by P. Nigidius Figulus (first century BCE). Meteorological prognoses from the parapegma of John Lydos were later incorporated in John Kamateros’ didactic verse Introduction to Astronomy (eleventh century CE). On the other hand, information on weather prognostics derived from terrestrial signs (the behavior of birds, animals, and plants) is also present in theological or philosophical treatises of the Byzantine period. For instance, Basil of Caesarea (b. 330) and Michael Glykas (b. 1125) acknowledge the use of terrestrial signs for predicting weather, while Michael Psellos (b. 1018) includes weather signs from lizards, the sea, clouds, mountain tops, lamp snuff, animals, trees, and bees, in a brief text devoted to omoplatoscopy. The circulation in Byzantium of several divinatory texts reporting astrological, meteorological, and calendrical information appears to have prompted the flowering of analogous texts in the Slavic world. Fortune-telling texts influenced by the Byz-

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antine brontologia, seismologia, selenodromia, zodiologia and kalandologia appeared first in Bulgaria and Serbia in the thirteenth century and, from the fifteenth century onward, these texts were transmitted to Muscovy. The Slavic gromniki (divination by thunder, including also divination by earthquake), molniianiki (divination by lightning), lunniki (divination by the age or shape of the moon), and koliadniki (kalandologia), offered divination of private and public interest, including weather forecasts. Nonetheless, the genre of Byzantine parapegmata did not have an analogous impact on Slavic literature, unlike the successful dissemination of the remaining genres of divinatory texts, probably because of the limited integration of astronomy and the relevant scientific terminology in the Slavic world, at least until the fifteenth century.

Techniques and Manifestations The Byzantine sources fail to yield any direct information about the existence of meteorologists in the modern sense; namely professionals skilled in observing and analyzing weather signs in order to deduce weather forecasts, without – of course – the use of any instruments. From the remarkable interest in reproducing and developing ancient wisdom on weather prognostication, as documented by the wide diffusion of the relevant textual evidence throughout the Byzantine era, we can surmise that weather forecasting techniques were probably mastered, not only by astrologers, but also by anyone who was in need of meteorological forecasts and capable of evaluating the relevant signs. Thus, the farming manual Geoponica (tenth century), which includes a compilation of excerpts from ancient agricultural literature in conjunction with astrometeorological and meteorognomonical weather prognostics, was probably aimed at farmers, who would become capable of interpreting the relevant signs. Furthermore, the Parapegma of cod. Marcianus gr. 335 (see Appendix no. 6), which deals mainly with meteorological forecasts of winds and sea storms, was seemingly of use to sailors. On the other hand, weather forecasting was important for strategic planning as well. Byzantine military manuals acknowledged the importance of weather forecasting. For instance, the Tactica of Leo VI (ninth century) reports that the task of astrology is to predict the seasons of the year, during which changes in cold and hot weather, alterations in rainfall, and extraordinary motions of winds occur, because these changes frequently endanger armies. Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (r. 913–959) mentions, in his De Cerimoniis, the inclusion of books “dealing with good and bad weather and storms, rain, lightning and thunder, and the vehemence of the winds”, as well as in his manuals recommended to military commanders “a treatise on thunder and a treatise on earthquakes, and other books such as those to which sailors are wont to refer.” Overall, the continuous need for weather prognoses in Byzantium indicates a desire within a society that based its sustainability on agriculture and sea trade to



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acquire and secure knowledge of future weather changes in order to cope with unexpected events in the sphere of agriculture, military and nautical practice. Therefore, weather prognoses were marked by the anticipation of meteorological occurrences that would signal either hazardous or favorable environmental conditions. Byzantine evidence on weather forecasting shows that atmospheric phenomena (e.  g. wind, rain, snow, hail etc.), as well as extreme weather events (e.  g. rainstorms, heatwaves, cold or dry spells, etc.), and seasonal extreme conditions (e.  g. severe winters, very dry or wet summers, etc.) were evaluated as important and concentrated the primary predictive interest. The potential of such environmental events to influence the quality and quantity of the harvests and affect seafaring and/or strategic planning was perceived as a crucial factor for the survival and wellbeing of the Byzantine economy on both the local and regional scale. On the other hand, the diffusion of techniques or discussions on weather forecasting in a wide array of texts verifies the importance ascribed to this topic by the whole of Byzantine society, including the upper social class. For instance, at the twelfth-century Byzantine royal court, John Kamateros addressed his didactic astrological poem, Introduction to Astronomy, to the Byzantine emperor Manuel I (r.  1143–1180) and included  – among other astrological topics  – prognoses related to thunder, lightning, comets, earthquakes and winds. Kamateros’ poem was definitely intended for a broader audience, that comprised the members of the Byzantine court and aristocrats, who favored the fashionable science of astrology during that period. Nevertheless, the weather prognostication documented in astrological texts was not the sole prerogative of the Byzantine royal or upper class. The abundance of popular divinatory works (brontologia, seismologia, etc.) and the inclusion of weather forecasts within them verify that weather prognostication was a hot topic, of interest also to the lower social strata.

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts Historical testimonies concerning the interest in meteorological prognosis and practices related to weather forecasting are identifiable throughout Byzantine history. The existing body of direct and indirect information enhances the study of weather forecasting practices, mainly for the well-documented periods of the Byzantine era. Specifically, within the framework of an early Byzantine theological and philosophical discourse about the legitimacy of astrology and its compatibility with the Christian faith, weather forecasting was approached by thinkers such as Basil of Caesarea or John Philoponus as the only acceptable domain of astral influence on earthly processes. The circulation of several early Byzantine astrological compilations, such as Paul of Alexandria’s Introduction to Astrology (ca. 378) and Hephaistion of Thebes’ Apotelesmatika or Astrological Effects (ca. 415), clearly inspired discussion on the

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reception of astrology in the Christian worldview, and left imprints within the early Byzantine legislation, as well as in subsequent debates (see below, ch. 5). The early Byzantine astrological treatises’ texts drew on Hellenistic and Roman astrology and included correlations between the characteristics of the zodiacal signs or lunar phases and meteorological qualities or phenomena. For instance, Paul of Alexandria devoted a brief chapter in his Introduction to Astrology to predictions based on the winds linked to the correlation between the moon and the zodiacal signs. This chapter was later commented on and extended by Olympiodorus the Younger of Alexandria (495–570), who also added several new observations about the passage. In the sixth century, Byzantine confidence in the practical value of oracles and predictions, as derived from the interpretation of celestial and other natural signs, is recorded in the compilation of John Lydos’ antiquarian anthology, On omens. In respect to weather forecasting, this work verifies the penetration of the brontologia, seismologia and other divinatory calendrical texts in early Byzantine society. In turn, these texts engaged in the transmission of weather forecasting practices in parallel with their ancient (Chaldean, Egyptian, Etruscan) and Roman prophetic content to Byzantium, and from there to the Slavic world. During the mid-Byzantine period, the most comprehensive text that includes systematic weather forecasts was the farming manual, Geoponica (tenth century). The set of astrometeorological and meteorognomonical weather prognostics offered in this text confirms the ongoing interest of the Byzantines in weather prognostication and relevant forecasting practices. Furthermore, the scattered evidence embellished in the Greek historiographical sources suggests that weather prognostication survived in full accordance with the cultivation of astrology and occasionally in support of apocalyptic speculation. For instance, Theophanes Continuatus notably mentions that the eminent Byzantine scientist, Leo the Mathematician (d. 869), applied his astrological knowledge in order to safeguard the city of Thessalonica from famine by accurately predicting the end of a prolonged drought and the best time to sow the next grain crop. Moreover, in the period around the turn of the millennium (1000 CE), foreign attacks, civil wars, and natural disasters – including meteorological catastrophes – were invested with apocalyptical significance by Byzantine chroniclers. Though by no means comprehensive or systematic, this type of weather forecasting indicates that weather and its prognosis was contextualized in favor of eschatological concepts that were extensively cultivated by chronographers during the mid-Byzantine period. In twelfth-century Byzantium, debates over the compatibility of astrology with Orthodoxy were continued during the reign of Manuel I Komnenos, because of the broadly positive attitude toward astrological practices and the presence of astrologers at the royal court. Weather forecasting had a place in John Kamateros’ astrological poem that was addressed to Manuel I, who favored astrological and meteorological predictions. However, the emperor was severely criticized by Michael Glykas and Nicetas Choniates for his liking for astrology. Choniates described with irony in his chronicle how an imperial official of Manuel I consulted a brontologion during a cam-



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paign in the years 1156/1157, impressed by the horrific rumbling of thunder. The wide diffusion of the Byzantine fortune-telling texts had already begun. The late Byzantine period is marked by the extended production and circulation of various types of texts dealing with natural divination. The majority of the Byzantine brontologia, seismolologia, selenodromia, zodiologia, and kalandologia had been composed in the thirteenth century and flourished from the fifteenth century onward. Although by no means written to facilitate weather forecasting, as was the main goal of the parapegmata, these texts offered omens on various matters, including weather and agriculture. At times, meteorological forecasts occupy a formulaic place in those texts by functioning as paraphernalia in predictions about matters related to human fortune. In the Slavic world, the earliest attempts to approach weather prediction at a theoretical level were linked to the transfer of Greek theological and scientific thought to the Slavic culture. Weather forecasting was a topic of discussion in scholarly texts from the tenth century, combined with astrology. Specifically, John the Exarch of Bulgaria (fl. ca. 890–917), in his Shestodnev (a compilation of passages translated mostly from Basil of Caesarea’s Nine Homilies in the Hexaemeron), admits that the subject matter of astrology, according to the Greeks, i.  e. the rising, setting, and combination of the stars with the sun and moon, all demarcate signs of rain, cold, heat, and other meteorological phenomena, but definitely do not deal with human fate. Furthermore, John the Exarch explains the essence of certain atmospheric phenomena, such as rain, through the action of the Divine Providence, which offers certain predictive signs to humans in order to denote rainfall. With these statements, John the Exarch condemned astrology and recognized the value of weather forecasting according to the theological views expressed by Basil of Caesarea. An analogous theoretical acknowledgement of weather prediction resulting from the observation of the stars and the related rejection of the power of astrology to predict human affairs is encountered also in the anonymous Russ theological encyclopedic miscellany, Interpretative Palea (Palea Tolkovaya), from the fourteenth century, which had a significant influence in Wallachia, Moldova and Muscovy in subsequent centuries. In parallel with scholarly discussions on the value of stellar signs in fulfilling weather prediction, several fortune-telling books, which began to circulate from the thirteenth century onward in the Slavic world. The expansion of the Byzantine brontologia, seismolologia, selenodromia, zodiologia, and kalandologia fueled the production of analogous texts in the Slavic literature (the gromniki, molniianiki, lunniki, and koliadniki), that included weather forecasts. These texts were usually structured – like their Byzantine counterparts – in brief conditional sentences, which correlated prognostic signs in the protasis with the expected weather changes in the apodosis. The wide diffusion of these texts throughout the Slavic world from the fifteenth century onward played an essential role in the development of popular weather lore in the Balkans and Russia in later centuries.

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Medieval Classifications and Discussions Weather forecasting in the Eastern Christian World was a field for practicing natural divination, usually with the support of astral observation, rather than a theoretical branch of medieval meteorology. Therefore, despite the prominent position occupied by astronomy in the Byzantine quadrivium of sciences, weather prognostication – at least insofar as it concerns the astronomical aspect of the forecasts – was mentioned on a very limited scale. The two extant quadrivia of the Byzantine period – the anonymous Quadrivium of 1008 and George Pachymeres’ Quadrivium (ca. 1300)  – both shared the negative approach to astrological predictions, well-known from earlier centuries. Since the issue of the compatibility of astrological predictions with the Christian faith was predominant among Byzantine theologians and scholars, who were usually wary of astrology and its potential to fulfil the plan of the God, both scientific manuals accepted the manifestation of signs related to natural outcomes as the sole predictive power of the stars. Overall, astrometeorological and meteorognomonical weather prognostication was acknowledged as a practice that was fully compatible with the Christian faith, despite the generally negative attitude toward astrological divination. As a matter of fact, with regard to Christian theological thought, weather forecasting emerged as a field of compromise between the Orthodox faith and pagan astrology through the acceptance of the fact that the stars have an effect upon the physical bodies and workings of nature, but do not pertain human fate. The Biblical quotation: “let them [the lights in the vault of the sky] serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years” (Gen. 1,1:14), as well as several passages from the Gospels denoting Jesus’ endorsement of the regularity and predictability of weather, offered the Church Fathers solid theological arguments for supporting the differentiation between signs useful for weather forecasting, and divination obtained from astral observation and magical practices. For instance, Basil of Caesarea in his Nine Homilies on the Hexaemeron (fourth century) accepted that one might employ the configuration of stars as signs for predicting the phenomena of nature, especially weather, but denied the stars’ influence upon human fate. In later centuries, several Byzantine theologians and scholars acknowledged Basil’s views contra astrology and pro the practical value of weather prognostication. In John Philoponus’ On the Creation of the World (sixth century), the stars are perceived as signs of meteorological predictions, but as lacking any further influence upon human life and destiny. In the seventh century, John of Damascus (Philosophical Chapters) concluded that the stars did not generate anything but weather changes, while George of Pisidia (Hexaemeron) attributed to the Divine Will the power appended to the stars and the birds to foretell weather changes. Analogous views of what is acceptable from astral science, and thus the value of weather signs, are encountered also in Michael Glykas’ introduction to his Chronography, (twelfth century), reflecting Basil of Caesarea’s views. The positive theological approach of weather prognostication as an acceptable facet of astrological knowledge left imprints in the Byzantine legislation. In 319, Con-



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stantine I condemned severely the astrologers, but excluded from punishment those magical practices in rural districts for agricultural purposes. An analogous law was issued in 409 by Emperor Theodosius, who exempted from criminal accusation those men who were equipped with the magic arts when providing assistance in rural districts so that farmers might not fear that the rain would destroy the grape harvest, or that the harvests would be shattered by ruinous hail since, through such actions, “those men bring it about that divine gifts and the labors of men are not destroyed” (Theodosian Code, 16.3). Both legal acts denote that weather forecasting was differentiated from astrology and magic regarding its objectives and results. The acceptance of weather prognostication is also indicated in a few Byzantine texts that attempted to reconcile Christian dogma with positive attitudes toward the star’s influence over human affairs. In the mid-twelfth century Peter the Deacon, librarian at Montecassino, in a letter addressed to Patriarch Luke of Constantinople, justifies some interest in astrology by taking for granted the deduction of weather forecasts from astral signs. Then, in favor of iatromathematics and medical astrology, Peter wonders why forecasting should not be expanded from the weather to cover prognoses of changes in the human body. In the fourteenth-century dialogue entitled Hermippos or on Astrology, the defense of astrology is supported by reporting moon weather signs drawn directly from Aratus.

Selected Bibliography Andreeva, Margarita Alekseeva. “Polititcheskіi i obchtchestvennyi èlement vivantіisko-slavianskikh gadatel’nykh knig. Vvedenіe.” Byzantinoslavica 2 (1930a): 47–73. Andreeva, Margarita Alekseeva. “Glava II. Vizantіiskіia gadatel’nyia knigi VI veka.” Byzantinoslavica 2 (1930b): 395–415. Andreeva, Margarita Alekseeva. “Glava III. Pozdneichtchіia vizantіiskіia, novo-gretcheskіia i slavianskіia gadatel’nyia knigi.” Byzantinoslavica 3 (1931): 430–461. Andreeva, Margarita Alekseeva. “Glava IV. O nzm’nengiakh i dopolneniiakh vnesennykh v slavianskiie gadatel’nyie knigi.” Byzantinoslavica 4 (1932): 65–84. Andreeva, Margarita Alekseeva. “K istorii vizantiisko-slavianskikh gadatel’nykh knig.” Byzantinoslavica 5 (1933–1934): 120–161. Böker, Robert. “Wetterzeichen.” Pauly-Wissowa RE. Suppl. 9. col. 1609–1692. Caudano, Anne-Laurence. “An Astrological Handbook from the Reign of Manuel I Komnenos.” Almagest 3.2 (2012): 46–65. Cronin, Patrick. Greek Popular Meteorology from Antiquity to the Present. The Folk-Interpretation of Celestial Signs. Lewiston, NY, 2010. Cumont, Franz et al. (eds). Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum (CCAG). 12 vols. Brussels, 1898–1953 [For detailed references to specific texts compounded to weather forecasting, see Appendix]. Dalby, Andrew (trans.). Geoponika: Farm Work. A Modern Translation of the Roman and Byzantine Farming Handbook. Totnes and Devon, 2011.

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 Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages: Weather Forecasting

Dolley, Reginald Hugh. “Meteorology in the Byzantine Navy.” The Mariner’s Mirror 37.1 (1951): 5–16. DOI: 10.1080/00253359.1951.10658059 Duffy, John, and Dominic O’Meara (eds). Michaelis Pselli Philosophica minora. Vol. 1. Opuscula logica, physica, allegorica, alia (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana). Leipzig, 1992 [On omoplatoscopy: op. 33, 13–15]. Filipov, Mario Todorov. “Predskazvane na vremeto prez Srednovekovieto.” Balgarska Nauka 64 (2014): 64–70. George, Demetra. “Manuel I Komnenos and Michael Glykas: A Twelfth-Century Defence and Refutation of Astrology.” Culture and Cosmos 5.1 (2001): 3–48; 5.2 (2001): 23–51; 6.1 (2002): 23–43. Giet, Stanislas (ed.). Basile de Césarée. Homélies sur l’Hexaéméron. Texte grec, introduction et traduction de Stanislas Giet (Sources Chrétiennes 26). 2nd ed. Paris, 1968. Grant, Robert. “God and Storms in Early Christian Thought.” God in early Christian thought: Essays in memory of Lloyd G. Patterson. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 94. Eds. Andrew B. McGowan et al. Leiden and Boston, 2009. 351–360. Haldon, John (ed.). Constantine Porphyrogenitus. Three Treatises on Imperial Military Expeditions. Introduction, Edition, Translation and Commentary (Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 28, Series Vindobonensis). Vienna, 1990. Heeger, Maximilanus (ed.). De Theophrasti qui fertur Περὶ σημείων libro. Ph.D. Diss. Leipzig, 1889. [pp. 66–72: edition of cod. Laurent. gr. 28.32  ff. 12–14 prognostic notes on the forthcoming condition of the atmosphere entitled: Παρασημειώσεις προγνωστικαὶ περὶ τῆς μελλούσης τοῦ ἀέρος καταστάσεως]. Hübner, Wolfgang. “L’astrométéorοlοgie dans l’Antiquité classique.” La météorologie dans l’Antiquité, entre science et croyance. Actes du Colloque international interdisciplinaire de Toulouse, 2–3–4 Mai 2002. Ed. Christophe Cusset. Saint-Étienne, 2003. 75–94. Hübner, Wolfgang. “Weather Portents and Signs.” Brill’s New Pauly, Antiquity volumes. Eds. Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider. First published online 2006. http://dx.doi. org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e12210840 (11 May 2020). Kristanov, Tsvetan, and Ivan Dujčev (eds). Estestvoznanieto v srednevekovna Bŭlgariia: sbornik ot istoricheski izvori. Sofia, 1954. Lehoux, Daryn. “Impersonal and Intransitive ΕΠΙΣΗΜΑΙΝΕΙ.” Classical Philology 99/1 (2004): 78–85. Lehoux, Daryn. “The Predictive Sciences: Measuring and Forecasting Weather Conditions.” Oxford Handbooks Online. http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/ oxfordhb/9780199935390.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935390-e-86 (11 May 2020). Magdalino, Paul. “Chapter 12. Astrology.” The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium. Eds. Anthony Kaldellis and Niketas Siniossoglou. Cambridge and New York, 2017. 198–214. Magdalino, Paul. “Occult Science and Imperial Power in Byzantine History and Historiography (Ninth until twelfth Centuries).” The Occult Sciences in Byzantium. Eds. Paul Magdalino and Maria Mavroudi. Geneva, 2006. 119–162. Mandosio, Jean-Marc. “Meteorology and Weather Forecasting in the Middle Ages.” Die mantischen Künste und die Epistemologie prognostischer Wissenschaften im Mittelalter (Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 74). Ed. Alexander Fidora. Cologne, 2013. 167–181. McCartney, Eugene. “Classical Weather Lore of Thunder and Lightning.” The Classical Weekly 25. 23 (Apr. 25, 1932). 183–192. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4339100 (11 May 2020). Nicolaidis, Efthymios. Science and Eastern Orthodoxy. From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization. Baltimore, 2011. Peretts, Vladimir Nikolaevich (ed.). “Materialy k istorii apokrifa i legend. 1. Istoriia Gromnika. Vvedenie, slavianskie i evreiskie teksty.” Zapiski Istoriko-filologicheskogo fakult’teta Imp. Sanktpeterburgskogo uniiversiteta 54.1 (1899).



Ioannis G. Telelis 

 677

Peretts, Vladimir Nikolaevich (ed.). “Materialy k istorii apokrifa i legendy (1–6): K istorii lunnika.” Izvestia otdelenia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk 6.3 (1901): 1–126. Peretts, Vladimir Nikolaevich (ed.). “Materialy k istorii apokrifa i legendy (7–9): K istorii Gromnika i Lunnika. Novye teksty. Vyvody. Ukazateli.” Izvestia otdelenia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk 6.4 (1901): 103–131. Rosenthal, Bernice G. The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture. Ithaca, NY, and London, 1997. Ševčenko, Ihor. “Remarks on the Diffusion of Byzantine Scientific and Pseudo-Scientific Literature among the Orthodox Slavs”. Slavonic and East European Review 59.3 (1981): 321–345. Sider, David, and Carl Wolfram Brunschön (eds). Theophrastus, On Weather Signs (Philosophia Antiqua, 104). Leiden and Boston, 2007. Tikhonravov, Nikolaj Savvič (ed.). Pamjatniki otrečennoj russkoj literatury. (Priloženie k sočineniju «Otrečennyja knigi drevnej Rossii»). 2 vols. St. Petersburg, 1863. Trombley, Frank, and Alexander Kazhdan. “Brontologion.” The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Ed. Alexander Kazhdan. New York and Oxford, 1991. p. 326. Turfa, Jean M. Divining the Etruscan World: The Brontoscopic Calendar and Religious Practice. Cambridge and New York, 2012.

Appendix The following list presents a repertoire of Greek texts published in the Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum (CCAG), 12 vols., Brussels 1898–1953. CCAG is the most comprehensive collection of astrological, divinatory and occult Greek texts compiled during the Byzantine and post-Byzantine period. The collection is organized on the basis of the manuscripts in which the texts are preserved. The manuscripts included in the CCAG were produced from the fifth through the early nineteenth century CE. In most cases, the original texts that the manuscripts preserve may have been written long before the compilation of the manuscripts. Moreover, some texts may have been expanded by successive copyists, who probably added their own material. This means in fact that one cannot say with certainty whether a particular text is of Byzantine, Roman, or Hellenistic origin. The texts listed below share the common feature of providing weather forecasts. The texts are arranged by volume and page of appearance in the CCAG. Bibliographic data are supplemented by a TLG index, since most of the texts are now available online in that electronic platform of Greek literature (TLG update stand: Dec. 6, 2017). Moreover, each text is indicated by its general character or type of weather prognostics it conveys.

CCAG vol.

1

1

1

2

2

2

3

3

3

No.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

47–52

30–31

25–29

214–216

144–152

122–132, 136–138

171–173

134–137

131–134

Pages

Περὶ σημείων ἀστέρων (e cod. Mediolanensi E 81 supp., fol. 307)

Περὶ τῆς τῶν ζῳδίων βασιλείας (e cod. Medio­ lanensi B 33 supp., fol. 93)

Ἀρχὴ τῶν ιβʹ ζῳδίων (e cod. Mediolanensi A 56 supp., fol. 2v)

Τοῦ πρωτοσπαθαρίου καὶ στρατηγοῦ τῶν Κιβυρραιωτῶν περὶ τῶν παρατηρουμένων ἀστέρων παρὰ τοῖς πλευστικοῖς, τῶν ποιούντων ζάλας καὶ ταραχὰς ἐν τῇ θαλάσσῃ (e cod. Venet. Marc. 335, fol. 420)

Dodecaeteridos chaldaicae formae duae (e cod. Venet. Marc. 334, fol. 89v)

Achmet, Introductio et fundamentum astrologiae (prooemium et capitula selecta) (e cod. Venet. Marc. 324, fol. 202); Εἰσαγωγὴ καὶ θεμέλιον εἰς τὴν ἀστρολογίαν· Ποίημα Ἀχμάτου τοῦ Πέρσου

Syrus, Fragmenta; Καθολικὴ παραγγελία περὶ καταστημάτων·Σύρου [e cod. Laur. 28.34, fol. 144]

Περὶ καταστημάτων τῶν ζ’ ἀστέρων Ἰουλιανοῦ [e cod. Laur. 28.34, fol. 66]

Syrus, Fragmenta; Περὶ ὑετῶν δόκιμον ἀπὸ φωνῆς Σύρου τινός [e cod. Laur. 28.34, fol. 65]

Title of Text

{4350.211}

{4350.209}

{4350.208}

{4350.235}

{4350.225}

{4384.002}

{1827.001}

–

{1827.001}

TLG index

14–15

15

16

15

14

14

[11]

[11]

[11]

Date of manuscript containing the text

brontologion; seismologion; selenodromion

zodiologion

brontologion

astral calendar

zodiologion [dodoecaeteris]

zodiologion

kalandologion

zodiologion

selenodromion; zodiologion

Type of texts/prognostics

678   Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages: Weather Forecasting

4

4

4

4

4

4

4

4

4

4

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

Ἑρμηνεία τοῦ βροντολογίου τοῦ μηνιαίου (e cod. Neapol. II C 34, fol. 125v)

Ἑρμηνεία τοῦ σεισμολογίου διὰ τῶν δώδεκα ζῳδίων (e cod. Neapol. II C 34, fol. 123v)

Antiochus, Fragmenta (e cod. Neapolitano 19); Περὶ τοῦ Κυνὸς ἐπιτολῆς καὶ τῆς προγνώσεως τῶν ἐξ αὐτοῦ συμβαινόντων, Ἀντιόχου

Περὶ ἀστέρων ποιούντων τάραξιν καὶ κίνδυνον εἰς τὸ ὑπουρανὸν (e cod. Neapol. II C 33, fol. 398)

Περὶ τῶν τῆς Σελήνης παρατηρήσεων Πέρσου φιλοσόφου τοὔνομα Ζανατῆ [e cod. Neapol. II. C. 33, fol. 393]

Tonitruale ignoti auctoris (e cod. Bonon. 3632, fol. 327v)

Apomasar, De mysteriis (lib. 1) (excerpta e cod. Bonon. 3632, fol. 272)

Melampus Lunarium; Mέθοδος περὶ τῶν τῆς Σελήνης προγνώσεων Μελάμπους τοῦ ἀστρολόγου [e cod. Mutin. 85, fol. 92]

Julianus, Disquisitio astronomica (excerpta) (e cod. Mutin. 85, fol. 79) [Excerpt in fol. 91: Περὶ νεφελῶν ἐπίσκεψις]

Περὶ τῶν ἐν ταῖς καταστάσεσι τῶν ἀέρων συμβαινόντων ἀνέμων, δηλονότι ὑετῶν, βροντῶν, πρηστήρων, αὐχμῶν, σεισμῶν καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν τοιούτων (e cod. Taurinensi C, VII, 10, fol. 41v)

{4350.224}

{4350.223}

{1144.002}

{4385.003}

–

{4350.218}

{4361.003}

{1365.005}

{4378.004}

{4350.212}

16

16

15

15

15

15

15

15

15

14

brontologion

brontologion [though entitled as seismologion]

astral calendar; zodiologion

brontologion; seismologion

selenodromion

brontologion

astral calendar; zodiologion

selenodromion

[prognostics from clouds]

zodiologion

Ioannis G. Telelis 

173

170–172

154–155

145–146

139–142

128–131

124–127

110–113

110

83–87

  679

CCAG vol.

5.1

5.1

5.4

5.4

7

7

7

7

7

No.

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

173

171–172

167–711

163–167

153–160

171–176

156–163

241–242

172–193

Pages

Apocalypsis Danielis (excerptum) (e cod. Berol. phil. 1577, fol. 71); Ἐκ τῶν ἀποκαλύψεων τοῦ προφήτου Δανιήλ. ιγʹ. Περὶ βροντισμοῦ ἄγαν

Ex libro “Persicae inventionis” sive Danielis prophetae apocalypsibus [e cod. Berolin. phil. 1574, fol. 145v]

Ἑρμοῦ τοῦ Τισμεγίστου περὶ σεισμοῦ [e cod. Berolin. phil. 1574, fol. 15v]

Tonitruale ignoti auctoris [e cod. Berolin. phil. 1574, fol. 15]

Andreas Libadenus, Praedictiones pro anno mundi 6844 (excerpta e cod. Monac. 525, fol. 155)

Dodecaeteris chaldaica (e cod. Palat. Vat. 312, fol. 194v)

Paraphrasis carminis de terrae motibus (e cod. Vat. gr. 1753, fol. 18v)

Dodecaeteris chaldaica (e cod. Vat. gr. 1290, fol. 69v); Περὶ τῆς φύσεως τῶν ιβʹ ζῳδίων καὶ πρὸς τὰ ἐνιαύσια καταστήματα τῶν φυσικῶν ἰδιωμάτων

Dodecaeteris chaldaica (fort. compilatore ­ leutherio) (e cod. Angel. 29, fol. 92v) E

Title of Text

15

[15]

–

{4362.005}

[15]

[15]

14

16

14

15/16

16

Date of manuscript containing the text

–

–

{4379.008}

{4350.207}

{4350.203}

{4350.176}

{4351.003}

TLG index

brontologion

kalandologion

seismologion

selenodromion; zodiologion

astral calendar

zodiologion [dodoecaeteris]

seismologion

zodiologion [dodoecaeteris]

zodiologion [dodoecaeteris]

Type of texts/prognostics

680   Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages: Weather Forecasting

7

7

8.1

8.1

8.1

8.3

8.3

8.3

8.3

8.3

8.3

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

171–179

169–171

168–169

166–167

166

123–125

261–263

182–187

137–140

226–230

183–187

Apocalypsis Danielis (prooemium et capitulum primum) (e cod. Paris. gr. 2316, fol. 380v)

Ἕτερον βροντολόγιον τοῦ σεληνιακοῦ (e cod. Paris. gr. 2316, fol. 326v)

Βροντολόγιον Δαβὶδ τοῦ προφήτου (e cod. Paris. gr. 2316, fol. 325v)

Περὶ βροντολόγιον τῶν ιβʹ ζῳδίων (e cod. Paris. gr. 2315, fol. 277)

Προγνωστικὸν περὶ χειμῶνος (e cod. Paris. gr. 2315, fol. 215v)

Ἑρμηνεία τοῦ βροντολογίου τῶν δώδεκα μηνῶν (excerptum e cod. Paris. gr. 2118, p. 77)

[Palchus], περὶ τροπῆς ἔαρος (fort. compilatore Eleutherio) (e cod. Paris. 2506, fol. 139v)

Astrologus anonymus anni 379, De conjunctionibus et defluxionibus lunae (e cod. Angel. 29, fol. 145v + Paris. gr. 2419, fol. 142v)

Περὶ τῆς ἐκ τῶν ζῴων σημασίας, ὅσα χειμῶνας καὶ εὐδίας καὶ ἀνέμων κινήσεις προσημαίνουσιν (e cod. Paris. gr. 2229, fol. 22)

Βροντολόγιον Ἑρμοῦ τοῦ Τρισμεγίστου [e cod. Berolin. phil. 1577, fol. 152v]

Eudoxus, Selenodromium secundum cyclum duodecim annorum (fragmenta) (e cod. Berol. phil. 1577); Τοῦ Εὐδοξίου χειμῶνος προγνωστικά

{4362.003}

{4350.146}

{4350.145}

{4350.144}

{4350.143}

{4350.140}

{4351.008}

{4352.002}

{4350.127}

–

{1358.002}

15

15

15

15

15

16

15

15

13

[15]

[15]

brontologion; seismologion; selenodomion

brontologion; selenodomion

brontologion

brontologion

[prognostics from magic practices]

brontologion

zodiologion

selenodromion

[prognostics from: animals, sun, moon, clouds, and rainbow]

brontologion

zodiologion; selenodromion

 Ioannis G. Telelis   681

CCAG vol.

8.3

8.3

8.3

8.3

8.3

9.1

9.2

9.2

9.2

10

10

No.

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

60–62

58–59

170–175

124–126

120–123

141–156

193–197

191–192

189–190

181–187

179–180

Pages

Ex tonitribus et terrae motibus praesagia (e cod. Ath. Bibl. Publ. 778, fol. 161v)

Ex tonitribus et terrae motibus praesagia (e cod. Ath. Bibl. Publ. 462, fol. 185)

Dodecaeteris chaldaica (e cod. Holkham. 290, fol. 17 et cod. Paris. 90, fol. 298v)

Praesagia e signis caelestibus (excerptum e cod. Londin. reg. 16 C II, fol. 46); Ἀρχὴ σὺν Θεῷ Βροντολογίου καὶ Σεισμολογίου τῶν ιβʹ μηνῶν

(e cod. Harleiano 6295, fol. 148)

De mansionibus Lunae (e cod. Oxon. Cromwell. 12, P. 402); Αἱ εἴκοσι ὀκτὼ μοναὶ τῆς Σελήνης ἔχουσι οὕτως

Tonitruale (e cod. Paris. suppl. gr. 1191, fol. 42v); Βροντοσκόπιον τῶν δώδεκα ζῳδίων καθ’ ἑκάστην νύκτα κατὰ τὸν τῆς Σελήνης δρόμον

Calandologion (e cod. Paris. gr. 2381, fol. 72); Οἰωνισμὸς ῥωμαϊκὸς εἰς τὰς καλάνδας Ἰαννουαρίου

Dodecaeteris chaldaica (excerpta e cod. Paris. gr. 2381, fol. 68)

Lunarium anonymum (e cod. Paris. gr. 2316, fol. 441); Σεληνοδρόμιον, σεισμολόγιον, βροντολόγιον

Lunarium (e cod. Paris. gr. 2316, fol. 428)

Title of Text

{4350.065}

{4350.064}

{4350.125}

{4350.117}

{4350.116}

{4350.107}

{4350.152}

{4350.151}

{4350.149}

{4350.148}

{4350.147}

TLG index

17

17

15

15

14

15–16

16

16

16

15

15

Date of manuscript containing the text

brontologion; seismologion; zodiologion

brontologion; seismologion;

zodiologion [dodoecaeteris]

brontologion; seismologion;

brontologion

selenodomion

brontologion; selenodomion

kalandologion

zodiologion [dodoecaeteris]

brontologion; seismologion; selenodomion

selenodomion

Type of texts/prognostics

682   Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages: Weather Forecasting

10

10

10

10

10

10

10

10

10

10

10

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

Calendarium (e cod. Ath. Bibl. Publ. 1350, fol. 50)

Ἑτέρα τοῦ Ὀκτωβρίου ἑβδομάς; Calendologion (excerptum e cod. Ath. Bibl. Publ. 1350, fol. 25)

Ἑτέρα διάλεξις τῶν ἡμερῶν; Calendologion (e cod. Ath. Bibl. Publ. 1350, fol. 24)

Περὶ Σελήνης ὀρθῆς καὶ πλαγίας [e cod. Ath. Bibl. Publ. 1350, fol. 23v]

Περὶ τοῦ βασιλεύοντος ζωδίου τὸν κάθε χρόνον [e cod. Ath. Bibl. Publ. 1350, fol. 22v]

Ζύγι τῶν ιβ’ μηνῶν [e cod. Ath. Bibl. Publ. 1350, fol. 18v]

Περὶ ἐκλείψεως Ἡλίου καὶ Σελήνης [e cod. Ath. Bibl. Publ. 1350, fol. 17]

Βροντολόγιον καὶ σεισμολόγιον (e cod. Ath. Bibl. Publ. 1350, fol. 15v)

Leonis imperatoris de terrae motibus [e cod. Ath. Bibl. Publ. 1275, fol. 37v]; Σεισμολόγιον σὺν Θεω ἀγίῳ τῶν μεγίστων σεισμῶν τῶν δώδεκα μηνῶν καὶ ζωδίων Λέοντος τοῦ Σοφοτάτου Βασιλέως

Tonitruale duodecim mensium [e cod. Ath. Bibl. Publ. 1275, fol. 34v]; Βροντολόγιον τῶν δώδεκα μηνῶν

Ex terrae motibus praesagia (e cod. Ath. Bibl. Publ. 778, fol. 164v).

{4350.091}

{4350.090}

{4350.089}

{4350.088}

{4350.087}

{4350.086}

{4350.085}

{4350.084}

–

–

{4350.066}

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

17

kalandologion

kalandologion

kalandologion

selenodomion

zodiologion

brontologion; selenodomion

zodiologion

brontologion; seismologion

seismologion

brontologion

seismologion

Ioannis G. Telelis 

156–170

153

151–152

150–151

149–150

144–148

142–144

140–142

132–135

129–132

62–65

  683

CCAG vol.

10

10

11.1

11.1

11.1

11.1

11.1

11.1

11.2

11.2

11.2

No.

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

72

168–173

162–163

156–157

164–165

159–164

157–159

155–157

146–155

145–146

203–211

170

Pages

Joannes Laurentius Lydus, Excerpta e calendario Clodii (e cod. Matrit. Bibl. Nat. 4681, fol. 151v)

Περὶ τῶν τοῦ ἡλίου σημείων (e cod. Matrit. Bibl. Nat. 4616, fol. 95v)

Περὶ τῶν τῆς σελήνης σημείων (e cod. Matrit. Bibl. Nat. 4616, fol. 92)

Περὶ σημείων σελήνης (e cod. Scorial. I R 14, fol. 171)

Dodecaeteris chaldaica (versio recentior) (e cod. Scorial. I R 14, fol. 168); Περὶ γεννήσεως τοῦ χρόνου ἐν τοῖς δώδεκα εἰδώλοις

Σεισμολόγιον (e cod. Scorial. I R 14, fol. 166)

Brontologium, Βροντολόγιον (e cod. Scorial. I R 14, fol. 165)

Joannes Laurentius Lydus, Περὶ σεληνιακῶν ἐπιτηρήσεων (e cod. Scorial. I R 14, fol. 161)

Brontologium, Βροντολόγιον έτερον (e cod. Scorial. I R 14, fol. 161)

Praesagia ex tonitribus et terrae motibus (e cod. Ath. Soc. Hist. 210, fol. 9)

Προγνωστικὰ περὶ τόξου φανέντος ἐν οὐρανῷ (e cod. Ath. Bibl. Publ. 1350, fol. 64v)

Title of Text

{2580.009}

{4350.056}

{4350.054}

{4350.035}

{4350.034}

{4350.033}

{4350.032}

{2580.008}

{4350.031}

{4350.098}

{4350.092}

TLG index

15

15

15

15

15

15

15

15

15

18

19

Date of manuscript containing the text

astral calendar

[prognostics from: sun, parhelia, cloud forms]

[prognostics from moon]

selenodomion

zodiologion [dodoecaeteris]

seismologion

brontologion

selenodomion

brontologion

brontologion

[prognostics from rainbow]

Type of texts/prognostics

684   Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages: Weather Forecasting

11.2

11.2

11.2

11.2

12

12

12

12

12

12

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

82

203–204

153–154

136–145

114–116

109–112

96–104

180–183

178–180

177–178

174–177

Brontologium slavicum (interpretatio graeca) (excerptum e cod. Petropol. Bibl. Acad. Scient. 13.3.17)

De eclipse solis et lunae (e cod. Petropol. Bibl. Publ. gr. 575, fol. 48)

Περὶ νὰ κάμῃς ἐρώτημα (excerpta e cod. Petropol. Bibl. Publ. gr. 575, fol. 1v)

Σημεῖα ὁπότε ἔσονται ἄνεμοι καὶ βροχαί (e cod. Petropol. Mus. Palaeogr. Acad. Scient., fol. 41)

Περὶ τῶν ληʹ ἀστέρων ἀπλανῶν τῆς ὀγδόης σφαίρας, ὁποῦ ἔχουν ἐνεργείας εἰς τοὺς ἀνέμους καὶ τὰς βροχάς (e cod. Petropol. XXAa-8, fol. 159)

Apomasar, De mysteriis (lib. 2) (excerpta e cod. Petropol. XX Aa-II, fol. 194v)

Ἔτι περὶ χειμ(ῶνος) καὶ εὐδίας ἀπό τε τῶν κτηνῶν καὶ τῶν πετεινῶν (e cod. Matrit. Bibl. Nat. 4681, fol. 160)

Περὶ τῶν τῆς σελήνης σημείων (e cod. Matrit. Bibl. Nat. 4681, fol. 158v)

Περὶ παρηλίων (e cod. Matrit. Bibl. Nat. 4681, fol. 157v)

Περὶ τῶν ἐν τῷ ἀέρι σημείων τοῦ τε χειμῶνος καὶ τῶν ἀνέμων (e cod. Matrit. Bibl. Nat. 4681, fol. 163v)

{4350.026}

{4350.014}

{4350.011}

{5002.009}

{4350.008}

{4361.006}

{4350.060}

{4350.059}

{4350.058}

{4350.057}

14

17

17

17

17

17

14

14

14

14

brontologion

[prognostics from: eclipse of sun, moon]

zodiologion

[prognostics from: sun, clouds, animals, shooting stars, thunder, and lightning]

astral calendar

zodiologion

[prognostics from animals]

[prognostics from: moon, sky colors, shooting stars, cloud forms, and fog]

[prognostics from parhelia]

[prognostics from: sun, parhelia, moon, sky colors, cloud forms, and animals]

 Ioannis G. Telelis   685

Dov Schwartz

Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World In the Middle Ages, rationalists described the weather relying on Aristotle’s Meteorology. The importance of this work, which attempted to present the order of phenomena in the sublunary world, lies in its being the first of Aristotle’s works to be translated from Arabic into Hebrew (see Fontaine 1995). R. Samuel ibn Tibbon translated it because he viewed it as extremely significant in regard to the philosophical and hermeneutical understanding of creation. A group of thinkers, which included R. Abraham ibn Ezra, Maimonides and R. Samuel ibn Tibbon, held that an understanding of the atmospheric processes underlying the weather provides the hermeneutical key to the first chapter of Genesis (see Ravitzky 2008). The foundations of weather forecasting in medieval Jewish thought appeared in three ways, which denote the three significant literary genres: philosophy, theology, and magic. 1) Rationalism. In the Middle Ages, scientific weather forecasting was perceived as a characteristic of the perfect man. From the scientist’s perspective, the astrologist and magician could forecast the weather only partially and imperfectly. Only the intellectual and scientist, who possess absolute knowledge, can predict the weather. Rationalists, therefore, ascribed such perfect knowledge solely to the prophet. Weather forecasting appears in Jewish thought in the context of the prophet’s confirmation. R. Saadia Gaon, and the thinkers whom he influenced, claimed that the miracle serves the prophet to confirm the divine source of his prophecy to the public. Given that God created the universe, only God can change its laws; therefore, if the prophet creates a miracle, he is, by definition, God’s emissary. Already in the Commentary to the Mishnah, a work of his youth, Maimonides disputed this determination of R. Saadia, claiming that the prophet is not confirmed through a miracle. In another work (The Guide of the Perplexed  II: 36), Maimonides wrote that prophecy itself is a natural phenomenon wherein the prophet receives the emanation from the Active Intellect that, from its cosmic stance, enriches the prophet’s intellect and imagination with scientific knowledge. The prophet is thus a perfect intellectual or scientist. How, then, does the public verify his prophecy? Maimonides had already answered this question in his introduction to the Commentary to the Mishnah when he stated that the prophet unerringly predicts the future, using rainfall as an example. Weather forecasting, in his view, separates the prophet from the diviner. Diviners make generalized statements, such as predicting a drought year or rainfall in a few days. By contrast, when the prophet predicts rain, he must provide an exact date. The prophet possesses faultless scientific meteorological knowledge and his forecast is, therefore, perfect (Shilat 1992, 32–33). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-039



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Meteorological prediction continues to be a significant element in the prophet’s existence. Maimonides claimed, in Commentary to the Mishnah, that a prophet’s positive prediction to the collective must be realized whereas, if the prophet foresees a calamity, he could be proved wrong since the people might repent. One of the examples he chose was a lightning storm. R. Yitzhak Arama, who was active in Spain in the fifteenth century, wrote at length against the principle stated by Maimonides that a positive prophecy about the collective never fails. He did fully agree, however, with the approach that prophecy is confirmed through an accurate prediction of the future, be it positive or negative. In Akedat Yitzhak, Section 96, Arama cites Maimonides’ distinction between the predictions of the diviners and those of the prophet, pointing out that the prophet is absolutely right. Weather forecasting, therefore, is a significant issue in the thought of medieval rationalists. Maimonides held that a perfectly wise man must, by virtue of his wisdom, be expert in weather forecasting. 2) Theology. The theological mode of weather forecasting was equally widespread as the scientific one. Some thinkers, who held a strong belief, argued that appropriate religious behavior will bring with it good weather, and vice-versa. These thinkers, usually not rationalists or indeed anti-rationalists, placed forecasting in the category of divine providence and grace. Theological forecasting was, in fact, entirely different from rational forecasting and it is doubtful whether it can be called forecasting at all or, more precisely, the affecting or shaping of the weather. A twelfth-century anti-rationalist thinker, R. Judah Halevi, grappled with the absence of a world to come (meaning life after death) in the Torah. One of the answers he provided to this question was that the Torah affirms the concrete, not what cannot be subject to examination and critique. When the people of Israel keep the Torah, “if the divine presence is among you, you will perceive by the fertility of your country, by the regularity with which your rainfalls appear in their due seasons” (The Kuzari I: 109, 75). The world to come, by contrast, is not subject to review because no one has returned from it to testify about it. The regular tilling of the land, which is subject to the weather, is an indication of divine providence (see Schwartz 2017, 53). R. Judah Halevi influenced medieval thought. R. Yitzhak Abuhav (in fourteenth century Spain) wrote in his morality treatise, Menorat ha-Ma’or (end of section 146), that the proper observance of the Sukkot festival will bring with it bountiful rains. 3) Magic. Various techniques for predicting the weather appear already in the magic literature of antiquity. Medieval works also include magic traditions in this spirit. The author of Sefer Brit Menuḥa, written at the dawn of the fourteenth century, points to the magic powers of King Solomon, who is at times perceived in the Kabbalistic and magic literature as the paradigmatic magician. Among these powers is also the deciphering of the language of trees, a skill that implies guessing from sounds. When Solomon listened to the whistling of the tree as the wind blew through its branches,

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he could tell “whether it would be a year of drought or of rains” (Derekh Shminit, Porat 2016 edn., 330, ln. 249). Divination is, at times, accompanied by astrological considerations; for example, Mars is perceived as the planet responsible for a drought year, which R. Abraham ibn Ezra notes in his Reshit Hokhmah (Sela 2017, 160). Many thinkers have, therefore, identified astrological influences on the weather. One instance is Samuel ibn Zarza (living in Spain in the second half of the fourteenth century), who argued that Pharaoh had turned to Mars because of its aggressive character and had noted among its qualities the fact that it provokes a drought year (Mekor Hayyim, 35 c–d). The combination of astrology and magic also shifts from weather forecasting to affecting and influencing it or, in other words, the use of astral magic (Schwartz 2005, ch. 4 and 5). Weather forecasting thus appears as a distinct technique in the medieval rationalist discussions of prophecy and in the magic literature dealing with divination. When we move to the theological and astral magic literature, weather forecasting is transformed into weather influencing.

Selected Bibliography Abuhav, Yitzhak. Menorat ha-Ma’or. Eds. Judah Paris-Horev and Moshe Hayyim Katzenelenbogen. Jerusalem, 1970 [Hebrew]. Arama, Yitzhak. Akedat Yitzhak. Ed. Hayyim Pollak. Pressburg, 1849 [Hebrew]. Fontaine, Resianne. Otot ha-Shamayim: Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew Version of Aristotle’s Meteorology. Leiden, 1995. Porat, Oded (ed.). Sefer B’rit ha-Menuḥa (Book of Covenant of Serenity): Critical Edition and Prefaces. Bnei Brak, 2016 [Hebrew]. Ravitzky, Aviezer. “Aristotle’s ‘Meteorology’ and the Maimonidean Modes of Interpreting the Account of Creation.” Aleph 8 (2008): 361–400. Sela, Shlomo. Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Introductions to Astrology. Leiden and Boston, 2017. Schwartz, Dov. Messianism in Medieval Jewish Thought. Trans. Batya Stein. Boston, 2017. Schwartz, Dov. Studies on Astral Magic in Medieval Jewish Thought. Trans. David Louvish and Batya Stein. Leiden and Boston, 2005. Shilat, Itzhak. Maimonides’ Introductions to the Mishnah. Jerusalem, 1992 [Hebrew].

Charles Burnett

Traditions and Practices in the Medieval Islamic World Prognostication of the weather has always been regarded as an important part of human activity, as is witnessed even in the prominence of the weather forecast before (or after) every newscast in the modern media, and the availability of detailed forecasts for any part of the world for any time period. This was no less the case for the pre-modern Islamic world, in which (one could say) it was even more important to predict the weather. For excessive cold could ruin the crops, storms at sea could sink boats, and an intemperate turn in the weather could change the results of a military campaign. Thus we find in the Islamic world concern for the weather and techniques for forecasting it ranging from the most popular to the most scientific.

Definitions and Terminology The root gh-y-th (“rain”) gave rise to a twelfth form of the verb istaghātha which had the sense of “asking God for the benefit of rain”. In the Letter on the Intellect of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʼ, other manuscripts have istaʻāna in the sense of “ask for help”, but it is fitting that istaghātha should be retained, since asking for rain can be generalized into asking for anything that is really needed (Walker: 108 Arabic). The beneficial rain that was asked for was the maṭar. Excessive weather, which was regarded as an evil, was described as ṭūfān, which signified not only floods (its most common designation), being the excess of the watery element, but excesses of the other elements as well: conflagrations, earthquakes, and hurricanes (Hasse 2019). Texts specifically about the occurrence or absence of rain were called kitāb or risāla fi-l-maṭar (“book” or “letter on rain”). But the intricate connections of the weather not only with other earthly phenomena (floods, conflagrations etc.), but also with the movements of the heavenly bodies – most obviously those of the Sun and the Moon – meant that its study came under the general heading of “the science of the occurrences in the atmosphere” (ʻilm aḥdāth al-jaww) (of which the Latin equivalent is scientia de mutationibus aeris).

Written Sources and Artifacts At a popular level are the proverbs and collections of “weather signs”. These can be traced all the way from Ancient Mesopotamian omen texts (Hunger 1976), through https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-040

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Mandaic texts (Drower 1949, 127) to Arabic adab literature and calendars. The sources of Ibn Qutaybah’s Kitāb al-anwāʼ for instance are largely folkloristic (see Pellat 1955). The preface to the so-called Calendar of Cordoba, which was drawn up in 961 for indicating the weather events to be expected at different times of the year, refers to the age-old methods of predicting the weather: When the Arabs [i.  e. the pre-Islamic Arabs] see lightning flashing in the region of the south, they take this as a good omen for irrigating rain, because they are certain that it accompanies irrigation. When it flashes from the direction of the north, they call it ‘deceiving’. When they see redness on the horizon at the time of the rising or setting of the Sun, together with thick clouds, they take this as a good omen for fertility. When they see redness without clouds or with little cloud they predict drought. (Pellat 1961, 8–11)

A special liturgy governed the prayer for rain, known as the istisqāʼ, and was led by the imam in the mosque. Talismans or amulets could also be used to produce rain (Porter 2009). The Arabian nights includes several examples of a magic darkness brought about by sorcerers or jinn: see the stories Sīrat ʻAntar, Sīrat Baybars, Qiṣṣat Fīrūz Shāh (together with a magic storm), and Sīrat Sayf Dhī Yazan (Lyons 2010, iii, 63, 196, 205, 216, 528, 597, 610, 626). But prediction is the subject of this chapter. And it was from the sky that information about weather was thought to be most appropriately found. The pre-Islamic Arabs developed a method of predicting the weather throughout the year by observing the risings and settings of certain stars, or clusters of stars, on each day of the sidereal course of the Moon (i.  e. the course of the Moon seen against the backdrop of the fixed stars, until it returns to the same place in the heavens from which it set off). These clusters are called anwāʼ (singular nawʼ) – and were regarded as being 28 in number, varying between 12 and 13 days each. They provided an alternative division of the ecliptic circle to that of the zodiac, and when their names do not correspond to parts of the zodiac sign (such as “the claws” of the Crab), they may go back to those of Mesopotamian gods. The preface to the Calendar of Cordoba once again provides a good explanation for these observations: [The calendar includes] the theories of the [pre-Islamic] Arabs concerning the anwāʼ and rains, because they were particularly concerned with determining the date of the rising and setting of the stars, and to distinguish those that brought rain from those that did not keep their promises, in order to decide where to move their camps and look for food. […] They considered that the nawʼ of each star was necessarily accompanied by rain, cold, wind or heat. […] Those that they found bringing rain they compared to fertile women, those not bringing rain, to sterile [women] and impotent men. […]The pre-Islamic authors frequently mention the anwāʼ in their poems and proverbs. (Pellat 1961, 4–7)

The rising and setting of the anwaʼ throughout the year is indicated in the Kitāb al-Anwāʼ attributed to Kātib al-Andalusī’ (“an Andalusian writer”, probably ʻArīb ibn Saʻīd), which appears to be the source of material incorporated into the Calender of Córdoba. One may take as an example the anwā’ mentioned in the month of April:



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The naʼ’ of al-Simāk al-Aʻzal (the star Spica, α Virginis), which lasts for five nights… It is a nawʼ abundant which rarely deceives. The rising of its opposite – baṭn al-ḥūt (literally, the belly of the Fish = the star Mirach, β Andromedae) is at dawn. […] Its nawʼ belongs to spring, and its rain is called ṣayyif (‘springlike’).

In keeping with their role as indicators of the weather the anwaʼ’ are classified into “very humid”, “humid”, “moderately humid”, “moderate” and “dry”, and they are depicted as asterisms – or groups of stars – so that they can easily be recognized in the sky – rather than as images. In this way they differ from the signs of the zodiac with their familiar zoomorphic figures. The observation of the anwāʼ are particularly associated with the agrarian community, as knowledge that is passed on by experience rather than through books (Varisco 1991). There is no explanation about how the anwāʼ bring about the changes of the weather; they remain signs rather than causes. The anwāʼ were brought into line with the “mansions of the Moon” (manāzil al-qamar) from Indian astrology, which were regarded as 27 in number, by merging the sixteenth and seventeenth nawʼ (zubāna – the “claws of the crab” – and iklīl – the crown), each of 13 and a third degrees. It is these 27 mansions which appear in the scientific treatises in a group of weather-forecasting texts that purport to derive their doctrines from the Indians: al-Kindī’s letter on The Causes of the Forces attributed to the Higher Bodies, which Indicate the Origin of Rain (extant only in Hebrew and Latin: Bos and Burnett 2000), Jafar Indus, Book of Rains and the work known from its incipit as Sapientes Indiae (both works in Latin translation only; Burnett 2004). It is the Moon in these 27 mansions rather than their rising or setting that is significant for the weather. For the Indians, the lunar mansions (nakṣatras) had numinous qualities: their gods ruled earthly affairs. Sometimes the anwāʼ too were thought to have power over rain (Pellat 1955, 4, Varisco 1991, 6). But the equivalents in Arabic were rather the celestial spirits of the Ṣabiʼans. Shahrastānī refers to a spiritual being among them which governs the universal phenomenon of rain, as well as spiritual beings which preside over the descent of each particular raindrop: Moreover, the influences could be universal, issuing from a universal spiritual being [rūḥānī]; or they could be particular, issuing from a particular spiritual being. So together with the genus of rain there is an angel there is with each raindrop an angel. There are rūḥāniyyāt which govern metereological phenomena including: those which rise from the earth and descend thereon such as rain, snow, ice and wind; those which descend from the sky such as thunderbolts and meteorites; and those which occur in the atmosphere such as thunder, lightning, clouds, fog, rainbows, comets; other rūḥāniyyāt govern the snow, rains, wind, comets, thunder, lightning, clouds, earthquakes (Shahrastānī, Kitāb al-Milal wa al-niḥal, ed. Cureton, 204, trans. Michael Noble).

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Techniques and Manifestations Whole texts were devoted to “astrological weather forecasting”. Fuat Sezgin has catalogued 69 such works in the second half of one volume of his history of Arabic literature (“Meteorologie und Verwandtes”), with titles such as fī (ʻilm) aḥdāth al-jaww (“on (the knowledge of) the occurrences in the atmosphere”), iftāḥ al-abwāb (“the opening of the doors”), al-sirr (“the secret”). It is in the field of astrology that weather forecasting acquires a rational basis. Weather forecasting belongs to the branch of astrology known as “general astrology” – the branch which relates to whole societies rather than to individuals. Included in this branch are issues both related to human society – both political and religious – and natural events such as earthquakes, landslides, and floods, often predicted at the time of the “revolution of the year” (when the Sun enters the first degree of Aries). Ptolemy of Alexandria, in his classical text on astrology – the Tetrabiblos (mid-second century CE) –devotes one of the four books to general astrology, in which he includes not only the omens (such as, that a halo round the Moon which, if it is clear and gradually fading, signifies fair weather, but if there are two or three (haloes), that signifies storms), but also scientific explanations, and his work was well known in Persian and Arabic translations (the Kitāb al-Arbaʻa). Weather forecasting features among the earliest astrological texts originally written in Arabic, such as Māshā’allāh’s Kitāb al-amṭār wa-al-riyāḥ (“Book of Rains and Winds”) (Levi della Vida, 1933–1934), and is one of the subjects of works of interrogations or “judgements”, in which the questions on the weather are typically reserved for the end of the text. One may take a typical set of questions (in this case from ʻUmar ibn al-Farrukhān al-Ṭabarī’s Kitāb Mukhtaṣar al-masāʼil): 1. How to know the weather, the times and seasons and how they effect change in heat and cold. 2. How to know rain, thunder, lightning and winds. 3. How to know “the opening of the door” 4. How to know the “bases” 5. How to know the time of rain (Bos and Burnett 2000, 433–455) The predictions are based on obvious facts: that the signs of the triplicity (the group of zodiac signs distant from each other by four signs each) of water – Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces – plus Aquarius, whose wateriness is obvious, but also Leo, whom one would normally associate with heat because it is the house of the Sun, were responsible for wet weather. Of the planets, Saturn indicates clouds and coldness, Jupiter, temperateness of the air, Mars, heat, Venus moisture, and Mercury winds and some moisture. The Moon is especially related to moisture, and therefore significant in analyzing the causes of rain. E.g., when it is in the first quarter from the sun, its nature is hot and moist, when it is in the second quarter, it is hot and dry, in the third quarter it is cold and dry, in the fourth quarter it is cold and moist (Bos and Burnett 2000, 191–192), but these conditions are modified depending on other factors of the Moon’s movement.



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As al-Kindī puts it (Bos and Burnett 2000, 253): “Venus is the essence of rain, the Moon is the essence of water, and Mercury is the essence of wind and air”. Particularly relevant to weather forecasting is the “opening of the doors”, which is the situation when one planet whose sphere is lower (and, therefore, the planet is moving faster) is in conjunction (or some other relation) with a higher planet and their houses are opposite (Sun and Moon with Saturn; Jupiter with Mercury and Venus with Mars). For example: When Mercury applies to Jupiter, moisture occurs together with winds, and when Venus applies to Mars, moisture occurs together with lightning, thunder and thunderbolts, and when the Moon applies to Saturn, moisture occurs together with tranquillity, coldness, snow, hail, ice, and destructive rain. (al-Kindī, kitāb fī aḥdāth al-jaww; Bos and Burnett 2000, 417)

The Moon might also “open the door” when it moves from one of the two planets to the other, especially if it is in one of the “bases” (the word probably originates from a wrong Arabic transliteration of an originally Greek word phaseis = “phases”; ʻUmar ibn al-Farrukhān al-Ṭabarī, Kitāb mukhtaṣar al-masāʼil, Bos and Burnett 2000, 446–447), which are the several distances between the Moon and the Sun, from 12 degrees until 348 degrees. One can make a calculation from the “lot of rain”. Lots (sahām) were an alternative way of making predictions to that of considering the planets in the signs and the houses, and involved observing the number of degrees between two points on the ecliptic (usually two planets), and counting this number off from a third point (usually the ascending degree). Thus the “lot of rain” was either (1) measured by day from the degree of the Moon to the conjunction of the Sun and Moon (in the direction of signs), and from the conjunction to the Moon by night, and this number of degrees would be cast out from the ascendant point, or (2) more commonly from the Sun to Saturn, and cast from the position of the Moon. Where the calculation arrives is “the lot of the rain” (Abraham ibn Ezra gives both lots but says that he tried the second and it proved more accurate; Bos and Burnett 2000, 52). If it is in a house of Saturn, the day will be cold, if Jupiter, cloudless and mild, if Mars, a strong wind, if the Sun, a warm day, if Venus, a rainy day, if Mercury, a variable day, if the Moon, a rainy day (Bos and Burnett 2000, 298).

Developments, Historical and Social Contexts Arabic weather forecasting was one of the sources of weather forecasting in the West. Al-Kindī’s two letters, combined into one, were translated by a hitherto unknown translator “Azogont”, probably in the mid-twelfth century, copied into at least 30 manuscripts and printed twice in the Renaissance (Peter Liechtenstein, Venice 1507; Jacob Kerver, Paris 1540). Hence, it exerted a strong influence on Latin theories and

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practices of weather forecasting. It was the main source of Firmin de Beauval’s De mutatione aeris (mid-fourteenth century) (↗ Kocánová, Weather Forecasting Western Christian World, 660–662) and was singled out by Bernardino Baldi in his bibliography of mathematicians (1588) for praise (Burnett 1999). Several further Arabic texts on weather forecasting were translated into Latin in the twelfth century, and were the source of Latin texts on the same subject, such as Hermann of Carinthia’s Liber imbrium (Low Beer 1979, 106–127). In both Arabic and Latin these scientific texts were part of the portfolio of astrologers. They could not be understood unless one had already had training in astrology. Weather signs, on the other hand, were part of folk tradition and would have been widely known and often repeated.

Medieval Classifications and Discussions Ḥajjī Khalīfa in his mid-seventeenth century Kashf az-ẓunūn (“removal of doubts”) lists nuzūl al-ghayth (“the falling of rain”) among the sciences of firāsa (“signs”) (Fahd 1966, 40). In the early sixteenth century, Girolamo Cardano, who knew al-Kindī’s work on weather forecasting well, was able to write: […] the most beautiful science of nature, which we call philosophy. We have written about the more worthy parts of this science in our books on the secrets of eternity, on the higher bodies, on the immortality of the soul and on the variety of things. But its most noble part is that which teaches us how to know in advance the nature of the weather and the temperament of the air. For it is useful to farmers, sailors, merchants, generals – in short, it is both a delight and a boon to the whole human race. (Bos and Burnett 2000, 1, quoting Cardano, De subtilitate).

Selected Bibliography Bos, Gerrit, and Charles Burnett. Scientific Weather Forecasting in the Middle Ages: The Writings of al-Kindī. London and New York, 2000. Burnett, Charles. “Al-Kindī in the Renaissance.” Sapientiam amemus: Humanismus und Aristotelismus in der Renaissance. Festschrift für Eckhard Keßler zum 60. Geburtstag. Ed. Paul Richard Blum. Munich, 1999. 13–30. Burnett, Charles. “Lunar Astrology. The Varieties of Texts Using Lunar Mansions, With Emphasis on Jafar Indus.” Micrologus 12 (2004): 43–133. Drower, Ethel Stefana. The Book of the Zodiac. London, 1949. Fahd, Toufic. La Divination arabe. Leiden, 1966. Hasse, Dag Nikolaus. “Avicenna’s De inundationibus” (forthcoming, in print). Hunger, Hermann. “Astrologische Wettervorhersagen.” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 66 (1976): 234–260. Levi della Vida, Giorgio. “Un opusculo astrologico di Māšāʼallāh.” Rivista degli Studi Orientali 14 (1933–1934): 270–281.



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Low-Beer, Sheila. “Hermann of Carinthia: The Liber Imbrium, the Fatidica, and the De indagatione cordis.” Ph.D. Diss. City University New York, 1979. Lyons, Malcolm. Tales of 1001 Nights. Harmondsworth, 2010 (Penguin Classics). Pellat, Charles. “Dictons rimés, anwāʼ, et mansions lunaires chez les Arabes.” Arabica (1955): 17–41. Pellat, Charles. Le Calendrier de Cordoue. Ed. Reinhart Dozy. Revised by Charles Pellat. Leiden, 1961. Porter, Venetia. “Stones to Bring Rain? Magical Inscriptions in Linear Kufic on Rock-Crystal Amulet Seals.” Rivers of Paradise: Water in Islamic Art and Culture. Eds. Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom. New Haven and London, 2009. 131–159. Sezgin, Fuat. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums VII: Astrologie-Meteorologie und Verwandtes bis ca. 430 H. Leiden, 1979. Shahrastānī. Kitāb al-Milal wa al-niḥal: Book of Religious and Philosophical Sects. Ed. William Cureton. Leipzig, 1923. Varisco, Daniel Martin. “The Origin of the anwāʼ in Arab Tradition.” Studia Islamica 74 (1991): 5–28 [reprinted in Daniel Martin Varisco. Medieval Folk Astronomy and Agriculture in Arabia and the Yemen. Aldershot, 1997. Article 1]. Walker, Paul E. “Epistle 35, ‘On the Intellect and the Intelligible’.” Epistles of the Brethren of Purity: Sciences of the Soul and Intellect, Part I. Eds. Paul E. Walker et al. Oxford, 2015.

Quantifying Risks James Franklin

Traditions and Practices in Medieval Western Christian World Definitions and Terminology Late medieval Italy developed a very complex and numerate commercial culture. Weights and measures, computations with Arabic numerals, careful recording of dates and times, credit instruments in banking and the development of algebra led to a level of numeracy not seen before. The nature of commerce is to be very concerned about the future, and some of these quantitative techniques especially concerned future quantities and the management of risks of future events – insurance and life annuities, tables of compound interest, and (to a much lesser extent) ideas on the outcomes of dice games and lotteries. It proved difficult to develop a language for risk (for example to explain what is bought by an insurance premium). Medieval (and ancient) thought lacked any idea of either stochastics or statistical inference. On a modern understanding, there are three aspects of probability: stochastics (such as the individual unpredictability but longrun average stability of dice throws); statistical inference from data (such as inferring the efficacy of drugs from frequencies of cures in experiments); and uncertain conclusions from evidence (as in “proof beyond reasonable doubt” in law or historical evidence). The last of these was familiar in medieval thought, especially in legal contexts, with a range of terminology in Latin such as suspicio, coniectura, presumptio, indicatio, probabilis, verisimilis (“likely”), all of which have meanings close to their descendants in modern European languages. The first two aspects of probability were almost absent. However, a language was developed for discussing uncertain quantities involved in commerce, such as insurance rates, prices of life annuities, and estimates of forward prices for crops. They involved intuitive estimates of probabilities, based on experience. The basic concepts for discussing these probabilities had been developed by ancient Roman law, which allowed the pricing of a “hope” (spes) or “peril” (periculum) as an entity distinct from a thing; for example one could purchase a future catch of fish and “The contract is valid even if nothing results, because it is the purchase of an expectancy (spei).” Analysis of such cases by medieval legal theorists led to words such as hope, peril, risk (risicum, Italian rischio) and probability (probabilitas) being applied to the quantity of risk that could be assigned a price in cases such as insurance and annuity contracts. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-041

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These quantities were not however based, as might be done now, on tables of collected statistics such as the mortality tables now used by life insurers. They were based on the experience of experts, but intuitively and so as to take into account the multitude of variable relevant factors, such as reports of pirates in the sea lanes that would increase the rates for maritime insurance.

Written Sources and Artifacts Most medieval thought on risk is connected with commercial practice in one way or another, whether directly or in the course of legal and mathematical reflection on practice. 1. Contracts of merchants The primary business documents involving risk are contracts. Many maritime insurance contracts survive for the insurance of an individual ship on a particular voyage, mainly Italian from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They state a premium but it is not usually possible to see on what basis it was calculated. Business documents are generally not very explicit about the concepts involved, such as risk. It is also true that business history is a specialized and not widely practised variety of historiography, so much of the primary material has not yet been intensively studied. 2. Guides to merchant practice A few guides to business practice survive, such as Pegolotti’s Pratica della mercatura of about 1340, which includes a table of compound interest. 3. Mathematical works based on merchant arithmetic Luca Pacioli’s Summa de Arithmetica (1494) is the main printed work summarizing the techniques of the Italian merchant schools developed in the previous three centuries. 4. Tables of compound interest Pegolotti’s guide contains a table of compound interest and Pacioli’s treatise assumes an ability to calculate compound interest, but the tables were regarded as commercial secrets and no more examples survive from the period. 5. Treatises on canon and civil law and moral theology Works on canon law are much more informative about the concepts involved in commercial practice. Usury, the lending of money at interest, was forbidden by the church law of the middle ages. Merchants and bankers found that inconvenient and their practice often evaded the letter of the law. But it did not do so with impunity, given the power of the church. The prohibition on usury led to difficult problems concerning the relation of interest to risk, necessitating complex legal analysis. For example, if a loan is made with an extra charge to cover the risk of default, is that charge interest or is it really a price for risk (which would be legit-



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imate)? Many complex contracts involving risk were entered into, some of which included genuine charges for risk and some of which were fictions designed to evade the prohibition on usury. Subtle and generally reasonable analyses of the probabilities in contracts like options, insurance and life annuities are found in such legal-moral treatises in Latin as Peter John Olivi’s On Sale, Purchase, Usury and Restitution (of about the 1290s), Alexander Lombard’s Treatise on Usury (1307), Lorenzo de Ridolfi’s On Usury (1403), Johannes Nider’s On the Contracts of Merchants (about 1400) and Pedro de Santarém’s On Insurance and Merchants’ Bets (1488). 6. Books on games Rules of how to play various simple and complex games with dice are available in books like Alfonso X’s Book of Games, but generally without any probabilistic analysis. As we will see, a few manuscripts show a very minimal such analysis. 7. Commentaries on poetry A few Italian commentaries on poetry (of pseudo-Ovid and Dante) contain some simple but successful analyses of dice outcomes. 8. Oresme’s treatises against astrology Nicole Oresme, in his attacks on astrology, advanced some powerful probabilistic analysis to show that astrological predictions were not credible. 9. Artifacts Non-written sources are unhelpful. Many medieval dice and some manuscript images of dice games survive, but give little information about how dice were used or how players thought about the games. The existence of biassed dice, it is true, suggests a considerable knowledge of how to cheat. They include ones with too many high or low faces (presumably to be secretly substituted for fair ones) and ones that look fair but are weighted by inserted deposits of mercury.

Techniques and Manifestations Commerce is an inherently uncertain enterprise. It involves taking calculated risks about the future. Some ships founder, some return laden with goods. Crops fail or thrive. Business ventures and investments prosper or not, driven by a multitude of unpredictable factors. By modern standards, the risks undertaken by medieval merchants were very high. Businessmen could pray, consult oracles, and practise divination as well as anyone else. But in addition it came to be recognised, especially in late medieval Europe, that risks could – to a limited extent and in some circumstances – be evaluated and managed by rational methods. The future income from a fixed-interest investment could be calculated by a table of compound interest. The risk of ships failing to return could be roughly estimated and an insurance premium paid to cover

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the loss. Grain prices varied, but it was generally predictable that they would be low after the harvest and high in spring, because of the relative abundance of grain. The sale of life annuities for an initial lump sum might in an individual case be profitable (if the annuitant died soon) or not, but the predictability of average lifespan allowed them to be priced so as to make an overall profit. These methods differ from prognostication as normally understood in several ways. Divination and similar methods aim to predict a singular event (and perhaps allow it to be avoided). Risk methods such as insurance do not predict individual events but make statements only about what can be expected to happen in the mass or on average. In that sense they are less ambitious than divination. But in another way they are more ambitious, since by dealing with the mass of cases they permit risk management, that is, a way of securing the future that protects against whatever may happen. The premium paid for an insurance protects the insured against financial loss, if the disaster insured against occurs.

Development of Techniques and Concepts Mercantile Techniques Tables of Compound Interest For predicting the future, tables of compound interest are of special interest because they display the future values with exactitude and certainty – even more so than astronomical tables. They can do so because what they predict is a human artifact – the money that a bank agrees to pay in the future for money deposited with it. A depositor places money in a bank and the bank agrees to pay a fixed percentage of the deposit each year, and also to add the interest to the deposit and pay interest on that as well. So the money amount paid in interest increases each year, as the deposit grows. The calculations are complex and painful, especially with the arithmetical methods available in the middle ages (which used fractions but not decimals). So tables of values were very useful. The Florentine merchant Francesco Balducci Pegolotti includes a table of compound interest in his Pratica della Mercatura, a large handbook of information useful in international trade of about 1340 which contains also tables of weights and currencies and descriptions of the route to Cathay. It tabulates the interest on 100 lire, for interest rates from 1 % to 8 % in steps of half a percent, for up to 20 years. Pegolotti’s table is the only known medieval table of compound interest. It is preserved in a single manuscript of 1472. Tables were not printed until 1558. The reason for the rarity of tables is presumed to be the prohibition on usury, and the fact that tables were regarded as industrial secrets. However mathematical problems on com-



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pound interest are found in various mathematical works in the fifteenth century, which assume an ability to calculate interest. Luca Pacioli’s Summa de Arithmetica (1494) mentions the rule that to determine the number of years for an investment at compound interest to double, one should divide the interest rate into 72. (For example, an investment at 2 % compound interest takes about 36 years to double.) Actually, the certainty of compound interest tables in predicting the future is not perfect. It is possible that the bank offering to pay the interest may default. That was by no means a trivial consideration in view of the spectacular bank failures of the Middle Ages. The huge Bardi firm for which Pegolotti worked collapsed in 1347 and he was engaged in dealing with the consequences of the bankruptcy.

Limiting Risks by Forward Prices, Compensation and Bankruptcy Forward contracts provided a way of stabilising future finances. In a typical example, an English monastery had established itself as a reliable supplier of wool. The large Italian trading firms handled the export of wool to continental destinations. The firm could offer to buy the monastery’s wool clip several years ahead – sometimes up to twenty years – for a fixed price payable now. The monastery gained ready cash in the present, the buying firm gained a discount on the price plus a guaranteed supply, any implicit interest payment on the money advanced was invisible, and both sides were protected against the vagaries of future price movements. Both sides could thus plan their operations with a more secure view of the future. A forward contract provides for certain goods to be delivered at a fixed date in the future, for a price agreed on now. The price thus depends on an estimate of what will be a fair price at the future time. In a case like grain, prices varied to a degree predictably over the year, as grain was more plentiful and so cheaper after harvest than after winter. That provided an opportunity to cover up interest payments and evade the usury prohibition. The distinguished canon law commentator Hostiensis, writing in the mid-thirteenth century, explained clearly how fair prices ought to vary with expectations about the future, and how those expectations are based on what normally happened: What therefore if one gives a price at harvest time, with the amount [of grain] to be delivered at Easter? It is clear from the intention of the words that he is to be considered usurious. It is the common and accustomed course in all regions, and common opinion, which are to be taken notice of and expected (Digest 43.12.1.1; 33.7.18.2; Decretals 3.28.9). And if you say to me, that sometimes the contrary happens [i.  e., the price does not rise between harvest and Easter], I reply, that the laws are not adapted to those things which happen rarely (Digest 1.3.5); but rather, to those which happen for the most part, and frequently (Novels 94.2). (Franklin 2001, 164)

Similar concepts apply to the valuation of future earnings. If someone has had their goods requisitioned by the state, or has lost limbs through a work accident, they may deserve compensation for loss of future earnings. How is that to be measured? It must

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involve an estimate of what would have happened in the normal or probable course of things. Peter John Olivi, writing around the 1290s, says that is not the general custom to require compensation in the case of lost limbs, because the cause is too remote from the effect, but if it is, If you say that he who lost limbs is now deprived of the mechanisms and occupations from which he could derive profit, then it should be said that either the depriver is required to restore only as much as the probability of profit weighs (quantum ponderat probabilitas talis lucris), or that […] common custom excuses him from any restitution. Perhaps this custom is because often such a probability for the whole life of one who has lost limbs is not at all uncertain, but is of such weight or price as could scarcely be compensated for, at least in popular estimation. I believe though that a rich man who has cut off someone’s limbs is bound to support him, if he needs support. (Petrus Johannes Olivi, De emptionibus, ed. Todeschini, 91; Franklin 2001, 266)

In traditional societies, commercial risk-taking is discouraged because of the fearsome consequences of bankruptcy, such as debt slavery or imprisonment. One of the points of the prohibition on usury was that it prevented the spiral of debt leading to such consequences. In modern law, the future for an insolvent debtor is not so severe, because bankruptcy law allows the bankrupt to make a “clean slate” free of debt, so as to be able to start again. That was an idea of medieval Roman and canon law, based on some hints from ancient Roman law. It contained the downside of financial risks and allowed merchants and bankers to accept the risks necessarily attendant on the highly variable business environment. Although individual future events cannot be predicted, there is something about them in the mass which gives rise to a hope (expectation, risicum) that can be quantified and given a price.

Life Annuities The essential idea of life annuities is that although the time of death of a healthy individual is unpredictable, the times of deaths of such individuals in the mass, or on average, are rather predictable. That allows money to be made by offering a contract of a life annuity, that is, an annual payment for life in return for a fixed upfront fee (or sometimes provision of services for life such as food, wood, or health care, called a corrody). Approximate knowledge of average life expectancy enables the product to be priced properly. For the buyer, it provides a very predictable income stream for the future, especially for periods when illness or decrepitude may make earning money impossible. The possibility of selling the prospect of something in the future for hard cash in the present was tempting, for states and other powerful bodies that could offer the purchaser reliability over a lifespan, such as monasteries. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a trade in both perpetual and life annuities grew up. The cities



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of Germany commonly raised money through the sale of annuities from the thirteenth century. Hamburg standardly offered 10 % of the purchase price per year on life annuities, as against 6.66 % for perpetual annuities (that is, annuities inheritable by heirs); Douai in 1324/1325 offered 10 % for life annuities, 5 % for perpetual ones. The difference between life and perpetual represents some kind of implicit quantification of the expected life span. Ghent in the later fourteenth century gave 10 % for a life annuity, 6⅔% for an annuity on two lives (one payable until both purchasers had died), and 5 % for perpetual annuities, although these rates varied widely. In the fourteenth century, there is found the first discrimination on grounds of age, to reflect the different expectancies of life at different ages; Nordhausen in 1350 offered 1 mark per year for a down payment of 10 for persons between 40 and 50, but 1 mark per year for 8 to those between 50 and 60. In Artois in 1399, the rate of interest on a life annuity offered to a man of 58 was twice that offered to a child. Theoretical analysis again came from canon law commentators. Alexander Lombard writes, in his Treatise on Usury (1307), that it might seem that life annuities are unjust contacts, since sometimes twenty-five years olds are seen to live a long time and gain back many times the initial price they paid; if the price is such that they would regain it in eight years, “although they may live less than those eight years, it is more probable (probabilius) that they will live twice that.” However, he argues, such contracts are not necessarily unjust. It is simply a matter of finding an equitable price by balancing the probabilities: Such equality can be saved, when life annuities are sold. This is when the price is of such quantity that, after weighing with care and consideration the age of the buyer and his health, and the risks concerning the profits from the possessions, it does not appear that either the buyer or the seller has notably the better side. If such equity is destroyed, it is certain the contract cannot be made, and is not licit […], the contract is licit, because the risk and doubt falls on both sides; for the sale is for a time for which it is doubtful whether he will survive more or less, and the uncertainty of the time makes equality on both sides. (Alexander Lombard, Tractatus de usuris, ed. Hamelin, 154, 156; Franklin 2001, 270–271)

Insurance The idea of insurance was invented by Italian merchants around 1350. The owner of a ship about to go on a voyage pays another person a premium; if the ship returns safely, the contract lapses, while if it the ship is lost the insurer pays the owner an agreed large sum, in compensation for the loss. As the name “insurance” implies, the process makes the future more predictable for the venturer, since (for a fee) he ensures that whatever happens, he does not sustain serious loss. The process encourages precision in stating what risks exactly are covered. (Scheller 2017) The size of the premium represents a quantification of the risk of the voyage, as estimated by the parties to the contract. Rates vary with available information such as

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the seasons and reports of wars or pirates. But by the late fourteenth century normal rates for commonly travelled routes had become established, such as 8 percent for Cadiz to Southampton and 4 percent for the Port of Pisa to Naples or Tunis. Such rates indicate an intuitive understanding of how the frequency of future events reflects the frequency of similar past events. That is not explicitly stated, but without some approximate calibration of future to past frequencies, the insurance business will not make money. A contract written in Crete in 1389 is valuable for showing in detail what the information is on which doubt is based and how it issues in a price. The contract is called an insurance but is close to a pure bet: This day 14 October 1389, 13th indiction, as overleaf, I, Niccolino de Fieschi, a Genoese residing at present in Candia, with my heirs, do hereby make known to you Ser Bernardo de Mezzo of Venice, residing in Candia, in your presence and to your satisfaction, and to thine heirs, that as a griparia, master Bartolomeo Acardo, entered the port of Candia today and he having said he saw part of a wreck and a barrel on the sea, and suspecting therefore that the ship of Antonio de Barba was wrecked, which sailed a short while ago from here on a voyage to Romania [Constantinople], I insure you for 200 ducats in gold, of good and fair weight, for your part of the cargo existing on said ship; whereby, if the said ship of Antonio de Barba was wrecked, counting from the time she left this port and up to the whole of the present day, understanding that certainty is had of this, I am bound to and must give and pay to you 200 ducats in gold of good and fair weight, here in Candia, safe on land. And for this insurance, according to our agreement, I have received from you 25 gold ducats. Nevertheless, should anything new happen in Candia, during the whole of this day, whereby we shall know for certain that the said ship of Antonio de Barba has sunk, then in that case I shall not be bound to you for the present insurance and this paper must be held of no value and must be null and void, because I issue this insurance to you for the doubt had and that one still has and not for any certainty. (Stefani 1958, 76, 207; Franklin 2001, 275)

Insurance expanded beyond maritime risks. Insurance on life is found from 1399 (but only for short terms), and from the early fifteenth century there are contracts covering the risk of death in pregnancy, of both wives and slaves. In such areas, the risk can be expected to be rather constant and independent of special knowledge, unlike shipping risks. The difference between insurance and betting was not clearly understood, and indeed the distinction is a fine one. In the fifteenth century merchants are found making “insurances” on the lives of the Pope and the Doge of Venice, on horses, and on the duration of a conclave. Those practices had to be forbidden, considering the temptation to bring about the event bet on. An intermediate case is insurance against the occurrence of a plague, available at Genoa for 4 percent for a year. While merchants’ documents did not explain the nature of these contracts, legal commentators well-informed about commercial practice did. The nature of insurance is explained very clearly by the Florentine jurist Lorenzo de Ridolfi in 1403, and cleared of any suspicions that insurance is a cover for usury:



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Of insurances (securitatibus) […] when you send your merchandise by sea or land to certain parts, and I take upon myself the risk, and agree that for every 100 of value of that merchandise, you pay me a certain quantity of money […] something is given for something done. It is not given as a loan, since no loan is involved, but something is received for assuring the merchant of his goods, which are at risk by sea or land. Besides, no stake is involved, so it is false to say that something is received over and above the stake; there is no building without a foundation […]. (Franklin 2001, 276–277)

The first book on insurance, On Insurance and Merchants’ Bets, by the Portuguese jurist Pedro de Santarém (Santerna), was published in 1552 though written in 1488. Santerna’s conception of the contract is expressed in the simple formula, “I undertake the peril, for your giving me money.” While admitting that insurance and bets can be a cloak for usury, he argues that generally a good intention in the parties must be presumed. For given the general uncertainty of life, everyone must bet about the future (“since the Pope does not know the secrets of the heart, and cannot divine them, he judges from likelihoods, and common accompaniments, and so is sometimes mistaken.”) There are various cases where it is important to determine legally whether the price of an insurance is just. Thus, if someone charges 16 percent in circumstances where 8 percent is usual, it may be inferred that the insurance was intended to cover a second voyage, and if a ship’s master defers sailing until a more dangerous time of the year, a price previously just may become unjust. Reinsurance is permitted, that is, insuring an insurance against the default of the insurer. There is a complicated discussion of the difference between “normal” unusual events like storms, and very rare ones, “that occur once in a thousand years”. Santerna asks, can the rule that a contract of sale is invalid if the price exceeds the just price by more than half apply to an insurance? Firstly, it needs to be determined whether an insurance can be said to have a definite value at all: It can be said that the insurer sells only the hope of a future outcome, of which there can well exist a sale […] from the fact that this hope is uncertain, it might not seem capable of estimation such that in respect of it there could be said to be exceeding of half the just price of its value. But, this is not to be estimated at how much the thing or goods would be worth in case the peril was realised, but at how much the doubtful event should likely (verisimiliter) be estimated. In which case the price seems to be constituted with respect to that hope. (Petrus Santerna, De assecurationibus, ed. Amzalak, 336; Franklin 2001, 277)

A few similar discussions can be found at the same time in Jewish law, which also forbade lending at interest and had to explain why the acceptance of risk in marine insurance was legitimate. The late fifteenth century saw the invention of a subtle but morally dubious use of insurance in an effort to render usury legitimate and thus secure investments against loss. It was agreed that both partnerships and insurance contracts were legitimate. So an investor could invest a sum in a venture, then insure that against both default and against the return being less than some fixed amount, say 5 %. Those three contracts

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were legitimate. If however they were all made with the same person, the effect was the same as lending him money at 5 % fixed interest. The moral theorist Angelo de Clavasio defended the “triple contract” in 1485, as did many later writers. Despite complaints from moralists of more rigorous views, it heralded the end of the prohibition on usury.

Mathematics of Games Dice Dice were used frequently in the middle ages, both for prognostication and for gaming. The literature about them consists more of condemnation of the evils of gambling than of any analysis of probabilities. In principle, dice throws have the same kind of predictability as life annuities: dice throws, like the times of human deaths, are unpredictable individually but have a certain predictability in the mass or on average. That was not understood before modern times. But the mid-thirteenth century poem De Vetula, which purports to be Ovid’s account of his life, contains a passage about throws of three dice that understands the question well and correctly calculates how rarely or frequently the different possible outcomes (the possible totals on the three dice) occur (in our language, the probabilities). It rightly distinguishes between partitions (punctaturae) and “fallings” (cadentiae), and correctly counts both for three dice. Thus the outcome 3 has one partition and one falling, as all three dice must come up 1, whereas 4 has one partition (it can only be made up by two 1’s and a 2) but three fallings – 1,1,2 and 1,2,1 and 2,1,1. It is correctly explained that how frequently an outcome occurs depends on how many fallings make it up, so that the outcome 4 occurs three times as often as 3. Thus outcomes, […] are not, however, Of equal value, since the larger and the smaller of them Come rarely and the middle ones frequently, And the rest, the closer they are to the middle ones, The better they are and more frequently they come. (Bellhouse 2000)

Despite De Vetula existing in nearly sixty manuscripts and several printed editions, its discoveries on dice seem to have made little impact. A commentary on Dante, possibly from the late fourteenth century, addresses the same problem in similar language, but is more confused about the crucial difference between partitions and “fallings”. It does repeat the general idea that “a number which can appear in more ways must occur more frequently.” (David 1962, 35; Franklin 2001, 293) The next similar work is a fragment on dice by Galileo, which solves the same problem in much the same way. Out of this context, with mathematical thought about dice barely in existence, there suddenly appears the statement, and the exact solution, of a difficult problem



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on the correct division of stakes in an interrupted game of chance. The problem is one of those solved in 1654 by Fermat and Pascal, which constitute their claim to have founded mathematical probability. The trivial cases of an interrupted game are when each of two players needs the same number of points to win. In that case, the stake should obviously be divided equally. The simplest non-trivial case is when one player needs two points to win and the other one. The answer as to how the stakes should be fairly divided if the game is interrupted at that point is not easy, as Pascal and Fermat discovered. The next simplest case is when one player needs three points and the other one. This is the problem correctly solved in an anonymous Italian mathematical manuscript of about 1400. It is done with a complex symmetry argument. The general problem of the just division of the stake in an interrupted game was mentioned in Luca Pacioli’s widely read Summa de Arithmetica, printed in 1494 (and solved incorrectly). In this and later discussions of the problem, including that of Pascal and Fermat, the problem is considered a moral-legal one about what is deserved and there is no suggestion that it is connected with the long-run relative frequency of how dice fall. Thus the connection between the mathematics of dice and what can be expected in future dice throws is in this period extremely tenuous.

Lotteries Lotteries bear an unusual relation to predictions of the future. For the lottery owner, they are a sure bet, being designed to pay out less than the incomings whatever happens (provided, however, that all the tickets can be sold). Like life annuities, they provide a way of making money for the offerer by aggregating individual risks into something predictable overall, the offerer relying on their credibility to pay out substantial sums in the future. For the individual ticketholders, they increase unpredictability, as the buyer trades a sure cost for the mere possibility – indeed, a remote possibility – of a win. They appeal therefore to risk appetite, which is the opposite of the appeal to risk aversion in, for example, insurance. Lotteries were offered by cities in Burgundy and Italy from the 1440s. They were instituted for civic purposes, sometimes to keep the city solvent, and so appealed to a sense of civic virtue as well as to greed. A lost stake could be regarded as a donation to a worthy purpose. In 1468, Raffaele de’ Neri offered to pay 2000 lire to the Milanese treasury for the right to conduct a lottery of 10000 one-lira tickets, with 268 prizes totalling 8000 lire. That would make money only if some prizes were not drawn or were unclaimed.

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Mathematics of Planetary Conjunctions Oresme on the Inability of Astrology to Predict Nicole Oresme, the mathematical genius of the mid-fourteenth century, advanced a subtle probabilistic argument intended to show that astrology cannot make reliable predictions. He begins with a simple example of the connection between probability, in the sense of what one ought to believe on evidence, and relative frequency: If there were some number as to which it were completely unknown what it is or how great it is, and whether it is large or small – as perhaps the number of all the hours that will pass before Antichrist  – it will be likely that such a number would not be a cube number. It is similar in games where, if one should inquire whether a hidden number is a cube or not, it is safer to reply that it is not, since that seems more probable and likely (probabilius et verisimilius). (Nicole Oresme, De proportionibus, ed. Grant, 248–251)

The reason is that cubes are rare among numbers: the great majority of numbers are not cubes. The reasoning is thus a form of the statistical (or proportional) syllogism: Most A’s are B’s This is an A (about which there is no further relevant information) Therefore this is probably a B

The statistical syllogism is a form of reasoning commonly used intuitively but rarely explicit before the modern theory of statistical testing. Oresme goes on to apply the same reasoning to the more complicated case of commensurability of ratios. Two ratios are said to be commensurable if one is a rational power of the other; for example, the ratios 4/1 and 32/1 are commensurable since 32/1 = (4/1)(5/2), but 4/1 and 5/1 are not commensurable. (The idea of fractional powers was itself a discovery of Oresme’s.) The vast majority of pairs of ratios are not commensurable, therefore, given an arbitrary set of ratios, it is very likely that none of them are commensurable with any of the others. The application to astrology is that astrological prediction relies on the recurrence of conjunctions of planets. But if the ratios of times of orbits are incommensurable, there can be no exact recurrence of conjunctions. Since all ratios between the periods of planetary orbits are almost certainly incommensurable, exact recurrence is extremely unlikely and hence, Oresme concludes, astrology can make no predictions. Readers naturally found that reasoning hard to follow. Oresme’s work on the question had virtually no impact and the mathematical ideas in it were lost until modern times.



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Medieval Classifications and Discussions The essential contribution of medieval European law was in understanding the nature of “aleatory contracts”, those involving chance or risk in itself as a saleable commodity. They included insurance, gambling, speculation and life annuities. Though implicit in ancient Roman law in a few cases, there was no general theory inherited from the ancients. The medieval commentators appreciated that in life annuities, insurance and bets, a price is paid for an uncertainty, which is not a physical thing but an abstract entity – in modern terms, an expectation. Such a quantity is to be estimated by the market, based on what is seen to happen usually. These conceptual developments concerning risk were not found in Islamic cultures. Authoritative traditions forbade all contracts involving risk or speculation (gharar). Thus one could not sell a bird in the air, even one accustomed to return to its nest, nor a ripening crop. So there was no occasion for discussion of risk in contracts as occurred in the Latin West. Nor was there the opportunity for generations of commentary and reflection on the examples and principles of Roman law.

Selected Bibliography Alexander Lombard. Un traité de morale économique au XIVe siècle: le Tractatus de usuris de maître Alexandre d’Alexandrie. Ed. Alonso M. Hamelin. Louvain, 1962. Baum, Hans-Peter. “Annuities in Late Medieval Hanse Towns.” Business History Review 59.1 (1985): 24–48. Bell, Adrian R., Chris Brooks, and Paul Dryburgh. “Interest Rates and Efficiency in Medieval Wool Forward Contracts.” Journal of Banking and Finance 31.2 (2007): 361–380. Bell, Adrian, and Charles Sutcliffe. “Valuing Medieval Annuities: Were Corrodies Underpriced?” Explorations in Economic History 47.2 (2010): 142–157. Bellhouse, David R. “De vetula: a Medieval Manuscript Involving Probability Calculations.” International Statistical Review 68.2 (2000): 123–136. Ceccarelli, Giovanni. “Risky Business: Theological and Canonical Thought on Insurance from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Century.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31.3 (2001): 607–658. Ceccarelli, Giovanni. “The Price for Risk-taking: Marine Insurance and Probability Calculus in the Late Middle Ages.” Journal Electronique d’Histoire des Probabilités et de Statistique 3.1 (2007): 1–26. David, Florence N. Games, Gods and Gambling: The Origins and History of Probability and Statistical Ideas from the Earliest Times to the Newtonian Era. New York, 1962. Francesco Balducci Pegolotti. La pratica della mercatura. Ed. Allan Evans. Cambridge, MA, 1936. Franklin, James. The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal. Baltimore, 2001/2015. Franklin, James. “Prehistory of Probability.” Oxford Handbook of Probability and Philosophy. Eds. Alan Hájek and Christopher Hitchcock. Oxford, 2016. 33–49. Garcia i Sanz, Arcadi, and Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol. Assegurances i canvis marítims medievals a Barcelona. Barcelona, 1983.

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 Traditions and Practices of Prognostication in the Middle Ages: Quantifying Risks

Kendall, Maurice. “The Beginnings of a Probability Calculus.” Biometrika 43 (1956): 1–14. Kohn, Meir. “Risk Instruments in the Medieval and Early Modern Economy.” Department of Economics, Dartmouth University, Working paper 99–07, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers. cfm?abstract_id=151871 (11 May 2020). Melis, Federigo. Origini e sviluppi delle assicurazioni in Italia (secoli XIV–XVI). Rome, 1975. Musser, Sonja. Los libros de acedrex dados e tablas: Historical, Artistic and Metaphysical Dimensions of Alfonso X’s ‘Book of Games’. Ph.D. Diss. University of Arizona, 2007. Nehlsen-von Stryk. Karen. L’assicurazione martittima a Venice nel XV secolo. Rome, 1988. Nicole Oresme. De proportionibus proportionum and Ad pauca respicientes. Ed. and trans. Edward Grant. Madison, WI, 1966. Pakter, Walter. “The Origins of Bankruptcy in Medieval Canon and Roman Law.” Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, 1984. Ed. Peter A. Linehan. Vatican City, 1988. 485–506. Passamaneck, Stephen M. Insurance in Rabbinic Law. Edinburgh, 1974. Petrus Johannes Olivi. Un trattato de economia politica francescana: il “De emptionibus et venditionibus, de usuris, de restitutionibus” de Pietro di Giovanni Olivi. Ed. Giacomo Todeschini. Rome, 1980. Piccinno, Luisa. “Genoa, 1340–1620: Early Development of Marine Insurance.” Marine Insurance: Origins and Institutions, 1300–1850. Ed. Adrian B. Leonard. Basingstoke, 2016. 24–45. Piron, Sylvain. “Le traitement de l’incertitude commerciale dans la scolastique médiévale.” Journal Electronique d’Histoire des Probabilités et de Statistique 3.1.2007. Poitras, Geoffrey. “The Early History of Option Contracts.” Vinzenz Bronzin’s Option Pricing Models: Exposition and Appraisal. Eds. Wolfgang Hafner and Heinz Zimmerman. Berlin, 2009. 487–518. Rosenthal, Franz. Gambling in Islam. Leiden, 1975. Santerna, Petrus (Pedro de Santarém). De assecurationibus et sponsionibus mercatorum, Venice, 1552 [reprinted with notes by M. Amzalak and English, French and Portuguese translations. Lisbon, 1971]. Scheller, Benjamin. “Die Geburt des Risikos. Kontingenz und kaufmännische Praxis im mediterranen Seehandel des Hoch- und Spätmittelalters.” Historische Zeitschrift 304.2 (2017): 305–331. Spencer, Brian. “Fifteenth-century Collar of SS and Hoard of False Dice with Their Container, from the Museum of London.” Antiquaries Journal 65.2 (1985): 449–453. Stefani, Giuseppe. Insurance in Venice from the Origins to the End of the Serenissima. Trieste, 1958. Tauber, Walter. Das Würfelspiel im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit: eine kultur- und sprachgeschichtliche Darstellung. Frankfurt am Main, 1987. Toti Rigatelli, Laura. “Il ‘problema delle parti’ in manoscritti del XIV e XV secolo.” Mathemata: Festschrift für Helmuth Gericke. Eds. Menso Folkerts and Uta Lindgren. Stuttgart, 1985. 229–236. Welch, Evelyn. “Lotteries in Early Modern Italy.” Past and Present 199.1 (2008): 71–111. Zdekauer, Ludovico. Il gioco d’azzardo nel Medioevo italiano. Florence, 1993.

Part III: Repertoire of Written Sources and Artefacts

Jean Lempire

Calendars, Astronomical Tables, and Easter Tables in the Eastern Christian World Two works of Ptolemy (active about 120–150 CE), the famous Alexandrian scholar who shaped the conception of the universe that was to prevail for some 1500 years, contain the most widely used astronomical tables during the Middle Ages: the Almagest (Heiberg 1898–1903, trans. Toomer 1984) and the Handy Tables (Tihon-Mercier 2011). They were also the model of the tables that abound in Arabic, Persian, Jewish or Latin astronomical traditions. Ptolemy’s tables were easily manipulated by Medieval astronomers and astrologers thanks to the commentaries of Theon of Alexandria (ca. 364 CE), especially his Small Commentary on Handy Tables that is a clear handbook illustrated by examples (Tihon 1978, see also Tihon 1999). Theon’s explanations are also found in Syriac texts like in the work of the seventh-century monk Severus Sebokht (Villey 2014). In Constantinople the astronomical teaching developed from the seventh century with the treatise attributed to Stephanus of Alexandria (Lempire 2016) who imitated Theon’s Small Commentary and added specific tables for the latitude of Byzantium. Stephanus’ text is followed by three calendrical chapters attributed to Emperor Heraclius, among which is an Easter date computation for the year 623 (see Tihon 2004). During Heraclius’ reign (610–641), the computus literature, focusing on the Easter date and calendrical cycles, was particularly rich. In addition to Heraclius’ chapters, the Chronicon paschale (Dindorf 1832, translation of 284–628 CE Whitby 1989) was conceived as a universal history from Creation to ca. 630 CE but presents rich material: it contains relevant calendrical tables (a 19-year cycle, a 28-year cycle, an Easter table) and many datings of Church feasts that are connected with the Creation and Incarnation. In 639/640, the monk and priest, George, wrote down a Paschal method (Diekamp 1900) which was used for the first time in the Byzantine world era (year 1 = 5509/5508 BCE). In 640/641, Maximus the Confessor wrote his Computus ecclesiasticus (forthcoming ed. Lempire-Markesinis), which was an extensive treatise with tables devoted to the calendrical tradition of Alexandria and its world era (year 1 = 5493/5492 BCE): an excerpt from Maximus’ chronology of Christ’s life (Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection) was reported in many Byzantine Evangeliaries (e.  g. the famous “Uspenski Gospels”, copied in 835 CE). In Armenia, the famous scholar Anania of Shirak wrote, in the late seventh century, a treatise on Easter in order to promote in Armenia a new 532-year Paschal cycle (of which only manuscript fragments remain). The ancient Armenian civil calendar was further reformed later by John the Deacon (ca. 1100), who introduced a fixed calendar with a leap-year intercalation. In Georgia, the 532-year Paschal period was used to create the “kronikoni” cycle (from the Greek word kronikon), a time period https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-042

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beginning in 780/781 and attested in many inscriptions and manuscripts (see Mosshammer 2008). In the eighth century, John of Damascus composed a Paschal canon (ed. PG 95, 239–240). This Easter table was later used by Barlaam and Gregoras (fourteenth century) in their criticism of the “canon of the Fathers” (see below). The ninth and tenth centuries, the first “Byzantine Renaissance,” provided the oldest manuscripts of Ptolemy’s (MS Vatican gr. 1594) and Theon’s (MS Vatican gr. 190) astronomical work. Greek uncial manuscripts of this time containing Ptolemy’s Handy Tables are MSS Florence Plut. XXVIII.26, Leyden BPG 78 and Vatican gr. 1291. They also contain calendrical tables including the Hemerologion of months of various cities, a tabular document which informs us about the local ancient calendars used in the Eastern Roman Empire. Similar tables giving the corresponding months and days within two or more calendars (Julian, Alexandrian, Egyptian, Macedonian, Persian, Jewish, etc.) occur frequently in the manuscripts. Relevant computus material is also found in the MS Leyden Scaliger gr. 33, which was copied in Constantinople around 950. The scientific activity of the eleventh and twelfth centuries furnished a rich docu­ mentation. In addition to works in Ptolemy’s tradition, astronomical texts testify to an Islamic influence. Many texts attest the use and the adaptation of Arabic tables, among which the scholia written in about 1032 and preserved in the margins of MS Vatican gr. 1594 (Tihon 1989, see also Mercier 1989), the anonymous handbook composed around 1072 (ed. Jones 1987) and the stars tables of the astrological compilation preserved in MS Vatican gr. 1056 (Kunitzsch 1970; Tihon 1990). Regarding ecclesiastical chronology, the important calendrical teaching of Michael Psellos (written in the form of questions-answers in about 1092, see Redl 1928) focuses on the Easter date problem (19-year and 28-year cycles) and on the dating of Christ’s life in the Byzantine world era. Moreover, the preserved excerpt from the Easter tract of Nicetas Seidos (beginning of the twelfth century, ed. PG 127, 1485–1488) briefly deals with the dates of Christ’s Birth and Passion. Following a brief rupture, caused by the capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade (1204), the Palaeologan period (1261–1453), known as the “Second Byzantine Renaissance,” is marked by a strong intellectual boom across most disciplines. Manuscripts multiplied during this period. Although Ptolemy’s ancient tables (mean motions in particular) were outdated, Byzantine astronomers still managed to obtain relatively good results by applying minor corrections to Ptolemy’s values. Solar eclipses for the 1330s were predicted from Almagest or Handy Tables by Nicephorus Gregoras (Mogenet et al. 1983) and his rival, Barlaam of Seminara (Mogenet and Tihon 1977). In his treatise on New Tables (1367/1368), Isaac Argyros adapted several tables of Ptolemy, originally set up according to the Egyptian calendar and the meridian of Alexandria, to the Julian calendar and the meridian of Constantinople. Argyros’ work was not very successful but nevertheless used by John Chortasmenos, who calculated the solar eclipse of April 1409 by combining both Ptolemy’s methods and Persian



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astronomy (Caudano 2003). The success of the Persian tables in Byzantium is well-attested by other documents: an important Persian astronomical corpus of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Pingree 1985/1986; Tihon 1987); the Persian Syntaxis of George Chrysokokkes (unpublished except for several chapters ed. by Usener 1914), written around 1347 mainly from the Zīj-I Ilkhānī of Naṣīr al‐Dīn al‐Ṭūsī (Mercier 1984); the Paradosis tôn Persikôn Kanonôn (Bardi 2017); and book III of the Astronomical Tribiblos of Theodore Meliteniotes (books I and II in Leurquin 1990–1993, book III see Bardi 2017), composed around 1352. The Persian astronomy, based on far more recent observations than Ptolemy’s, was supposed to be more accurate but unfortunately the results of the Persian tables were compromised in the Greek calculations due to improper use and incorrect methods (for instance, in the calculation of lunar speed, which is part of syzygies prediction). This was why the Byzantines continued to use Ptolemy’s tables by adding a few corrections. Other foreign astronomical tables were imported into Byzantium. In 1380, the Latin tables, known as the “Alphonsine tables”, were adapted by Demetrios Chrysoloras in a treatise that is preserved in a single manuscript (copied by John Chortasmenos): MS Vatican 1059. In the fifteenth century, Jewish tables had a decisive influence on Byzantine astronomy, as attested by several Greek adaptations of Jewish texts (Tihon 2017). The Hebraic version of al-Battānī also influenced Georgios Gemistos Plethon’s Method for Finding the Conjunctions of Sun and Moon According to Tables Drawn up by Himself (Tihon-Mercier 1998). This manual was an original creation and no longer an adaptation of existing tables: Plethon developed a luni-solar calendar, imitating that of the ancient Greeks and Romans. In the fourteenth century, the question of the Easter date gave rise to a rich corpus of texts. Due to the serious problem of the progressive shift in the Julian calendar with respect to the cycles of the sun and moon, Paschal treatises of this period were more like astronomical works than methods of computation. Nicephorus Gregoras (about 1324, Bezdeki 1924) and Barlaam of Seminara (about 1333, ed. and trans. Tihon 2011) were competing on this matter. Both scholars finally relied on Ptolemy for the date of the spring equinox and the length of the solar year, but Barlaam introduced a supplementary argument, which was the inexactness of the 19-year cycle (a shift of a day every 304 years). This shift value was also given in 1335 by Matthew Blastares in his compilation of Church canons (Paschal chapter ed. in PG 145, 65–108) and in about 1372 by Isaac Argyros (ed. PG 19, 1279–1316). The latter discussed Ptolemy’s value of the tropical year but did not claim to reform the traditional Paschal canon. Barlaam’s argument was taken up again by Cardinal Bessarion in his letter to Pope Paul II, De Errore Paschatis (Mohler 1942). Among the Easter treatises of the fourteenth century, one should still mention the computation method of Nicolas Rhabdas, dated 1341 (ed. and trans. Tannery 1886, see also Schissel 1937).

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Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Barlaam of Seminara. Traités sur les éclipses de soleil de 1333 et 1337. Eds. Joseph Mogenet and Anne Tihon. Louvain, 1977. Bezdeki, Stephan. “Nicephori Gregorae epistulae XC.” Ephemeris Dacoromana 2 (1924): 330–336. Chronicon paschale. Ed. Ludwig August Dindorf. Bonn, 1832. Chronicon Paschale 284–628 AD, Translated with Notes and Introduction. Ed. Mary Whitby. Liverpool, 1989. Claudius Ptolemy. Claudii Ptolemaei opera quae exstant omnia volumen I. Syntaxis Mathematica, I– II. Ed. Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Leipzig, 1898–1903. Claudius Ptolemy. Ptolemy’s Almagest. Ed. and trans. Gerald J. Toomer. New York et al., 1984. Claudius Ptolemy. Πτολεμαίου Πρόχειροι Κανόνες, vol. 1a–b. Eds. Anne Tihon and Raymond Mercier. Louvain, 2011. Gregory Chioniades. The Astronomical Works of Gregory Chioniades. Ed. David Pingree. Amsterdam, 1985–1986. Jones, Alexander (ed.). An Eleventh-Century Manual of Arabo-Byzantine Astronomy. Amsterdam, 1987. Nicephorus Gregoras. Calcul de l’éclipse de Soleil du 16 juillet 1330. Eds. Joseph Mogenet and Anne Tihon. Amsterdam, 1983. Plethon (Georgios Gemistos). Georges Gémiste Pléthon. Manuel d’astronomie. Eds. Anne Tihon and Raymond Mercier. Louvain-la-Neuve, 1998. Stephanus of Alexandria. Le commentaire astronomique aux ‘Tables Faciles’ de Ptolémée attribué à Stéphanos d’Alexandrie. Tome I. Histoire du texte, édition critique, traduction et commentaire (chapitres 1–16). Ed. Jean Lempire. Louvain, 2016. Theodore Meliteniotes. Tribiblos Astronomique. Ed. Régine Leurquin. Amsterdam, 1990–1993. Theon of Alexandria. Le ‘Petit commentaire’ de Théon d’Alexandrie aux Tables Faciles de Ptolémée (histoire du texte, édition critique, traduction). Ed. Anne Tihon. Vatican City, 1978. Tihon, Anne. “Barlaam de Seminara. Traité sur la date de Pâques.” Byzantion 81 (2011): 362–411.

Secondary Literature Bardi, Alberto. Persische Astronomie in Byzanz: ein Beitrag zur Byzantinistik und zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Dissertation. LMU Munich: Faculty of Cultural Studies, 2017. Caudano, Anne-Laurence. “Le calcul de l’éclipse de soleil du 15 avril 1409 à Constantinople par Jean Chortasménos.” Byzantion 73 (2003): 211–245. Diekampf, Franz. “Der Mönch und Presbyter Georgios, ein unbekannter Schriftsteller des 7. Jahrhunderts.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 9 (1900): 14–51. Kunitzsch, Paul. “Die arabische Herkunft von zwei Sternverzeichnissen in Cod. Vat. gr. 1056.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 120 (1970): 282–287. Mercier, Raymond. “The Greek «Persian Syntaxis» and the Zīj-I Ilkhānī.” Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences 34 (1984): 35–60. Mercier, Raymond. “The Parameters of the Zīj of Ibn al-A’lam.” Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences 39 (1989): 22–50. Mohler, Ludwig. Kardinal Bessarion als Theologe, Humanist und Staatsman, vol. 3. Paderborn, 1942. 546–548.



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Mosshammer, Alden A. The Easter Computus and the Origins of the Christian Era. Oxford, 2008. Redl, Gertrude. “La chronologie appliquée de Michel Psellos.” Byzantion 4 (1927/1928): 197–236, and Byzantion 5 (1929): 229–286. Schissel, Otmar. “Die Osterrechnung des Nikolaos Artabasdos Rhabdas.” Byzantinisch-Neugriechische Jahrbücher 14 (1937–1938): 43–59. Tannery, Paul. “Notice sur les deux lettres arithmétiques de Nicolas Rhabdas (texte grec et traduction).” Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale et autres bibliothèques. Vol. XXXII/1. 1886, 174–242 (especially 190–196). Tihon, Anne. “Les tables astronomiques persanes à Constantinople dans la première moitié du XIVe siècle.” Byzantion 57 (1987): 471–487. Tihon, Anne. “Sur l’identité de l’astronome Alim.” Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences 39 (1989): 3–21. Tihon, Anne. “Tables islamiques à Byzance.” Byzantion 60 (1990): 401–425. Tihon, Anne. “Theon of Alexandria and Ptolemy’s Handy Tables.” Ancient Astronomy and Celestial Divination. Ed. Noel M. Swerdlow. Cambridge, MA, 1999. 357–369. Tihon, Anne. “Le calcul de la date de Pâques de Stéphanos-Héraclius.” Philomathestatos. Studies in Greek Patristic and Byzantine Texts. Eds. Bart Janssens, Bram Roosen, and Peter van Deun. Louvain, 2004. 625–646. Tihon, Anne. “Astronomie juive à Byzance.” Byzantion 87 (2017): 323–347. Usener, Hermann. “Ad historiam astronomiae symbola.” Kleine Schriften von Hermann Usener. Vol. 3. Leipzig and Berlin, 1914. 323–371. Villey, Émilie. “Qennešre et l’astronomie aux VIe et VIIe siècles.” Les sciences en syriaque. Paris, 2014. 149–190.

Philipp Nothaft

Calendars, Astronomical Tables, and Easter Tables in the Western Christian World Western manuscript collections are likely to contain thousands of calendars in both Latin and vernacular languages from the period of ca. 700 to 1500, although more precise estimates are hampered by the lack of a comprehensive census. The standard format and content of the medieval kalendarium was established in the Frankish kingdom in the late-eighth century. It merged saint days and liturgical dates with astronomical and meteorological information as well as entries for the so-called Egyptian Days (dies Aegyptiaci), which presaged bad luck on 24 days of every Julian year. A comprehensive edition of this calendar type was produced by Arno Borst (2001), who cites roughly 250 relevant manuscripts from the eighth to twelfth centuries and traces their common format back to a “prototype” made at the imperial monastery of Lorsch in 789. The technical underpinnings of the medieval kalendarium were elucidated in treatises and handbooks on the computus, a discipline whose core remit was the use of calendrical tables and the calculation of parameters pertaining to the date of Easter. Computus texts range from short collections of calendrical algorithms (so-called argumenta) to full-blown textbooks on the history and organization of the ecclesiastical calendar. The production of computus textbooks began with the work of Irish monastic authors in the second half of the seventh century, where the existence of conflicting methods of Easter reckoning created a demand for theoretical literature on the subject. A series of important studies of this early Irish computus tradition and its influence on later Frankish sources is due to Immo Warntjes, whose publications include an edition and English translation of the so-called Munich Computus of 719 (Warntjes 2010). Irish precedents like the Munich Computus shed a revealing light on the genesis of the Venerable Bede’s widely read textbook De temporum ratione (725), which is available in an English translation by Wallis (1999). Bede’s doctrines had a seminal influence on the development of computus in the Frankish kingdom, where the reign of Charlemagne coincided with the production of voluminous computistical encyclopaediae. A three-volume corpus of Frankish computistical texts from 721 to 818 was published by Arno Borst in 2006. Early examples for the vernacularisation of computus include the Old English works of Byrhtferth of Ramsey (Lapidge and Baker 1995) and Ælfric of Eynsham (Blake 2009), which date from around the beginning of the eleventh century. An important Latin computus anthology from this period and region appears in MS Oxford, St John’s College, 17, copied at Thorney Abbey ca. 1110, which includes medical material as well as prognostics (lunaries). It has been subjected to a thorough study and a digital edition by Faith Wallis, available at . https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-043



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Prior to 1100, the resources of astronomical computation were mostly limited to the rules and tables of the computus, notwithstanding the existence of a rudimentary and corrupt Latin version of Ptolemy’s Handy Tables (Pingree 1990). Those intent on practicing planetary astrology, as disseminated from the late tenth century onwards in texts belonging to the so-called Alchandreana corpus (Juste 2007), had to take recourse to simple arithmetical techniques based on counting the “years of the world” (see Juste 2004). The predictive capacities of the standard computistical tables were diminished by inherent flaws, as both the Julian calendar and the 19-year lunar cycle used by the Church overstated the length of the relevant periods (the tropical year and the mean synodic month). As a reaction to this problem, eleventh-century authors elaborated the existing techniques into a computus naturalis, which was supposed to enable finding the exact moment when Sun and Moon were in conjunction as well as their positions in the zodiac down to fine-grained units of time such as the portiuncula (1/235th of an hour). The principal pioneer of this approach was the monk Hermann of Reichenau (1013–1054), whose computistical works are dealt with by Nadja Germann (2006) and in a forthcoming edition by Arno Borst (†) and Immo Warntjes. The eleventh-century computus naturalis was developed further by the Lotharingian computist Gerland, author of the Computus Gerlandi (Lohr 2013), and by Walcher of Malvern (Nothaft 2017), who also hinted at its prognostic uses. Walcher’s approach to lunar and solar reckoning was eventually rendered obsolete by the large-scale translation of astronomical texts from Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek that took place during the twelfth century and provided Latin Christian authors with access to comprehensive collections of computational tables for the Sun, Moon, and five planets, known in Arabic as zīj (↗ Gaida, Introductions to Astrology). The transformative impact of this translation movement on the Latin computus is documented in twelfth-century computus treatises such as those written in England by Magister Cunstabulus (1175) and Roger of Hereford (1176), both edited by Alfred Lohr (2015), which paved the way for an astronomical critique of the ecclesiastical calendar that eventually led to the Gregorian reform of 1582. Medieval debates surrounding such a reform reached an early peak at the major Church councils of the first half of the fifteenth century, as documented by a corpus of texts recently edited by Olivier de Solan (2016). Closely connected to such debates was the study of alternative systems such as the sophisticated lunar calendar used by medieval Jews, which was the subject of several Latin treatises written during the twelfth to fifteenth centuries (Nothaft 2014; Lohr 2015, 1–55). A commonly observed standard for mathematical astronomy in Latin Europe first emerged in the shape of the Toledan Tables, which went back to the work of a group of Andalusian astronomers active in the 1060s and 1070s. The full corpus of Toledan Tables, which are attested in over 150 manuscripts, was made available in a comprehensive four-volume edition by Fritz S. Pedersen (2002). Following the introduction of the Toledan Tables in the first half of the twelfth century, Christian astronomers adapted their mean motion parameters to the longitudes of various European cities and rendered the tables more user-friendly by replacing the lunar calendar of their

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Arabic predecessors with the Julian calendar. Examples include the tables for Marseille produced around 1141 by Raymond of Marseille, whose Liber cursuum planetarum (d’Alverny, Burnett, and Poulle 2009) emphasized the astrological uses of the new tables. A classificatory survey of the full range of different tables available in later medieval Europe was published by Chabás and Goldstein (2012). The parameters of the Toledan Tables dominated European Latin astronomy from the end of the twelfth century until ca. 1320, when they began to be replaced by another set of tables for the same meridian attributed to King Alfonso X “el Sabio” of Castile and Léon (1252–1284). The original version of these tables was compiled between 1263 and 1272 at Alfonso’s court in Toledo, although modern scholars have sometimes treated the common Latin redaction of the so-called Alfonsine Tables as the later product of astronomers active at the University of Paris. An edition of these Latin tables together with the most widely copied set of instructions for their use, written by John of Saxony in 1327, was made available by Emmanuel Poulle (1984). New insights on the Alfonsine Tables, their dissemination, the corpus of related texts, and their practical uses are promised by the research project ALFA (Shaping A European Scientific Scene: Alfonsine Astronomy, 2017–2022), which is being directed by Matthieu Husson at the Observatoire de Paris (). Both the Toledan and the Alfonsine Tables were employed in furnishing Latin calendars with more accurate data for the times of conjunctions and oppositions, solar longitudes, daytime lengths, eclipse data, and other numerical information of this kind. Such astronomically enhanced calendars began to proliferate around 1290 with works like the Kalendarium of the Danish astronomer Peter Nightingale (Petrus de Dacia). Found in more than 60 manuscripts, the Kalendarium attracted numerous further tables and texts with computistical and astrological significance (Pedersen 1983, 204–456). The fourteenth century saw the creation of increasingly elaborate medical-astrological almanacs structured around calendars with accurate data for the Sun and Moon. In England, lasting popularity was achieved by the calendars of John Somer (Mooney 1998) and Nicholas of Lynn (Eisner 1980), which were both first produced during the 1380s and continued to be copied and extended until the end of the fifteenth century. A sign of their practical utility is the frequent inclusion of Somer’s and Lynn’s calendars in folded “girdle books” or “bat books”, which practitioners of medicine and astrology could carry around by attaching them to their backpacks or waistbelts. A comprehensive catalogue of such late medieval “bat books”, most of them almanacs with astrological and prognostic content, was published by Gumbert (2016). Another typical manifestation of calendar-based prognostication in this period are vernacular compendia of astro-medical lore, in particular those produced in Southern Germany in association with the so-called Volkskalender, manuscripts for which are listed by Brévart (1995–1996). They include lavishly illustrated specimens such as the Passauer Kalender of 1445, the Tübinger Hausbuch from the third quarter of the fifteenth century, and the Kodex Schürstab composed in Nuremberg ca. 1472, all three of which are available in editions or facsimiles with extensive commentaries (Keil 1981–



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1983; Brinkhus, Juste, and Lengenfelder 2005; Müller 2009). After 1480, their function began to be taken over by printed almanacs such as the popular Teutsch Kalender by Johann Blaubirer (Augsburg, 1481), which went through more than 30 editions and ushered in a new period in the distribution and consumption of prognostic material.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources d’Alverny, Marie-Thérèse, Charles Burnett, and Emmanuel Poulle. Raymond de Marseille: Opera omnia, vol. 1, Traité de l’astrolabe, Liber cursuum planetarum. Paris, 2009. Baker, Peter S., and Michael Lapidge. Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion. Oxford, 1995. Blake, Martin. Aelfric’s De temporibus anni. Cambridge, 2009. Borst, Arno. Der karolingische Reichskalender und seine Überlieferung bis ins 12. Jahrhundert. 3 vols. Hanover, 2001. Borst, Arno. Schriften zur Komputistik im Frankenreich von 721 bis 818. 3 vols. Hanover, 2006. Brinkhus, Gerd, David Juste, and Helga Lengenfelder. Iatromathematisches Kalenderbuch / Die Kunst der Astronomie und Geomantie: Farbmikrofiche-Edition der Handschrift Tübingen, Universitätsbibliothek, Md 2. Munich, 2005. de Solan, Olivier. La réforme du calendrier aux conciles de Constance et de Bâle. Paris, 2016. Eisner, Sigmund. The Kalendarium of Nicholas of Lynn. Athens, GA, 1980. Juste, David. Les Alchandreana primitifs: étude sur les plus anciens traités astrologiques latins d’origine arabe (Xe siècle). Leiden, 2007. Keil, Gundolf. Vom Einfluss der Gestirne auf die Gesundheit und den Charakter des Menschen. 2 vols. Luzern, 1981–1983. Lohr, Alfred. Der Computus Gerlandi: Edition, Übersetzung und Erläuterungen. Stuttgart, 2013. Lohr, Alfred. Opera de computo saeculi duodecimi (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 272). Turnhout, 2015. Mooney, Linne R. The Kalendarium of John Somer. Athens, GA, 1998. Müller, Markus. Beherrschte Zeit: Lebensorientierung und Zukunftsgestaltung durch Kalenderprognostik zwischen Antike und Neuzeit. Kassel, 2009. Nothaft, C. Philipp E. Medieval Latin Christian Texts on the Jewish Calendar: A Study with Five Editions and Translations. Leiden, 2014. Nothaft, C. Philipp E. Walcher of Malvern: “De lunationibus” and “De Dracone”; Study, Edition, Translation, and Commentary. Turnhout, 2017. Pedersen, Fritz S. Petri Philomenae de Dacia et Petri de S. Audomaro Opera quadrivialia, vol. 1, Opera Petri Philomenae. Copenhagen, 1983. Pedersen, Fritz S. The Toledan Tables: A Review of the Manuscripts and the Textual Versions with an Edition. 4 vols. Copenhagen, 2002. Pingree, David. Preceptum Canonis Ptolomei. Louvain-la-Neuve, 1997. Poulle, Emmanuel. Les Tables Alphonsines avec les canons de Jean de Saxe. Paris, 1984. Wallis, Faith. Bede: The Reckoning of Time. Translated Texts for Historians, 29. Liverpool, 1999. Wallis, Faith. The Calendar and the Cloister: Oxford, St John’s College MS17. 2007. McGill University Library. Digital Collections Program. http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/ms-17 (17 March 2020). Warntjes, Immo. The Munich Computus: Text and Translation; Irish Computistics between Isidore of Seville and the Venerable Bede and its Reception in Carolingian Times. Stuttgart, 2010.

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Secondary Literature Brévart, Francis. B. “Chronology and Cosmology: A German Volkskalender of the Fifteenth Century.” Princeton University Library Chronicle 57 (1995–1996): 225–265. Chabás, José, and Bernard R. Goldstein. A Survey of European Astronomical Tables in the Late Middle Ages. Leiden, 2012. Germann, Nadja. De temporum ratione: Quadrivium und Gotteserkenntnis am Beispiel Abbos von Fleury und Hermanns von Reichenau. Leiden, 2006. Gumbert, Johan Peter. Bat Books: A Catalogue of Folded Manuscripts Containing Almanacs or Other Texts. Turnhout, 2016. Juste, David. “Neither Observation nor Astronomical Tables: An Alternative Way of Computing the Planetary Longitudes in the Early Western Middle Ages.” Studies in the History of the Exact Sciences in Honour of David Pingree. Eds. Charles Burnett et al. Leiden, 2004. 181–222.

Bee Yun

Culture of Prognosis in the Medieval Western Christian Tradition of the Mirror-of-Princes The Mirror-of-Princes designates a pre- and Early Modern genre of literature, elaborated with a pedagogic intention for kings, princes or other categories of rulers, either by a real person or a (fictive) government official representing a particular social group (Anton 2006, 3–4). A discussion on the culture of prognosis and its basic ideas and inspirations requires further conceptual elaboration. The political and ethical literature, like the tracts discussing specific daily political issues and agendas, the commentaries on the classical political and ethical texts, the fables and other fictions taking issue with the ethical problems of the rulers or other political questions, and the pedagogical parts of the medieval encyclopedias must be excluded from our discussion. Otherwise, we would have to expand our scope of discussion to encompass the entire political and ethical literature in the Middle Ages and it would swiftly become unwieldy. In turn, the pursuit of conceptual parsimony must not be exaggerated. In the medieval tradition, the advice for rulers regarding the ethical principles of government and shaping and managing the institutions assumed a variety of forms and can be found in a variety of places, as in the preface to each book of the Chronia sive Historia de duabus civitatibus by Otto of Freising (d. 1158) (Otto of Freising, Chronica, ed. Lammers). In the ethical pedagogy of the Italian Renaissance, the misery of princes was a popular literary motive for illuminating the difficulties of reasonable decisions and actions in a highly contingent world as well as the meaninglessness of all human endeavor to confront and overcome the extreme uncertainty of life. Such discussions, which frequently end up as a sermon on abstinence from worldly desires and a call for the cultivation of the virtues, are difficult to locate within a corpus of literature dealing with future prognosis (Poggio Bracciolini, De varietate Fortunae, ed. Merisalo; De infelicitate principum, ed. Canfora). A problem arises when an author discusses the issue related to future prognosis in a work but omits that same topic in his or her own Mirror-of-Princes. Especially since the thirteenth century, the Mirror-of-Princes developed into a popular literary genre with increasing formalization and standardization in terms of both its form and contents. It is thus unsurprising that not all relevant topics and questions were discussed in the Mirror-of-Princes, with certain themes that appear highly relevant in the context of modern discussions on politics left underdeveloped or even completely omitted. In view of these and other complexities, it is reasonable to make a certain compromise in discussing the tradition of future prognosis in the medieval Mirror-of-Princes. The following discussion is thus confined to the representative works of the genre.

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No less than in other ages did people in the Middle Ages endeavor to deliberate on possible options under given conditions to decide on a realistic strategy of action while reducing the uncertainty involved in every human activity. Understanding the future signified evaluating a given situation, conjecturing its possible course of development and reflecting on the plausibility and effect of each possible course of action. In the context of the Middle Ages, attaining such knowledge signified understanding the divine will. The world is full of meanings given by God, but humans, with their eyes darkened by sin, cannot see these fully. Otto of Freising wrote, in his Chronica, that “God did not leave the world unattended, as some claim,” and “created what had not previously existed and leads with providence what he created and preserves with utmost graciousness what he leads” (Otto of Freising, Chronica VII, Prologue). Therefore, the medieval Mirror-of-Princes reveals an intense interest in the Bible and the meanings of the words, deeds and events recorded there, which were regarded as keys to the immanent meaning of the world. Sedulius Scottus, an Irish intellectual whose influences can be documentarily attested after the 940s, advised in his Liber de rectoribus Christianis, the thorough study of the holy dictions (sacra eloquia) and God’s wisdom, faithful to the text (Sedulius Scotus, Liber de rectoribus, ed. Dyson, 195). Also, an interest in non-biblical prophecies is apparent; for instance, in Speculum regum by Godfrey of Viterbo (d. 1192/1202), who served at the court of the emperor Henry VI, the Sibylline books (scripta Sibilla) are referred to as prophesizing Henry’s inheritance of the empire (Godfrey of Viterbo, Speculum regum, ed. Waitz, 39). An intensive engagement with the Biblical prophecies and oracles was recommended for other grounds in the context of medieval political discourses. Besides serving prognostication regarding the short- and mid-term future, they were also employed to illuminate and interpret current events, signifying that the prophecies and oracles could be instrumentalized to justify or criticize a specific position and action in actual political polemics. This reason for employing the prophecies and oracles stands out in the above mentioned citation of the Sibylline oracle as a transcendental confirmation of Heinrich’s imperial power by Godfrey of Viterbo. Being anchored in a prophecy and oracle, an event and its process are presented as fixed in a divine scenario and thus unchallengeable. By the same token, prophecies and oracles could be utilized to criticize and refute a certain position or adversary as uninformed, misguided and short-sighted. Otto of Freising justifies his position by citing the chiliastic Biblical prophecies: that a decline of the empire would usher in horrors and tragedies under the rule of the Antichrist, and that it thus lies in the interest of all Christians and the human race to stand by the empire. This prognosis contains a warning to the adversaries of the empire (Otto of Freising, Chronica VII). A complete knowledge of the developments of the future was regarded as inaccessible to the average human being. Human beings cannot grasp God’s hidden deliberation and decisions fully, and the world appears full of changes, inconstant and disorderly to them, as Otto of Freising explicates (Otto of Freising, Chronica I, Prolouge; II, Prologue). The authors of the Mirror-of-Princes thus recommend adherence



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Fig. 27: Liber ad honorem Augusti by Peter of Eboli (Burgerbibliothek Bern, Cod. 120.II, f. 146r; date: 1197). Photo credits: Codices Electronici AG (www.e-codices.org).

to the religious and moral prescriptions as the best method for overcoming the chaos of the world. A vision of the life of a Stoic sage, who tolerates the changes in fate with spirit and equanimity, comes to the fore in this context. Consequently, the religious and moral virtues were identified as the practical art of political leadership and government. Gilbert of Tournai (d. 1284) claims, in his De eruditione regum et principum (1259), that a monarch should search in the Bible for the necessary wisdom regarding all issues related to the government, ranging from administration to warfare (Gilbert of Tournai, De eruditione regum, ed. Poorter, 20–21). Aegidius Romanus (d. 1316) admonishes, in his De regimine principum Libri III, which is undoubtedly the most successful case among all of the medieval Mirror-of-Princes, that those who wish to preserve their rule as long as possible and bequeath it to their heirs should create a natural government (regimen naturale) and lead it faithfully to reason (ratio) and law (lex) (Aegidus Romanus, De regimine principum, ed. 1556, I, Prologue). Engelbert of Admont argues, in the same vein, in his De regimine principum, that luck and happiness can be given only by God and that the monarchs and consuls must care for religion and its teachings (Engelbert of Admont, De regimine principum, ed. Huffnagl, 100). A visual expression of this thought is a miniature in the Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis by Peter of Eboli, where the emperor Henry VI is depicted surrounded by the personifications of the four cardinal virtues, while his enemy Tancred is crushed under the wheel of fortune, an ancient goddess of luck and accident (Peter of Eboli, Liber ad honorem Augusti, trans. Hood, 355; see Fig. 27).

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The contrast between the fates of the two adversaries represent the opposite results deriving respectively from the pursuit of true virtue and of indulgence in lust for power and vainglory. The idea that the cultivation of virtue is also key to earthly success is eloquently embodied in this picture. The prophecies and oracles in the Bible and the hagiographies were also explicated in terms of exempla, which were exemplary demonstration of the divine principles. They served as a hermeneutic scheme for interpreting the events of the present and their future development as well as a reference for determining a strategy of action to follow. The prophecies concerning the coming tyranny by the Antichrist were believed to reveal where and how the tyranny of the earthly state would arise, how it would develop, and how the danger may be avoided. The Middle Ages did not lack an interest in other methods and conceptual tools for making sense of current events and prognosticating their future course of development. The medieval Mirror-of-Princes reflects such a concern. Particularly of interest here is the popularity of astrology, heralded by the introduction of the Arabic sciences into Christianity in the twelfth century. John of Salisbury (d. 1180) remarked, in his encyclopedic Mirror-of-Prince, Policraticus sive de nugis curialium et vestigiis philosophorum (1159), that celestial phenomena reflect the divine will and plan and, as such, deserve intensive research. He claimed that what is visible in heaven is frequently a sign of future events, adding that birds, other animals and other things might play a similar role in designating what will happen in the future (John of Salisbury, Policraticus II, 19). Furthermore, according to John of Salisbury, the prophecies and sermons of the sages feature among these signs, through which God indicates what he intends to realize (John of Salisbury, Policraticus II, 13). Needless to say, the criticism or skepticism regarding astrology in the tradition of the Patristics was seriously considered. It is thus unsurprising that the astrological interest had to be formulated and defended with caution. John of Salisbury thus distinguishes between the correct use and abuse of the art of reading the heavens. He refutes every ascription of a special intention to the planets or constellations and subsequent determinism, contending that it is misleading to claim that the character and fate of a person are determined at the moment of birth by the constellation. The Secretum secretorum, a pseudo-Aristotelian Mirror-of-Princes of Arabic origin which enjoyed high popularity since the twelfth century, counts astrological ­knowledge among royal knowledge (↗ Forster, Pseudo-Aristotelian Sirr al-asrār/ Secretum Secretorum). The stars determine the character of a person absolutely and unchangeably. Thus, astrological knowledge is an indispensable tool for selecting ministers and other staffs and helpers. A fresco from the mid-fourteenth century on the Eastern Wall of the Great Chamber of the Longthorpe Tower in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England, depicts an episode of an Indian prince from Secretum secretorum, in which the Pseudo-Aristotle explicates the decisive effect of the stars on one’s mental constitution and fate (Fig. 28). The mural reflects the attention paid to astrology in political discourse at that time (Yun 2015).



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Fig. 28: An illustration from a story about an Indian prince from Secretum secretorum (Eastern Wall in the Great Chamber of Longthorpe Tower, Peter­ borough, Cambridgeshire; date: saec. XIV). Photo credits: Bee Yun.

The influence of astrological ideas in the medieval political discourses are also apparent from the continuation by Ptolemy of Lucca (d. 1327) of De regimine principum by Thomas Aquinas (d. 1275). Ptolemy ascribes different forms of government to the different characters of the people, for which the influences of the stars are accountable. The Romans stand, for instance, under the influences of Mars, are necessarily independent and envious in character, and consequently do not readily obey others’ will. Therefore, republican collective rule is more apt for them than monarchy (Ptolemy of Lucca, De regimine principum, ed. Busa, II, 8). In Policraticus, John of Salisbury stresses dream interpretation as a valuable prognostic tool. Even if not all, some kinds of dreams are signs of future occurrences and contain a warning. There is a kind of dream called a vision (visio), in which the divine will and plan are disclosed, surrounded by light. An oracle dream (oraculum) is a form through which the divine discloses itself via a second person whom God selects due to his/her nobility either in terms of birth, spirit or other characteristics (John of Salisbury, Policraticus II, 15). It is one of the most die-hard myths in the Western historiographical tradition, especially in the studies of the Italian Renaissance, to contend that a ‘rationalist turn’ in the perspective regarding the contingencies of the world and the concomitant uncertainties of life occurred around the fourteenth century in the Italian cities. According to this thesis, a new mentality arose around this time, which analyzes the inner dynamics of an event, proceeding rationally and attempting actively to control their future development by evaluating each potential course of action pragmatically. This view is hard to sustain as far as the political discourse of this time is concerned. The political thought of the time, especially the Mirror-of-Princes literature, was characterized by the consciousness of radical contingency pervading the world. A fundamental limitation is imposed on the ability of humans to intervene in the process of the world rationally. The stress placed on the contingencies of the world in the contemporary political literature was partly linked to the humanist rhetoric that emerged as a significant intellectual movement at that time. Since Petrarch, the ephemerality of human existence has been a central literary topic in the humanist literature. Consequently, the humanist concept of the ideal life approached increasingly the Stoic sage, which influenced the image of the ideal ruler in humanist writings on politics and government. Bartolomeo Sacchi (d. 1481), alias Il Platina, wrote in 1470, in his

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De principe, a humanist Mirror-of-Princes dedicated to Federico Gonzaga and Luigi Gonzaga, that the cultivation of virtue and wisdom is the sole defense against the vicissitudes of life and alternation between good and bad fortune. According to Bartolomeo, true prudence must be distinguished from incorrect, superstitious arts, which promise to reveal the future. A fortune-teller (ariolus), diviner (haruspex), soothsayer (augur), geomantist (geomanticus), pyromantist (pyromanticus), necromantist (necromanticus), magician (magus) and dream interpreter can never be trusted. Instead, Bartolomeo advises, one should study history and learn from the deeds of great people (Bartolomeo Sacchi, De principe, ed. Ferraù, 111). There are attempts in the Mirror-of-Princes of this time to arrive at a plausible solution to political questions and problems by concentrating on the causality that is empirically observable in human actions and reducing the uncertainty associated with policy decision-making. Such a case is the typology of government that Bartolus of Saxoferrato (d. 1351) developed in his De regimine civitatis, a Mirror-of-Princes also intended for the political leaders of the city regiments which were prospering in Italy of his time. According to him, a political leader must first consider the size of the city in order to specify an appropriate form of government. For him, finding a form of government that corresponds to the size of the city is the best way to preserve its stability against all odds. He argues that a small city needs rule by a multitude, a mid-sized city aristocracy and a large city monarchy (Bartolus of Saxoferrato, De regimine civitatis, ed. Quaglioni). Niccolò Machiavelli (d. 1527) placed the question of how to overcome the radical contingencies of human life at the center of his deliberation in Il principe. Deriving from the idea and metaphor of popular pragmatic discourse that existed all over Europe, Machiavelli elaborated a theory of politics which came to be called Machiavellian (Yun 2016). Human affairs are characterized by radical contingencies, resisting the human attempt at rational intervention and control. To overcome the uncertainties associated with political action, Machiavelli proposes a special art to be mastered by all political leaders which allows a radical departure from the existing religious and moral prescriptions. Key to understanding human reasoning and conceptualizing politics is self-interest, based on which insight one can expect to produce a plausible prognosis, so goes Machiavelli’s thought. The leading metaphor of his thought is a fight with Fortune. Instead of stressing the distance from her, as in the illustration from Liber ad honorem Augusti, Machiavelli recommends active engagement with Fortune (Machiavelli, Il principe Chapter 25). Machiavelli contends manliness, bold character and courage as the best strategy, but acknowledges the extreme difficulty, even impossibility, of winning the game against whimsical, capricious Fortune. The only way to retain Fortune’s favor is to adapt to her changing mood. This signifies flexibility in adopting different tactics and strategies according to changing circumstances, which almost no human mind can afford, according to Machiavelli.



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Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Aegidius Romanus. De regimine principum libri III. Rome, 1556 [repr. Frankfurt am Main, 1968]. Bartolus of Saxoferrato. ‘De regimine civitatis.’ Politica e diritto nel trecento italiano. Il “De tyranno” di Bartolo da Sassoferrato (1314–1357). Con l’edizione critica dei trattati “De Guelphis et Gebellinis”, “De regimine civitatis”, e “De tyranno”. Ed. Diego Quaglioni. Florence, 1983. Bartolomeo Sacchi. De principe. Ed. Giacomo Ferraù. Palermo, 1979. Engelbert of Admont. De regimine principum tractatus VII. Ed. Johannes Georg Gottlieb Huffnagl. Regensburg, 1725. Gilbert of Tournai. De eruditione regum et principum (Les Philosophes Belges. Textes et Études 9). Ed. Alphonse de Poorter. Louvain. 1914. Godfrey of Viterbo. Speculum regum. Ed. Georg Waitz (MGH Scriptores 22). Hanover, 1872. 21–93. John of Salisbury. Policraticus sive de nugis curialium et vestigiis philosophorum. London, 1909. Niccolò Machiavelli. ‘Il principe.’ Tutte le opere storiche, politiche e letterarie. Ed. Alessandro Capata. Rome, 1998. 6–55. Otto of Freising. Chronica sive Historia de duabus civitatibus. Ed. Walther Lammers. Trans. (into German) Adolf Schmitt. Darmstadt, 1960. Peter of Eboli (Pietro da Eboli). Book in Honor of Augustus (Liber ad honorem Augusti). Trans. Gwenyth Hood. Tempe, AZ, 2012. Poggio Bracciolini. De varietate Fortunae. Ed. Outi Merisalo. Helsinki, 1993. Poggio Bracciolini. De infelicitate principum (Edizione nazionale dei testi umanistici 2). Ed. Davide Canfora. Rome, 1998. Ptolemy of Lucca. ‘De regimine principum ad regem Cyprii.’ S. Thomae Aquinatis Opera Omnia. Vol 7. Ed. Roberto Busa. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1980. 550–570. Pseudo-Aristoteles. Secretum secretorum. Ed. and trans. Robert Steele. London, 1898. Sedulius Scottus. Liber de rectoribus Christianis. Ed. and trans. Robert W. Dyson. Woodbridge, 2010. Thomas Aquinas. ‘De regimine principum ad regem Cyprii.’ S. Thomae Aquinatis Opera Omnia. Vol. 3. Ed. Roberto Busa. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1980. 595–601.

Secondary Literature Anton, Hans Hubert (ed.). “Einleitung.” Fürstenspiegel des frühen und hohen Mittelalters. Darmstadt, 2006. 3–37. Yun, Bee. “The Representation of an Indian Prince in the Great Chamber of Longthorpe Tower and the Intercultural Transfer of Political Ideas in the Middle Ages.” Source – Notes in the History of Art 34.3 (2015): 1–6. Yun, Bee. “The Fox atop Fortune’s Wheel: Machiavelli and Medieval Realist Discourse.” Viator 47.2 (2016): 305–330.

Daniel Canaris

Debating Astrology in the Renaissance: Pierre d’Ailly (1351–1420), Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) In the Renaissance, it was generally assumed that celestial bodies exerted an influence on the earth and that the nature of this influence could be determined and interpreted by the professional astrologer. The former proposition was enshrined in the works of Aristotle, which enjoyed great prestige and authority since their rediscovery and translation in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Nord 1986; Grant 1994). In his Metaphysics and works of natural philosophy (Physics, On the Heavens, Meteorology, On Generation and Corruption, On the Generation of Animals), Aristotle postulated a causal connection between celestial movements, particularly those of the Sun, and the sublunar world. The latter proposition, however, was much more contentious given a long history of theological opposition to astrology dating to patristic times. The Church Fathers overwhelmingly rejected the theoretical and practical claims made by astrologers, dismissing astrology as a remnant of pagan superstition that undermined the freedom of the will, a central tenet of Christian moral theology. The most systematic, and arguably most influential, expression of this view was the City of God by Augustine (354–430) (Augustine, De civitate dei 5.1–11). In Book 5 of this work, Augustine deals with astrology in the context of understanding the causes behind the greatness of the Roman Empire. Linking a fatalistic account to astrological determinism, he categorically rejects the notion that human actions are caused by the stars or even by God through the stars as an egregious assault on religion and human freedom. Even the weaker hypothesis that the stars serve to signify future events and not cause them is spurned on an empirical level because of the inability of astrologers to explain the different life trajectories of twins. For Augustine, any accuracy in predictions are not to be attributed to the skill of the astrologer, but the intervention of demons. Isidore of Seville (560–636) in his encyclopedic Etymologiae reiterates Augustine’s firm opposition to astrology. He distinguishes between “astronomy”, which is defined as the study of “the turning of the heavens, the rising, setting and motion of the stars, and where the constellations get their names”, and astrology, which is described as having both superstitious and natural elements. “Natural astrology” would seem to differ little from his definition of “astronomy”, insofar as it “investigates the courses of the Sun and the Moon, or the specific positions of the stars according to the seasons.” Following Augustine, however, he condemns it as superstitious when astrologers (mathematici) “practice augury by the stars, or when they associate the twelve signs of the zodiac with the specific parts of the soul or body, or https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-045



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when they attempt to predict the nativities and characters of people by the motion of the stars.” (Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae III.xxvi) Though Isidore is unambiguous in condemning astrological prognostications, his vague concession to the possibility of a legitimate “natural astrology” was exploited by later astrologers in their attempts to find patristic justification for their art. From the twelfth century onwards, the Latin translations of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos and manifold Arabic sources occasioned a resurgence of interest in astrology (Smoller 1994, 28–29). A number of scholastic authors, including Roger Bacon (1219–1292), Albertus Magnus (1200–1280) and even Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), attempted to create a circumscribed space for astrology by reconciling the apparent determinism implied by astrological doctrines and the freedom of the will. Yet only three years after Aquinas’ death, the bishop of Paris and chancellor of the Sorbonne, Étienne Tempier (d. 1279), condemned a number of astrological precepts, citing the patristic objections (Grant 1994, 50–55). In the fourteenth century, Nicole Oresme (1320–1382) wrote a series of treatises in Latin (Tractatus contra iudiciarios astronomos, De commensurabilitate vel incommensurabilitate motuum coeli, Quodlibeta, Quaestio contra divinatores horoscopis) and French (Livre de divinacions) against astrology (Smoller 1994, 32–34). While rehearsing the traditional theological arguments against astrology, he suggested that it was impossible to know heavenly movements with sufficient precision for astrological prognostication. Similar objections were voiced in the two anti-astrological treatises of Henry of Langenstein (1325–1397), the Quaestio de cometa and Tractatus contra coniunctionistas. Despite the serious theological objections to astrology, in the fifteenth century the teaching and practice of astrology was widespread and enjoyed institutional sanction. The 1405 University Statutes of Bologna and contemporary documentary evidence from Padua, Pavia, Ferrara and other parts of Europe reveal that astrology formed an integral part of the university curriculum (Rutkin 2008; Grendler 2002, 409–412). Key astrological texts such as the tenth-century Liber Introductorius of Alcabitius, the Pseudo-Ptolemaic Centiloquium with the commentary of Haly Abenrudian, the Tetrabiblos, and medical texts such as the De urina non visa (1219) of William of Marseille and the De criticis diebus of Galen (129–ca. 216) were studied in Bologna as part of courses in medicine, mathematics and the arts (Moulinier-Brogi 2008). Outside the university, astrologers found employment as physicians and advisors in many Renaissance courts, playing key roles in decision making (Azzolini 2013). But the ambiguous theological status of astrology still loomed large. Faced with uncertainty, thinkers often wavered in their support for astrology. This chapter will trace the intellectual itinerary of three thinkers who exhibited significant development in their views on astrology: Pierre d’Ailly (1351–1420), Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494). The sheer number of writings in the fifteenth century dealing with astrology make a comprehensive overview of astrological texts in this period impossible. These thinkers were chosen because of the ease with which an intellectual narrative can be constructed: Ficino and Pico were close friends and

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influenced by each other and Pico’s monumental Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem (1496), which can be considered the most sweeping and comprehensive attack on astrology published in the fifteenth century, features a sustained critique of d’Ailly astrological writings and an anxiety to reinterpret Ficino’s writings as anti-astrological.

Pierre d’Ailly Pierre d’Ailly’s reputation rests primarily with his pivotal role at the Council of Constance (1414–1418), which ended the Great Schism plaguing the church since the election of Clement VII as rival pope to Urban VI in 1378. His theological writings on conciliar ecclesiology were enormously influential in the Church’s understanding of the relationship between Petrine authority and the broader church (Pascoe 2005; Oakley 1964). Famously, Christopher Columbus was guided in the discovery of the Americas by d’Ailly’s Ymago mundi (1410), a compendium of medieval geographic and cosmographic knowledge, as well as d’Ailly’s astrological writings, especially the De legibus et sectis and the Tractatus de concordia astronomice veritatis et narrationis hystorice (Watts 1985). Columbus read the incunabular edition of d’Ailly writings published in Louvain by John of Westphalia in 1483 (D’Ailly and Gerson 1483). Columbus’s annotations of d’Ailly’s Imago mundi have been made object of extensive study. A fascimile and French translation of the edition used by Christopher Columbus was produced by Edmond J.P. Buron (D’Ailly 1930). A fascimile of Columbus’s own copy has been published by the Massachusetts Historical Society (D’Ailly 1927). As Smoller has persuasively shown, d’Ailly’s interest in astrology was a late development that emerged in 1410 as he sought new means to predict the coming of the Antichrist. His earliest writings reflected the profound ambivalence about astrology in the final decades of the fourteenth century. In the Principium in cursum Bibliae (1375), he accepts the assumption of cosmological influences while rejecting the divinatory elements of astrology in line with Biblical and patristic teachings. D’Ailly includes among those who had disgraced the field of mathematics the interpreters of natal horoscopes (Gerson 1706, 1:613–14). Refusing to consider their views, he turns his attention to the “true mathematicians”, among whom are those who “examine scientifically the influences of the heavens in astronomy”. Though Albumasar’s study of influences is included in this litany, he is also castigated alongside Avicenna for having dared to explain “the doctrine, life, works and miracles of Christ from natural causes and celestial influences” (Cited in Smoller 1994, 160). While conceding that the nativity was announced to the magi by a “wondrous star”, he follows Augustine in claiming that after Christ’s birth such divination from heaven was no longer permitted. Mathematics lacks the precision to reveal divine secrets and toils in vain to reveal that which is hidden from us.



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A modern edition of the Principium in cursum Bibliae can be found in Dupin’s edition of Gerson’s Opera omnia (1706, 1:610–617). It was translated into French by Palémon Glorieux (1972). The text can also be found in the incunabular Quaestiones super libros Sententiarum cum quibusdam in fine adjunctis printed in Strasbourg (d’Ailly 1490) and Questiones Magistri Petri de Aylliaco cardinalis cameracensis super primum, tertium et quartum libros sententiarum printed in Paris (D’Ailly 1505a). In other works around this period, d’Ailly’s acceptance of the presuppositions about celestial influences on the sublunar world is coupled with a similar reluctance to consider their ramifications for religion and predicting human behaviour. In his commentary on Sacrobosco’s Sphera, which can be read in an incunabular edition published in Paris (Sacrobosco 1498), d’Ailly asserts that the sun, though by nature fortunate, can have evil effects when in conjunction with certain planets in certain signs. Zodiac signs and ascendants at the time of birth can have influences on a child’s appearance (Sacrobosco 1498, fol. [d5r]; fol. g2v). But again d’Ailly warns against relating astronomical phenomenon to matters of faith. He argues that the eclipse that occurred at the time of Christ’s passion should be regard as a miraculous event that cannot be explained with reference to natural astronomy (Sacrobosco 1498, fol. n1r). Similarly, in the De anima (1377–1381), d’Ailly acknowledges the role of the heavens in inclining individuals to a certain habitus but restricts the decision to perform actions to the will. A modern edition of the De anima can be found in Die philosophische Psychologie des Peter von Ailly by Olaf Pluta (1987). Among the ten editions of the De anima between 1490–1520 mentioned by Pluta (1987, vi; xxii-xxix), this text can be read in the incunabular anthology Tractatus et sermones published in Strasbourg by Jordanus de Quedlinburg (1490) and in the edition published by Jean Petit (1505b). In the second question of his commentary on Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, written between 1371 and 1381, he explicitly denies that celestial influences can determine the human will while accepting Aquinas’s concession that the heavens can influence the human body upon which the intellect relies for its ordinary functioning. Citing the Summa contra gentiles (Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles 3.2:17–18 [III.84]), d’Ailly concludes that astrologers are able to make judgements by considering celestial influences on bodily states as a “remote cause” (causa remota) influencing choices. Hence it is possible to derive from the stars a limited knowledge of future events even if astrological practice is considered a distraction from salvation. The manuscript of Tractatus utilis super Boecii de consolatione philosophie can be found in Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Lat. 3122. Other than Chappuis’s critical edition of the first question (1993), this work has never been printed. Similar views are discussed in his works written in the 1380s, which, as Smoller has concluded (1994, 47–48), generally consider astrology as inferior to prophecy. In the De falsis prophetis II, written between 1378 and 1388, d’Ailly goes further than in other works by claiming that the soul can receive an “impression” (impressio) from the celestial motions of the stars. Hence if a soul is born under the influence of Mercury, the soul will be formed with a strong memory and be directed by Mercury’s power. Such a

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view went beyond the concession granted by Aquinas, who denied that incoroporeal substances such as a soul could be directly impressed by a heavenly body and had been condemned in 1277 and would be condemned again by the University of Paris in 1398 (Denifle and Chatelain 1889–1897, 4:35). A modern edition of De falsis prophetis II can be found in Dupin’s edition of Gerson’s Opera omnia (Gerson, 1:546–547). The manuscript of Dupin’s edition can be found in Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Latin. 3122. Despite d’Ailly’s early reservations about applying astrology to the study of religion, from 1410 onwards his astrological writings undergo a significant transformation. He wrote numerous treatises defending the theological legitimacy of astrology, such as De legibus et sectis contra supserstitiosos astronomos (1410), Apologetica defensio astronomice veritatis (1414), and De concordantia astronomie cum hystorica narratione (1414). These later astrological works can be found in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 5266 and MS 5138. The incunabular published in Louvain by John of Westphalia (1483) contains a number of these late astrological writings. D’Ailly’s interest in astrology was intimately connected to his anxiety about the increasing eschatological speculation surrounding the seemingly interminable schism. D’Ailly saw in the theory of the great conjunctions the possibility to predict the coming of the Antichrist. The notion that the conjunctions of the superior planets Saturn and Jupiter could signal significant religious and political change was articulated by Albumasar in the De magnis coniunctionibus and enthusiastically taken up by Roger Bacon in his Opus maius, which was one of the major sources for d’Ailly’s astrological knowledge. While d’Ailly’s astrological writings were largely derivative of these medieval sources, his synthesis of medieval astrology proved especially influential for the fifteenth century. A modern critical edition of the De magnis coniunctionibus with the original Arabic text has been prepared by Yamamoto and Burnett (Abū Ma‘šar 2000). Bacon’s Opus maius has been published by the Clarendon Press (1897).

Marsilio Ficino Ficino was one of the most important and influential thinkers of Renaissance Florence. Under the patronage of the powerful Medici family, he played a key role in the revival of ancient philosophy by systematically translating and commenting on the entire Platonic corpus, Plotinus’ Enneads, Iamblichus’s De mysteriis and the Hermetic corpus amongst many other endeavours. His prolific writings reveal a sustained interest in astrology, which was discussed both critically and favourably in many of the Neoplatonic and Hermetic texts that he translated. Despite the prominence and institutional sanction afforded to astrology at the time, the continual vacillations in Ficino’s astrological interests reveal that even those who had a certain disposition towards astrology struggled with the vexed age-old question of how to reconcile astrology with free will. Ficino’s first extended writing on astrology was in fact a denunciation enti-



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tled Disputatio contra iudicium astrologorum (Disputation against the judgement of the astrologers), which is stored at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale of Florence MS Magl. XX 58, cart. S. XV. Dated between 1477 and 1478, this unfinished manuscript was unpublished before the edition of Hans Baron and Paul Oskar Kristeller (Ficino 1937, 2:11–76) but parts of it were reused in his commentary on Plotinus’s Enneads. It has been translated into Italian by Ornella Pompeo Faracovi (Ficino 1999, 49–174). Ficino’s purpose in composing this condemnation of astrology is to protect the delicate synthesis between Divine Providence and freedom of the will. While Ficino in this treatise does not reject the possibility of benefic and malefic influences from the stars over bodily dispositions through the humours, he follows Aquinas in denying the power of such celestial influences to determine the will. Whatever influence celestial bodies have over the body, the soul is able to temper or reject any external influence. For Ficino, any such suggestion that celestial influences can be responsible for or the causes of decisions undermines human freedom and reduces judgements to instinct. Ficino’s attack goes to the heart of astrological science, arguing that astrology is based on arbitrary and superstitious notions that are often contradictory and nonsensical. The contingency of manifold proximate causes in the highly changeable sublunar realm limits the usefulness of astrology even in the field of medicine. But he does concede that while celestial phenomena cannot be regarded as sublunar events, they may play the role of signifier insofar as the celestial spheres are moved by angelic minds who with divine intelligence are able to foresee imminent events resulting from human actions. Exemplary of this is the star that the Magi perceived as testimony of Christ’s divinity. What is peculiar is that, just as Ficino rails against astrological prognostication in the Disputatio, his coeval epistolary correspondence is replete with astrological references that accept the validity of prognostications based on celestial influences (Clydesdale 2011). For instance in a 1476 letter to the Archbishop of Florence, Ficino speculates that the bishop’s decision to refuse Ficino a tax exemption was the result of a square aspect between Saturn and the Moon (Ficino 1978, 16). Some letters of Ficino that are of astrological interest have been collected and translated by Ornella Pompeo Faracovi (Ficino 1999, 219–253). Ficino also made recourse to astrological conjunctions in the Consiglio contro la pestilenza (“Advice for combatting the plague”) written in 1479 and published in 1481 in Florence. Here he suggested that the malign conjunction of Mars and Saturn “in the human signs” was responsible for the diffusion of the plague (Ficino 1481, fol. 2). In the sermon De stella magorum (“On the star of the Magi”, 1482) Ficino expands on his reference to the Magi in the Disputatio by explicitly presenting the Magi as astrologers who were brought to Christ by following astrological signs (Buhler 1990). He speculates on what were the particular zodiacal signs that impressed the belief of Christ’s divinity on the Magi, even though the Zodiac was dismissed as fanciful in the Disputatio. The Latin text of the De stella magorum was printed in the two-volume Opera omnia published in Basel in 1576 (Ficino 1576, 1:489–491). It has been translated

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into Italian by Faracovi (Ficino 1999a, 175–182) and into English by the London Language Department of the School of Economic Science (Ficino 1999b, 60–65). His most important astrological work was the third book of the De vita (Three Books on Life, 1489): the De vita coelitus comparanda (“On Obtaining Life form the Heavens”). This work constitutes Ficino’s most extended engagement with astro-medicine. It was originally separate from the first two books, De vita sana and De vita longa. In one manuscript dated 1490 and held in the Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana Plut. 82, 11 in Florence, the first six chapters of De vita coelitus comparanda are presented as a commentary on Plotinus’ Enneads 4.3.11. According to the introduction to Kaske and Clark’s critical edition of the text (Ficino 1998, 8), the editio princeps published in Florence in 1489 is the most important textual witness of De vita. The goal of the Three Books on Life was to provide medical advice for intellectuals, who in Ficino’s mind are particularly susceptible to phlegm (pituita) and black bile (ater bilis) – the cause of melancholy and anxiety (Ficino 1998, 1.III). Ficino relates that melancholy can be caused by being born under the influence of Mercury or Saturn due to their cold and dry nature. Though the coupling of Mercury and Saturn as causes of melancholy was rather unusual in astrological literature, which saw Mercury as having a changeable nature, the link between Saturn and melancholy was well-established. While in the first two books, De vita sana and De vita longa, astrology plays a subsidiary role, De vita coelitus comparanda shifts the focus from black bile to celestial causes in achieving bodily health. The book begins with justification of considering celestial causes through the construction of an elaborate cosmology of sympathetic attraction. The world-soul (anima mundi) is positioned as a medium between motionless intellect and a powerless body. This medium, which Ficino identifies as the primum mobile, engenders motion in the universe and is at the heart of Ficino’s account of how intellectuals can draw upon cosmic forces for healthy living. As this soul is intimately connected with everything in the universe, it is also the fundamental principle of attraction and can, as it were, be “allured” (allici) by material forms through the sympathies between material forms and their corresponding “seminal reasons” (rationes seminales) in the world-soul. In the heavens, the world-soul forged stars, figures and parts of figures, and impressed on all these certain properties. As these celestial bodies participate in the process in which the world-soul fashions the species and properties of sublunar things, all species and properties of sublunar things have correspondences in these celestial bodies from which they draw influence both through rays of particular bodies and the omnipresence of the world-soul. On the basis of sympathetic attraction, Ficino asserts that individuals are able to draw to themselves favourable celestial influences and ward off the malign through the timely performance of actions under the influence of a particular heavenly body, the use of gems, stones, medicines and talismans with a sympathetic relationship to heavenly bodies, and even musical incantations. This explicit espousal of astrology would seem to contradict the earlier Disputatio, which, while not rejecting influences as such, cast doubt on the traditional



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frameworks used by astrologers to calculate the effect of these influences. Although an incongruence cannot be readily resolved, a certain continuity between the two works can be identified in their common preoccupation with the question of free will. As Ficino remarks in anticipation of theological objections from an unnamed “severe ecclesiastical prelate”, he rejects any astrological principle that would undermine the freedom of the will. Notably, while horoscopy features in Ficino’s account of mental dispositions and physical states, Ficino is generally uninterested in astrological prognostication and sidesteps the controversy of whether predictions are determined. Most importantly, Ficino argues that his principles of astro-magic do not bind the human will to fatal necessity, but liberate it in that they provide the tools for the individual to leverage celestial influences for personal benefit.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Like his older contemporary Ficino, Pico della Mirandola was also a key proponent in the recovery of ancient learning, but his precocious output was tragically cut short by his premature death at the age of thirty one in 1494. One of Pico’s principal projects was the reconciliation of the ancient philosophical traditions, which he hoped to achieve by debating nine hundred theses in a council to take place in Rome in 1486. Although the council never took place because of papal inquisition, the discourse that Pico planned to deliver was posthumously edited by his nephew Gianfrancesco Pico (1470–1533) and published in Bologna by Benedetto Faelli in 1496. It became one of the most celebrated texts of the Italian Renaissance. Unlike Ficino, however, astrology occupies a peripheral position in Pico’s restoration of ancient wisdom. In some of Pico’s early works, astrological themes can be identified. For instance, in a poem Pico describes his natal horoscope couched in a fatalistic worldview (Rutkin 2010). The manuscript of the poem was discovered and published by Kristeller (1965, 50, n. 56). Astrological notions also enter into Pico’s commentary on the sixth stanza of his friend Girolamo Benivieni’s poem, Canzone d’amore, where Pico explains our predisposition to love certain individuals over others by alluding to the affinities between individuals that result from their astrological signs. But, given the poetic genre of the first text and Pico’s explicit attribution of the views in the second text to Platonists, it is unclear whether these views can be regarded as Pico’s. Pico’s manuscript was edited by Blasio Buonaccorsi and Hieronimo Benivieni and first published in Florence in 1519 (Benivieni 1519). A reliable modern English translation has been prepared by Sears Jayne (Pico della Mirandola 1984). In his successive works, Pico either adopts an indifferent or hostile attitude to astrology. Those of the nine hundred theses that were to be debated at the Roman council that have astrological content do not consider the possibility of making pre-

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dictions on the basis of horoscopes and primarily treat of how celestial forces can form the natural dispositions of individuals (Farmer 1998, 139). His Heptaplus (1489), a Kabbalistic interpretation of the creation narrative in Genesis, does discuss some of the influences that planets have in certain conjunctions, suggesting for instance that Jupiter is propitious and beneficent and Mars violent and malefic, whereas the sun combines the features of both planets, being “good in its radiation, bad in conjunction.” (Pico della Mirandola 1965, 101) Yet while Pico stresses the harmonious kinship between the sublunar and celestial worlds, he is scornfully dismissive of astrological prognostication and cautions us against seeking form the heavens “goods of body and fortune”. After the death of Lorenzo de Medici in 1492, Pico embarked on a systematic refutation of astrology, the Disputationes adversus astologiam divinatricem. The work was posthumously published in 1496 by his nephew, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, at the height of Girolamo Savonarola’s influence in Florence. A modern edition of the work with Italian translation was prepared by Eugenio Garin in two volumes (1946– 1952) and has been republished in 2004. The apparent discrepancies between Pico’s earlier ambiguous position on astrology and the uncompromising refutation in the Disputationes has led some scholars to infer that the nephew had edited the work to make it better accord with Savonarola’s anti-astrological beliefs. Indeed, Savonarola himself leant on this work in his own popular attack on astrology, the Trattato contra li astrologi, published in 1497 (modern edition published in 2000). But Pico had already been drawing to Savonarola before his death and the Aristotelian flavour of the Disputationes is out of keeping with the nephew’s scepticism. Despite the nephew’s role in editing his uncle’s writings, it is more likely that the Disputationes reflected the crystallization of the uncle’s reservations about astrology that can already be perceived in his earlier works (Rabin 2010). This massive work, stretching to twelve volumes, was the most detailed dissection of astrology published to date. Although Pico’s multi-pronged attack is impossible to summarise here due to its length, two points have particular relevance for the preceding analysis of d’Ailly and Ficino’s astrological theories. Firstly, Pico forcefully argues that medieval attempts to reconcile astrology and Christianity contradict the testimony of scripture and the Church fathers. In the first book of the Disputationes, Pico pays particular attention to the arguments of d’Ailly, a figure for whom he professed great admiration for his literary cultivation and theological expertise. According to Pico’s reconstruction of d’Ailly’s views, astrology was only condemned by the Church Fathers out of prudence insofar as certain strands of astrology undermine human responsibility for action and bind human events to fatal necessity. But Pico maintains that the Church’s condemnation of astrology was broader than free choice and fate. Augustine’s argument of the twins was not simply directed at astrological determinism, but any form of astrological prognostication. In the second book of the Disputationes Pico rejects d’Ailly’s use of the great conjunction theory to account for the great changes in history. Pico points out that all those who have tried to link astrology to



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history have engaged in grievous historical contortions or made erroneous calculations. In the third book of the Disputationes, Pico attacks the very foundations of astrology by arguing that it is logically and scientifically impossible for the heavens to have the particular effects ascribed to them by astrologers. He establishes that the heavens influence the earth only with movement, light and heat and that it is non-sensical to suggest that there are celestial influences that causes cold because all light is a source of heat. That moonlight would seem produce cold and humidity is not a direct effect of the light itself, which shares the same characteristics of all light, but accidental due to its lower intensity. For Pico, astrologers falsely associate with the sun and moon effects which derive from proximate earthly causes. Burckhardt greatly overstated the influence of Disputationes with his claim that following its release “the astrologers ceased to publish their doctrines, and those who had already printed them were more or less ashamed.” (Burckhardt 1958, 2:492) On the contrary, astrology continued to flourish unabated in the sixteenth century despite repeated ecclesiastical condemnations. Indeed, Sixtus IV introduced astrology in the Roman university, Paul III consulted with the astrologer Luca Gaurico, and Urban VIII sought the advice of Tommaso Campanella (Faracovi 2014, 96). The publication of the Disputationes occasioned an immediate and forceful hostile reaction, led by Lucio Bellanti with the Responsiones in disputationes Johannis Pici (Bellanti 1498). Bellanti’s counterattack did not simply dismiss Pico’s arguments, but propounded forcefully the need to return to Ptolemaic astrology, purified of the accretions introduced by the Arab commentators that Pico had scathingly criticised in the Disputationes. In this way, Pico’s Disputationes stimulated a philological restoration of Ptolemaic astrology that would culminate in the commentaries of Girolamo Cardano (Vescovini 2014, 136; Hasse 2016, 248–292).

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Abū Ma‘šar. Abū Ma‘šar on Historical Astrology: The Book of Religions and Dynasties (On the Great Conjunctions), 2 vols. Ed. Keiji Yamamoto, Trans. Keiji Yamamoto and Charles Burnett. Leiden, 2000. Augustine of Hippo. The City of God against the Pagans. Trans. Robert W. Dyson. Cambridge, 1998. Bacon, Roger. The “Opus maius” of Roger Bacon. 2 vols. Oxford, 1897. Bellanti, Lucio. Responsiones in disputationes Johannis Pici. Florence, 1498. Benivieni, Girolamo. Opere di Hierony. Benivieni comprese nel presente volume. Una canzona de lo amore celeste, & divino col commento de lo ill. s. conte Iohan. Pico Mirandulano distincto in libri. Florence (per li heredi di Philippo di Giunta), 1519. Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis. 4 vols. Eds. Heinrich Denifle and Emile Chatelain. Paris (Ex typis fratrum Delalain), 1889–1897.

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D’Ailly, Pierre. Tractatus utilis super Boecii de consolatione philosophie. Paris, 1377–1381: Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Lat. 3122. D’Ailly, Pierre. Quaestiones super libros Sententiarum cum quibusdam in fine adjunctis. Strasbourg, 1490. D’Ailly, Pierre. Questiones Magistri Petri de Aylliaco cardinalis cameracensis super primum, tertium et quartum libros sententiarum. Paris, 1505a. D’Ailly, Pierre. Tractatus de anima. Paris, 1505b. D’Ailly, Pierre. Imago mundi by Petrus de Aiaco with Annotations by Christopher Columbus. Boston, 1927. D’Ailly, Pierre, and Jean Gerson. Tractatus de imagine mundi et varia ejusdem auctoris et Joannis Gersonis opuscula. Louvain, 1483. Girolamo Savonarola. Contro gli astrologi. Rome, 2000. Isidore of Seville. The Etymologies. Trans. Stephen A. Barney et al. Cambridge, 2006. Jean Gerson. Opera omnia. 5 vols. Antwerp, 1706. Joannes de Sacrobosco. Uberrimum sphere mundi commentum intersertis etiam questionibus domini Petri de Aliaco. Paris, 1498. Marsilio Ficino. Consiglio contro la pestilenza. Florence, 1481. Marsilio Ficino. De vita. Florence, 1489. Marsilio Ficino. Opera omnia. 2 vols. Basel, 1576. Marsilio Ficino. Supplementum ficinianum. 2 vols. Florence, 1937. Marsilio Ficino. The Letters of Marsilio Ficino. Vol. 2. London, 1978. Marsilio Ficino. Three Books on Life. Tempe, AZ, 1998. Marsilio Ficino. Scritti sull’astrologia. Trans. Ornella Pompeo Faracovi. Milan, 1999a. Marsilio Ficino. The Letters of Marsilio Ficino. Trans. London Language Department of the School of Economic Science. Vol. 6. London, 1999b. Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. Opera. Ed. Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola. Bologna, 1496. Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. Commentary on a Canzone of Benivieni. Trans. Sears Jayne. New York, 1984. Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem. 2 vols. Turin, 2004. Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. “Heptaplus.” Trans. Douglas Carmichael. On the Dignity of Man; On Being and the One; Heptaplus. Ed. Paul J. W. Miller. IndiaNapless, IN, 1965. 63–174. Thomas Aquinas. Summa contra Gentiles, 5 vols. Trans. Anton C. Pegis et al. New York, 1955–1957.

Secondary Literature and Critical Editions Azzolini, Monica. The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan. Cambridge, MA, 2013. Black, Crofton. Pico’s Heptaplus and Biblical Hermeneutics. Leiden, 2006. Buhler, Stephen M. “Marsilio Ficino’s De stella magorum and Renaissance Views of the Magi.” Renaissance Quarterly 43.2 (1990): 348–371. Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 2 vols. Trans. Samuel George Chetwynd Middlemore. New York, 1958. Buron, Edmond J. P. (ed.). Ymago mundi de Pierre d’Ailly: texte latin et traduction française des quatre traités cosmographiques de d’Ailly et des notes marginales de Christophe Colomb. Étude sur les sources de l’auteur. 3 vols. Paris, 1930. Castelli, Patrizia. “L’oroscopo di Pico.” Pico, Poliziano e l’umanesimo di fine Quattrocento. Ed. Paolo Viti. Florence, 1994. 225–229.



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Chappuis, Marguerite (ed.). Le traité de Pierre d’Ailly sur la Consolation de Boèce, Qu. 1: Édition et étude critiques. Amsterdam, 1993. Clydesdale, Ruth. “  ‘Jupiter Tames Saturn’: Astrology in Ficino’s Epistolae.” Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and his Influence. Eds. Stephen Clucas, Peter J. Forshaw, and Valery Rees. Leiden, 2011. 117–131. Dooley, Brendan (ed.). A Companion to Astrology in the Renaissance. Leiden, 2014. Faracovi, Ornella Pompeo. “Return to Ptolemy.” A Companion to Astrology in the Renaissance. Ed. Brendan Dooley. Leiden, 2014. 87–98. Farmer, Stephen A. Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486). Tempe, AZ, 1998. Garin, Eugenio. Astrology in the Renaissance. Trans. Carolyn Jackson and June Allen. London, 1983. Garin, Eugenio. History of Italian Philosophy, 2 vols. Trans. Giorgio Pinton. Amsterdam, 2008. Glorieux, Palémon. “Deux éloges de la saint écriture par Pierre d’Ailly.” Mélanges de science religeuse 29 (1972): 113–129. Grant, Edward. Planets, Stars, and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200–1687. Cambridge, 1994. Grendler, Paul F. The Universities of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore, MD, 2002. Hasse, Dag Nikolaus. Success and Suppression: Arabic Sciences and Philosophy in the Renaissance. Cambridge, MA, 2016. Kristeller, Paul Oskar. “Pico della Mirandola and his sources.” L’opera e il pensiero di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola nella storia dell’Umanesimo, Convegno Internazionale (1963). Florence, 1965. 1:35–142. Moulinier-Brogi, Laurence. “L’uroscopie en vulgaire dans l’occident médiéval: un tour d’horizon.” Science Translated: Latin and Vernacular Translations of Scientific Treatises in Medieval Europe. Eds. Michèle Goyens, Pieter De Leemans, and An Smets. Louvain, 2008. 221–243. North, John D. “Celestial Influence: The Major Premise of Astrology.” ‘Astrologi Hallucinati’: Stars and the End of the World in Luther’s Time. Ed. Paola Zambelli. Berlin, 1986. 45–100. Oakley, Francis. The Political Thought of Pierre d’Ailly: The Voluntarist Tradition. New Haven, 1964. Pascoe, Louis B. Church and Reform: Bishops, Theologians, and Canon Lawyers in the Thought of Pierre d’Ailly (1351–1420). Leiden, 2005. Pluta, Olaf. Die philosophische Psychologie des Peter von Ailly: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philosophie des späten Mittelalters. Amsterdam, 1987. Rabin, Sheila J. “Pico and the Historiography of Renaissance Astrology.” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 36.2 (2010): 170–180. Rutkin, H. Darrel. “L’astrologia da Alberto Magno a Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.” Il rinascimento italiano e l’Europa: Le scienze. Eds. Antonio Clericuzio and Germana Ernst. Treviso, 2008. 47–58. Rutkin H. Darrel. “Mysteries of Attraction: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Astrology and Desire.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 41 (2010): 117–124. Smoller, Laura Ackerman. History, Prophecy, and the Stars: The Christian Astrology of Pierre d’Ailly, 1350–1420. Princeton, NJ, 1994. Vescovini, Graziella Federici. “The Theological Debate.” A Companion to Astrology in the Renaissance. Ed. Brendan Dooley. Leiden, 2014. 99–140. Watts, Pauline Moffitt. “Prophecy and Discovery: On the Spiritual Origins of Christopher Columbus’s ‘Enterprise of the Indies’.” The American Historical Review 90.1 (1985): 73–102.

Montse Díaz-Fajardo

Didactic Poems on Prognostication in the Islamic Middle Ages Astrology is the science of prognostication par excellence. In the Middle Ages, astrological matters were the object of many compositions written in Arabic, in the form of books (kitāb), treatises (maqāla, risāla), numerical tables (zīj) and poems (qaṣīda, manẓūma), which might be composed in rajāz (urjūza) meter and with verses ending in the letter lām (lāmiyya). The genre that an author selected for his subject could reveal a great deal about his intentions. If we consider the function of a poem describing the methodology of an art or science, we tend to assume that the rhyme and rhythm of its verses would have enhanced their recall, and so the poem had a didactic purpose. However, the aim of this kind of composition is not always this clear. From a didactic point of view, the success of an astrological poem probably depended on the quality of the materials it contained. The basic knowledge that an astrologer needed included the nature and indications of segments of the zodiac (signs, decans, terms, celestial houses), planets, the affinity between signs (astrological aspects), between planets (conjunctions), and between signs and planets (domiciles, detriments, exaltations, dejections) – simple procedures that required memorization. Strongly rhythmical verses might have been an effective way of helping individuals to retain this teaching. An urjūza on the terms was attributed to al-Fazārī (d. possibly Baghdad, early ninth century). A sign has five terms, i.  e., five segments of unequal longitude, each ruled by a planet. Al-Fazārī’s verses are replete with adjectives related to the standard depictions of the planets: Saturn is the old man, the lord of calamities; Jupiter the lord of truth and justice; Mars the slayer, full of fury; Venus noble and beautiful; Mercury the scribe, and so on. According to the medieval copyist, al-Fazārī’s poem was written “to make memorizing them [the terms] easy” (Burnett et al. 2004). Several short poems by an unidentified astrologer are preserved in the Egyptian National Library. As these deal with sexual intercourse, the wedding night and marriage, we can guess that they appertained to the astrological topic of elections ­(ikhtiyārāt) – that is, establishing the best moment to do something. The lāmiyya of Ibn al-Khayyāṭ (d. in Toledo 1055) (Guesmi and Samsó 2018) reported universal incidents, such as droughts, earthquakes, and solar eclipses and disturbances. 75 of the 90 verses preserved base the prognostication of the situation of Saturn on each of the 12 zodiacal signs emphasizing Saturn’s ownership (Aries is Saturn’s dejection, Libra its exaltation, Aquarius its domicile) and the meeting of Saturn Acknowledgement: This paper was prepared within the research project: “Ciencia y sociedad en el Mediterráneo occidental” (MEIC: FFI2017-88569-P). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-046



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with the other planets (Saturn and Mars, the two maleficent planets, in the sign of Cancer, the effacement of Saturn by the moon). Ibn al-Khayyāṭ’s lāmiyya listed the indications of Saturn for every two and a half years, the period for which the planet remains in one sign. The urjūza of al-Ḍabbī (fl. Algeciras and Córdoba, eighth and ninth centuries) (Guesmi and Samsó 2018) established a body of knowledge about judicial astrology (‘ilm aḥkāmī) which provided meaning to groups of zodiacal signs on the basis of their properties. Thus, al-Ḍabbī’s verses noted that, when there is strength in the (hot, dry) fire signs, this means a dry year in the plains and mountains; strength in the (cold, dry) earth signs means a fertile year in the plains, cities, valleys and steppes; strength in the (hot, wet) air signs means a dry year in coastal regions but fertility in high mountains and, when the (cold, wet) water signs are strong, there will be plentiful water but disease among the mountain crops and livestock. At times, the prognostication was relatively detailed, specifying the types of fruit and disease. The Urjūza fī dalīl al-ra‘d (“Urjūza on the indication of thunder”) by Abū l-Rijāl al-Andalusī remains unstudied and it remains unclear whether he is the astrologer of a similar name mentioned below. As preserved in manuscript D1683 of the National Library of the Kingdom of Morocco, the verses are correlated with the 12 non-Islamic months (starting January, February, etc.) and specify what will happen if thunder is heard in the two fortnights of each month. Varying in length between eight and 17 verses for each month, these verses provide a rich account in which thunder is associated with climatic conditions, social activities (livestock and crop farming, seafaring, trade and artisan crafts), social groups (Jews, Christians, judges, pregnant women, pilgrims), illnesses, and hostilities and their effects on governments (conflict among the Berbers, rebellion in the Maghreb, civil war, and so on). The lāmiyya of Ibn al-Khayyāṭ and the urjūzas of al-Ḍabbī and Abū l-Rijāl al-Andalusī contain several common features: contents referring to certain communities (trade groups, governors) and a range of recurring themes (weather, natural disasters, public disorder). It was said that al-Ḍabbī’s urjūza was written “to predict weather conditions and the changing fortunes of kings”. All three poems convey a prognostication for a period of time: Ibn al-Khayyāṭ’s lāmiyya for two and a half years, al-Ḍabbī’s urjūza for one year, and Abū l-Rijāl al-Andalusī’s urjūza for one month or one fortnight. As for the systems used for prognostication, there is a distinction: Ibn al-Khayyāṭ’s lāmiyya and al-Ḍabbī’s urjūza obtain the indications by establishing an analogy between the heavenly configurations and earthly episodes, that is, from astrological principles: here, prognostication implies a transposition of the bodies (planets) and elements (zodiac signs) in the celestial sphere into climatic and social behaviors in the world. On the other hand, Abū l-Rijāl al-Andalusī’s urjūza is based on a phenomenon generated in the atmosphere (thunder) which indicates a change in weather; this popular wisdom is applied to other events in the world that may be a consequence of meteorological changes, including certain incidents that are merely superstitions. Another variation in this urjūza is the use of linguistic forms that are characteristic of western

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Arabic (for instance, the names of the months: Ghusht for August and Shutanbir for September). In relation to popular culture, we also have a set of sayings by a composer of rhymed prose (sāji‘) on the climatic conditions announced by the rising of a lunar mansion (Forcada 1993). Aside from the 12 zodiacal signs that the sun crosses along its apparent yearly path, the Arabs used the 28 lunar mansions placed near the moon in its cycle of 28 nights, named the zodiac circle of the moon. A lunar mansion is a single, pair, or small group of stars, or even the absence of stars. In addition to this basic knowledge, astrology involved technical knowledge as well in the form of a series of methods, some of them constituting difficult procedures which required comprehension and practice. Certainly, expounding them in verse would have been a demanding task. Although predetermination and free will are not astrological matters, the following biographical description of Ibn Taymīyah (Damascus, d. 1328) provides a different view of what might be expected from a didactic poem in the Middle Ages: “Ibn Taymīyah’s work was a rhymed poem of nearly 184 verses. The poem contained such vast knowledge that, were it to have been interpreted, its interpretation would have filled two huge volumes” (Holtzman 2012, 3). Thus, a poem was acceptable when it managed to synthesize the precepts of a discipline. On the delicate issue of a poem’s effectiveness as an instrument of teaching, however, van Gelder (van Gelder 2011) believes that “Concision and the constraints of metre and rhyme often impair intelligibility, and this makes these verses less than didactic by modern standards: many poems were therefore the subject of commentaries.” A good example of this is the long poem Urjūza fī aḥkām al-nujūm (“Urjūza on the judgements of the stars”) by Ibn Abī l-Rijāl (fl. Tunis, ca. 996–1048) which needed a commentary by Ibn Qunfudh (b. Constantine, 1339–1407) (Samsó 2009; Oliveras 2012). The five verses from Ibn Abī l-Rijāl’s urjūza, which began the chapter “On the life” in Ibn Qunfudh’s commentary (Díaz-Fajardo 2008; Samsó 2009), stated what must be applied to elucidate the future: namely, the prorogation of a person’s ascendant. Prorogation was used to identify the point on the zodiacal circle at which the astrologer should perform his observations in order to determine a prognostication. The verses of Ibn Abī l-Rijāl stated the main rule – the prorogation of the ascendant – but failed to state how this should be calculated; this latter question was discussed in Ibn Qunfudh’s commentary. Medicine, another discipline based on prognostication, was also described in urjūza (Forcada 2016), a fact that reflects the versatility of this kind of poem.



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Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Al-Qabisi. Al-Qabīṣī (Alcabitius): The Introduction to Astrology: Editions of the Arabic and Latin Texts and an English translation. Eds. Charles Burnett, Keiji Yamamoto, and Michio Yano. London and Turin, 2004 [for al-Fazārī’s urjūza, see pp. 365–369]. Ibn Asim. Ibn ‘Āṣim (m. 403/1013), Kitāb al-anwā’ wa-l-azmina – al-qawl fī l-šuhūr – (Tratado sobre los anwā’ y los tiempos – capítulo sobre los meses –). Estudio, traducción y edición crítica. Ed. Miquel Forcada. Madrid and Barcelona, 1993. Ibn Qunfuḏ al-Qusanṭīnī. Ibn Qunfuḏ al-Qusanṭīnī, Comentario de la Urŷūza astrológica de ‘Alī b. Abī l-Riŷāl. Estudio, traducción y edición crítica. Ed. Marc Oliveras. Barcelona, 2012. Secondary Literature Díaz-Fajardo, Montse. Tasyīr y proyección de rayos en textos astrológicos magrebíes. Barcelona, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2445/41683 (27 March 2020) [Ibn Qunfudh’s commentary (chapter “On the life”) of Ibn Abī l-Rijāl’s urjūza is referred to as G in the folders: 01, pp. 41–44, 50; 02, pp. 62, 81–82, 106–110, 125–155 (study and translation); 07, pp. 101–115 (Arabic text)]. Forcada, Miquel. “Didactic Poetry on Medicine in Late al-Andalus and the Maghrib (12th–15th centuries).” VII Congress of the International Society of the Islamic Medicine & IV International Congress of Fez on the History of Medicine in Muslim Heritage. Eds. Sidi Adil Ibrahimi et al. Fez (Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University), 2016. 168–178. van Gelder, Geert Jan. “Didactic Poetry, Arabic.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE. Leiden, 2011. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_26014 (10 March 2020). Guesmi, Chedli, and Julio Samsó. Astrometeorología en al-Andalus y el Magrib entre los siglos VIII y XV. El Kitāb al-amṭār wa’ l-as‘ār (“Libro de las lluvias y de los precios”) de Abū ‘Abd Allāh al-Baqqār (fl. 1411–1418). Turnhout, 2018. Holtzman, Livnat. “The Dhimmi’s Question on Predetermination and the Ulama’s Six Responses: The Dynamics of Composing Polemical Didactic Poems in Mamluk Cairo and Damascus.” Mamlūk Studies Review 16 (2012): 1–54. Samsó, Julio. “La Urŷūza de Ibn Abī l-Riŷāl y su comentario por Ibn Qunfuḏ: astrología e historia en el Magrib en los siglos XI y XIV.” Al-Qanṭara. Revista de Estudios Árabes 30.1 (2009): 7–39 and 30.2 (2009): 321–360. Sobieroj, Florian. Variance in Arabic Manuscripts: Arabic Didactic Poems from the Eleventh to the Seventeenth Centuries – Analysis of Textual Variance and its Control in the Manuscripts. Berlin, 2016 [Didactic poems in literature other than astronomy–astrology].

Ortal-Paz Saar

Divination and Prognostication in the Cairo Genizah One of the major sources on Jewish divination and prognostication in Late Antiquity and the medieval period is the Cairo Genizah. The term refers to a repository of wornout manuscripts and early printed matter, initially stored in the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo). Comprising around 300,000 fragments in different states of preservation, and ranging in date from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries, the Cairo Genizah provides information about every imaginable aspect of Jewish life. It contains not only religious texts  – such as worn-out Torah and Talmud leaves, Passover haggadot, and prayer books – but also everyday texts: marriage and divorce deeds, private letters, shipping inventories, pharmaceutical recipes, children’s abecedaries, and also – relating to the present topic – texts intended to predict the future.

The Cairo Genizah The Jewish practice of preserving worn-out writings containing the name of God, or other names and words considered sacred, is alluded to as early as the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 115a). Such writings were not supposed to be simply discarded, but gathered (for instance in a synagogue storeroom) and eventually brought to burial. Consequently, most ancient and medieval Jewish genizot no longer exist: they were buried centuries ago. Fustat (Old Cairo) is an exceptional case. It is clear that several genizot existed in this city, deriving from different Jewish communities (e.  g. Karaite, Babylonian) as well as different locations (e.  g. the Basatin cemetery served as a place for burying worn-out writings). Nonetheless, for convenience, the term “Cairo Genizah” continues to be in use (for a well-justified critique on this matter, see Jefferson 2018, especially 422–425). At present, the Cairo Genizah manuscripts are preserved in several collections throughout the world, the major one being located at Cambridge University Library. Other large collections are located in Oxford, Paris, New York, and St. Petersburg. In addition to collections belonging to academic institutions, private ones also exist; for example, the Jacques Mosseri collection, currently stored in Cambridge. Thanks to a major digital initiative by the Friedberg Manuscript Society, all of the Cairo Genizah fragments are now freely available online, with excellent quality images (see https:// fjms.genizah.org/). For general introductions to the Genizah, see, for example, Reif (2000) and Hoffman and Cole (2011), while for an innovative attempt to trace the history of the Genizah assemblage see Jefferson (2018). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-047



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Roughly 2,500 Genizah fragments pertain to the fields of magic, astrology, divination and alchemy (Bohak 2010a). They are mostly written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Judaeo-Arabic, and Arabic, and their dating (when established through paleographic means) ranges from the medieval through to the modern period. They only constitute a small portion of the Genizah, yet are highly valuable in revealing a facet of the personal lives of Jews and non-Jews during these periods. Approximately 250 fragments of divinatory texts, primarily lot divination (goralot) and dream interpretations, are found in the Cairo Genizah Cambridge University collection (Bohak 2010a, 66–67). Additionally, this collection contains over 50 fragments of prognostication: horologies, hemerologies, brontologies, and other texts purporting to deduce future events from everyday occurrences. Further fragments are found in the other Genizah collections, which have not yet been classified. Thus, the total number of divinatory and prognostication fragments exceeds 300. The sources of these writings are occasionally found outside Judaism, indicating that processes of borrowing and translation were in operation between Jews and non-Jews. For example, a medieval Jewish Aramaic fragment could be traced back to a Greek papyrus from the fifth century CE (edition forthcoming by Gideon Bohak). However, many of them display clear Jewish characteristics, including biblical quotations or allusions. In what follows, I will provide some typical examples of texts designed to predict the future, which were uncovered in the Cairo Genizah. It should be noted that, occasionally, such texts have parallels in non-Genizah collections, including Jewish and non-Jewish medieval manuscripts from Europe.

Lot divination (goralot) (↗ Bar-On, Manticism Jewish Traditions, 463) Several techniques of lot divination are attested in Jewish writings (Bar-On, forthcoming), including the Genizah. They comprise geomancy (goralot ha-ḥol), dice divination, and lots based on biblical verses. While many divination techniques found in the Genizah manuscripts date back to Late Antiquity, some scholars believe that contact with Islam brought about a proliferation of systematic lot manuals (Bohak 2010a, 66). The following example is from a divination manual written in Hebrew, with some words in Judaeo-Arabic. Its sections are numbered, and arranged according to the names of birds. Each section contains ten brief answers (for similar texts see Shaked 1988 and Burkhardt 2003). The Dove. 19.1. The Lord gave you plenty of money, and you should do good and (give) alms. 2. Your days and years will be long; and return to God and walk in His ways, and you shall succeed. 3. You are kind and generous, and you will not fool the people. 4. You are kind, but have no judgement and understanding. 5. Evil days and trouble have closed on you for all your days. 6.

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You have no knowledge of commerce, and neither (can you distinguish) between good and evil. 7. The person you have asked about, you shall not see him now, and your heart is worried. 8. You shall win in court, and you shall convict your fellow to fall in front of you. 9. If you wish to walk on the way to another country, to live there, you shall find benefit there. 10. The thought you shall find, and shall become rich, and succeed. (The Dove, 19.1. Cambridge, T-S K 1.118, recto, lines 5–12, unpublished)

Dream Interpretation This divinatory technique appears in two forms in the Cairo Genizah. Firstly, manuals that systematically list images and events, which may spontaneously appear in one’s dream, and then foretell the future based on the dream. For instance, a “dream book” in Hebrew, divided according to dream topics (horses, donkeys, sheep and goats), asserts (the word restoration is based on modern dream books): He who sees [in a dream] that he drank horse milk, money will come to him. He who sees that he eats horse meat, the Lord, blessed be He, will improve his provisions and his money [will be kept]. (Mosseri VI 154.1, recto, lines 4–6, unpublished)

Secondly, the Genizah contains several “dream requests” (she’elat ḥalom). This term refers to a divinatory technique in which one seeks to answer a specific question, by ritually summoning a dream. Then, based on the images and events revealed therein, the person extracts the response to his/her query. Interestingly, the Genizah preserves not only the instructions for obtaining such dreams, but also several personalized dream requests, bearing the names of the persons who employed them (Harari 2011; Bohak and Saar 2015; Bellusci 2016 and Bellusci forthcoming 2021). For example, in a text from the eleventh century, a woman named Chatun asked the help of a genie residing in her house, to reveal in a dream the location of a hoard of gold coins (Bohak 2010): You holy names and excellent letters, show me in this night the place of the gold coins which are buried in my house, I, Chatun daughter of Qaẓur, in this night, in a clear and true manner. Amen Selah. Hallelujah. I adjure you, the “priest” who dwells in this apartment, in the name of MSS the great and trustworthy, the master of all the demons, and in the name of ʾṬLṬWLʾ, the minister of all the spirits, that you will reveal to me the place of the gold coins which are buried in this apartment in truth. (Cambridge, T-S K 24.19)

Another personalized dream request, possibly referring to known historical persons, is preserved in a manuscript paleographically dated to the twelfth century, written in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic (first edited by Alessia Bellusci in her MA thesis, Dream Requests from the Cairo Genizah, Tel Aviv University, 2011, to appear in Bellusci forthcoming 2021):



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Dream request. He shall read: “Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year” (Ez. 1:1), the entire verse. In the name of (here follows a magical triangle composed of angel names). You holy angels, may you inform me in my dream if it will come upon me, and upon everyone who is with me, I, Yakhin son of […] and Mevasser son of Baladein, and Nathanel son of Milaḥ (?), from King Abū Ali. Inform me at what time his verdict (‫ )דברו‬will come. In the name of Your Rock, God most High, the Lord of Hosts, I am who I am, the Lord of Hosts, El Shadday […]. (Cambridge, T-S K 1.29, recto, lines 1–15)

It is possible that the three male names mentioned in this dream request belonged to identifiable historical persons. A Jewish dignitary named Yakhin, son of Nathanel, father of two sons, Mevasser and Nathanel, is mentioned in a poem describing a socio-religious struggle in Egypt. Yakhin is said to have overcome an enemy of the Jews. Since the signature of this Yakhin was found on a document from the late eleventh century, he could be the same person who employed the dream request to discover the “verdict” of a ruler named Abū Ali. The latter might perhaps be identified with the Fatimid calif of Egypt al-Amīr bi-Aḥkām Allāh Abū ‘Alī al-Manṣūr (1101–1130) (Bohak and Saar 2015, 84–86). If these identifications are correct, they indicate that dream interpretations were used by different social strata, not just for trivial matters such as finding treasure, but also to divine the outcome of social and political events.

Prognostication The Cairo Genizah further preserves techniques for foretelling the future based on the “intrinsic” qualities of a particular moment in time (day, month), or based on natural occurrences, such as thunder, eclipses, rainbows, and earthquakes. The following are just two examples drawn from a wide array of texts. An interesting Hebrew horologion provides the auspicious times for writing amulets for a variety of purposes: Tuesday write in the hour of Mars [in the name of …] who rules over it. Perform in it for (sowing) hate, and heal in it migraines […]. (Cambridge, T-S NS 322.79, recto, lines 21–22, unpublished)

A brontologion dated to the eleventh century provides concise predictions constructed around the zodiacal signs in combination with the months (other parts of this manuscript have been published by Abate 2012). The sequence is from the Hebrew month of Tevet: If it thunders in Aquarius, the fish in the sea shall multiply. And if it thunders in Pisces, the herbs and seeds shall multiply. And if it thunders in Aries, there will be trouble and war. (Bodleian Library MS Heb. e 44.13–14, 13 recto, lines 1–3)

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To conclude, the Cairo Genizah preserves divinatory and prognostication texts that are similar in nature to other Jewish and non-Jewish material from the same periods. Some of these are particularly interesting, given the fact that they preserve the names of their users or commissioners, who may at times be identified with known historical persons. Most importantly, the Genizah contains a relatively high concentration of divinatory and prognostication texts, many of which still await a comprehensive study, placing them in a broader historical, cultural, and socio-religious context.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Images of all the unpublished manuscripts are available on the website https://fjms.genizah.org/ (15 March 2020). Cambridge, T-S K 1.118 – unpublished Mosseri VI 154.1 – unpublished Cambridge, T-S K 24.19 – Bohak 2010 Cambridge, T-S K 1.29 – Bellusci forthcoming 2021 Cambridge, T-S NS 322.79 – unpublished Bodleian Library MS Heb. e 44.13–14 – partially published in Abate 2012

Secondary Literature Abate, Emma. “Prayers from the Genizah: Between Liturgy and Magic.” Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies: Annual Report 2010–2011 (2012): 67–76. Bar-On, Shraga. “Goralot.” A Handbook of Jewish Magic. Eds. Siam Bhayro and Ortal-Paz Saar. Leiden (forthcoming). Bellusci, Alessia. “A Genizah Finished Product for She’elat Ḥalom Based on Sefer Ha-Razim.” Journal of Jewish Studies 67.2 (2016): 305–326. Bellusci, Alessia. Dream Requests in the Middle East: The History of the Sheʾelat Ḥalom from the Medieval Era back to Late Antiquity (forthcoming in 2021). Bohak, Gideon. “Cracking the Code and Finding the Gold: A Dream Request from the Cairo Genizah.” Edición de Textos Mágicos de la Antigüedad y de la Edad Media. Eds. Juan Antonio ÁlvarezPedrosa Núñez and Sofía Torallas Tovar. Madrid, 2010. 9–23. Bohak, Gideon. “Towards a Catalogue of the Magical, Astrological, Divinatory and Alchemical Fragments from the Cambridge Genizah Collections.” “From a Sacred Source”: Genizah Studies in Honour of Professor Stefan C. Reif. Eds. Ben Outhwaite and Siam Bhayro. Leiden, 2010a. 53–79. Bohak, Gideon. “Manuals of Mantic Wisdom: From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Cairo Genizah.” Tracing Sapiential Traditions in Ancient Judaism. Eds. Hindy Najman, Jean-Sébastien Rey, and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar. Leiden and Boston, 2016. 191–216. Bohak, Gideon. “A Palestinian-Jewish Aramaic Planetary Horologion from the Cairo Genizah.” Aleph 18.1 (2018): 7–26.



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Bohak, Gideon, and Ortal-Paz Saar. “Genizah Magical Texts Prepared for or against Named Individuals.” Revue des études Juives 174.1–2 (2015): 77–110. Burkhardt, Evelyn. “Hebräische Losbuchhandschriften: zur Typologie einer jüdischen Divinations­ methode.” Jewish Studies between the Disciplines: Papers in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday. Eds. Klaus Herrmann, Margarete Schlüter, and Giuseppe Veltri. Leiden, 2003. 95–148. Harari, Yuval. “Metatron and the Treasure of Gold: Notes on a Dream Inquiry Text from the Cairo Genizah.” Continuity and Innovation in the Magical Tradition. Eds. Gideon Bohak, Yuval Harari, and Shaul Shaked. Leiden and Boston, 2011. 289–319. Hoffman, Adina, and Peter Cole. Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza. New York, 2011. Jefferson, Rebecca J. W. “Deconstructing ‘the Cairo Genizah’: A Fresh Look at Genizah Manuscript Discoveries in Cairo before 1897.” Jewish Quarterly Review 108.4 (2018): 422–448. Reif, Stefan C. A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: The History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection. Richmond, Surrey, 2000. Shaked, Shaul. “An Early Magic Fragment from the Cairo Geniza.” Occident and Orient: A Tribute to the Memory of A. Scheiber. Ed. Robert Dán. Budapest and Leiden, 1988. 361–371.

Stefano Rapisarda

Doubts and Criticism on Astrology in Western Traditions from Antique to Early Modern Literature After Enlightenment, divination was definitely considered a gallery of monsters and human foolishness (Allocco 2006), but skepticism concerning astrology and divination in general did not start in the century of Voltaire. Doubts about the “rationality” of divination were widely expressed in Classical, Medieval and Early Modern European culture. The literature on the theological condemnations of astrology is extensive, while, on the contrary, that on the rational and pragmatic claims of usefulness appears to be relatively thin. By “rational skepticism”, I refer to all of those expressions of doubt regarding the intrinsic validity and usefulness of divination theories, techniques, practices, and instruments, based on pragmatic grounds, whatever they might be, rather than on religious and/or theological reasons, such as diabolic intermissions, insane curiosity, or the violation of free will. In short, I refer here to rational skepticism based on the pragmatic perception that astrology in practice does not work, or the idea of the logical fallacy of astrology itself. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, a monograph specifically devoted to the history of divinatory skepticism is not currently available to scholars. While it is true that several general histories of skepticism, such as Machuca-Reed (2018), are available on the market, in this kind of monograph, any discussion of divinatory and – more specifically – astrological skepticism tends to be scattered across various chapters rather these phenomena being organically treated as a topic per se. Similarly, many episodes of rationalism are discussed in numerous different single sources, such as Lapp (1949) and Rapisarda (2010), but a focused, systematic history of divinatory skepticism is not at present available, which would, in my opinion, be highly desirable. The masterpiece of ancient skepticism regarding the effectiveness of divination is Cicero’s De Divinatione (“On Divination”, 44 BCE), which constitutes the basic text of a “rationalist” approach in the Western tradition. This is a two-volume philosophical treatise that takes the form of a dialogue between two interlocutors: Quintus, the brother of Cicero, who speaks in Book I, and Cicero himself, who speaks mainly in Book II. Book I deals with Quintus’ defense of divination, in line with certain Stoic beliefs, as a principal aspect of the religion and the ancient customs of the Roman people, while Book II contains Marcus’ refutation of these from his academic, philosophical standpoint. Cicero displays a close acquaintance with many divinatory techniques, dividing them into the “inspired” one and techniques requiring some skills of interpretation (i.  e., haruspicy, astrology, avimancy) but his approach, as a debater, is rationalist and opposed to divination. Many famous examples exist within the history of rationalism. Imagine you are setting out on a journey. You pick up your shoes and https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-048



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discover that they have been nibbled by rats. Many would regard this as a bad omen, but what kind of omen is it? It would be a real omen not if you found that a rat had nibbled your shoe, but if you found that your shoe had nibbled a rat. As far as cosmology is concerned, Cicero mocks the theory of universal sympathy: What sort of connection can exist between the liver, heart, and lungs of a sacrificial animal and the cosmos? Surely if entrails have any prophetic force, necessarily that force either is in accord with the laws of nature, or is fashioned in some way by the will and power of the gods. But between that divine system of nature whose great and glorious laws pervade all space and regulate all motion what possible connexion can there be with – I shall not say the gall of a chicken, whose entrails, some men assert, give very clear indications of the future, but – the liver, heart, and lungs of a sacrificial ox? And what natural quality is there in the entrails which enables them to indicate the future? (Cicero, De divinatione, ed. Falconer 1923, 403)

Special problems arose about the issue of multiple births. What is especially interesting is that twins pose a ‘rational’ challenge to the theory of astrology. They have the same sky map, horoscope, and constellation, so, under a coherent astral theory, should share the identical destiny, but this is not the case, states Cicero (De divinatione II, 90–95), citing the case of Procles and Eurysthenes, kings of Sparta, who had very different fortunes, as the braver of the two embarked on more glorious enterprises and pre-deceased his sibling. Moreover, Cicero’s counter-argument is effective: all of the children born at the same moment as Scipio the African should have shared his courage and bravery, and all of the soldiers who died at the Battle of Cannae should have been born at exactly the same astrological moment. Both of these statements are manifestly absurd. Nevertheless, twins remain a problem, and so require excogitation to explain them. This is, in my opinion, one of the most brilliant theories ever devised: the so-called “potter argument”, which led to the philosopher Nigidius being nicknamed “Figulus”, “the potter”, as a tribute to his excellent theory. Unfortunately, no work of Nigidius Figulus is extant, but several passages survive in indirect quotations and fragments (for an edition of fragments in the Swoboda edition, see Bremmer 2001, 153–166). His most relevant theory was reported by Augustine of Hippo: It is to no purpose, therefore, that that famous fiction about the potter’s wheel is brought forward, which tells of the answer which Nigidius is said to have given when he was perplexed with this question, and on account of which he was called Figulus. For, having whirled round the potter’s wheel with all his strength he marked it with ink, striking it twice with the utmost rapidity, so that the strokes seemed to fall on the very same part of it. Then, when the rotation had ceased, the marks which he had made were found upon the rim of the wheel at no small distance apart. Thus, said he, considering the great rapidity with which the celestial sphere revolves, even though twins were born with as short an interval between their births as there was between the strokes which I gave this wheel, that brief interval of time is equivalent to a very great distance in the celestial sphere. Hence, said he, come whatever dissimilitudes may be remarked in the habits and fortunes of twins.

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This excogitation is neat, indeed, despite Augustine’s claims: This argument is more fragile than the vessels which are fashioned by the rotation of that wheel. For if there is so much significance in the heavens which cannot be comprehended by observation of the constellations, that, in the case of twins, an inheritance may fall to the one and not to the other, why, in the case of others who are not twins, do they dare, having examined their constellations, to declare such things as pertain to that secret which no one can comprehend, and to attribute them to the precise moment of the birth of each individual? Now, if such predictions in connection with the natal hours of others who are not twins are to be vindicated on the ground that they are founded on the observation of more extended spaces in the heavens, whilst those very small moments of time which separated the births of twins, and correspond to minute portions of celestial space, are to be connected with trifling things about which the mathematicians are not wont to be consulted, – for who would consult them as to when he is to sit, when to walk abroad, when and on what he is to dine? – how can we be justified in so speaking, when we can point out such manifold diversity both in the habits, doings, and destinies of twins? (Augustine, De civitate dei, ed. Dodds 1913, 181)

Augustine is elusive and perhaps pretends not to understand exactly, as he says that “very small moments of time which separated the births of twins, and correspond to minute portions of celestial space”, whereas Nigulus implies that the brief interval of time is equivalent, not to a minute, but to a major portion of celestial space. Nevertheless, this is one of the most intelligent arguments ever devised and has never been thoroughly confuted. It was well known among astrological fans and experts. In the MS The Hague, MMW (Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum), 10 A 11, fol. 231v and following, we find an extraordinary illustrated section dedicated to the problem of twins. This is a superbly illustrated section, in which the problem of twins is repre­ sented by beginning with the potter’s argument: The dispute between Posidonius and Hippocrates, examining sick twins, regarding the stars’ influence on human health; the parents of the twins in the foreground (fol. 231v.); the astrologer and philosopher Nigidius and his argument about the twins’ fate derived from the potter’s wheel (fol. 232v); twins lying in bed and their fate (fol. 232v); twins of different genders as an ­counter-argument to astrology: a young man engaged in falconry; and fishermen angling (235r). Discussions about the problem of twin or two people who were born on the same day continued in the framework of the new horoscopic astrology, derived from Arabo-Latin translations; the same final result was targeted, in 1141, by the brilliant advocate Raymond of Marseille in his Liber cursuum planetarum (eds. D’Alverny et al.). Struggling with the arguments of Augustine and Gregory the Great, thanks to his technical dexterity, Raymond of Marseille managed to reject the favored arguments of astrology’s opponents: The different destinies of twins, and in general of two persons born on the same day, a king and a slave. Because of the argument of the potter, the same astral configuration for two different persons is hardly possible (quod aut vix aut nunquam evenire posse credimus) due to shifts in the celestial vault which are almost unperceivable by terrestrial astrologers but are enormous in the sky because of the angular distance; in any case, an astrological explanation of the differences in life and



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destiny can always be found. In the case of the king and the slave, the problem can be solved by observing the planets: a king has a positive, dominant Sun, while, in the same astral configuration, a slave has Mars in a negative position. De regum et servorum nativitate eodem tempore facta, quod aut vix aut nunquam evenire posse credimus, ut quorundam simplicium inutilibus oppositionibus satisfaciamus sic respondemus: ascendente XO gradu Arietis, dum esset Sol in ipso Ariete et Mars in Virgine, natus est rex et servus; regem ergo perpetuo futurum Sol indicat, servum vero Mars in perpetua servitute mansurum ostendit. Aliter eadem res accidere posset, verbi gratia: est in XIe Arietis gradu Sol cum Saturno; Sol ergo regis significator est, ideoque potius quia in exaltatione consistit; Saturnus vero ideoque deterius, quia in casu suo est, servum significat. (Raymond of Marseille, Liber cursuum planetarum, Paris, BnF, ms. lat. 14704, fol. 1).

According to Raymond of Marseille, in short, the problem lies in humans’ technical dexterity with regard to reading horoscopes. The famous translator, Gerard of Cremona (d. 1187), in a dialogue with Daniel of Morley, one of his English students in Toledo, takes up this latter topic and claims that, if the son of a king and the son of a villain are born under the same heavenly configuration, they will each reign in their sphere, regardless of their natural condition of departure. Gerard of Cremona adds, not without self-consideration: ‘I who am speaking to you, I am a king, for I have born under the sign of royalty, that of the Sun’ (i.  e. Leo, Sun). ‘Where is your kingdom?’ Daniel of Morley asks, ironically. ‘In my spirit’, replies Gerard of Cremona, ‘for I am unwilling to serve any mortal man!’ [‘Si ergo, ut ais, in eadem constellatione nati fuerint filius regis et filius rustici, ambo quidem reges erunt, sed non uno et eodem modo, quia filius regis de natura habet, ut succedat patri suo in regno. Natura enim filii rustici, licet deroget sue constellationi, tamen inter rusticos regnabit et omnibus, qui in suo genere erunt, potentior ac validior erit. Quid miraris? Ego etiam, qui loquor, rex sum, utpote qui sub regali signo natus fui, Sole dominante ceteris etiam convenientibus circumstanciis.’ Cum vero ironice interrogarem, ubi regnaret, respondit: ‘In animo, quia nemini mortalium servirem.’] (Daniel of Morley, Philosophia, ed. Maurach, 245; trans. Rapisarda).

Anyway, resistance against astrology was common, in theologians as in preachers. One of them, Martin of Braga, c. 573 CE, wrote De correctione rusticorum (ed. Naldini) against pagan superstition and particularly against the custom of naming the days of the week after gods (planets), as in ancient Greek and Latin and as occurs currently in almost all Romance and Germanic languages, Italian, French, Spanish, Occitan, German, and English. Due to his influence, Portuguese, alone among the Romance languages, named the days based on the numerical sequence, rather than after pagan deities (segunda-feira, terça-feira, quarta-feira, quinta-feira, sexta-feira). Many other treatises condemn and offer resistance to astrology, based mainly on the De divinatione daemonum and De civitate Dei of Augustine (354–430), the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville (560–636), the Decretum of Gratian (completed in 1140), and, especially, Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). These texts were widespread in terms of time and space throughout Europe: from central Italy, where Augustine of Ancona (1270/1273–1328), a

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friar who compiled the Tractatus contra divinatores et sompniatores, based mainly on Thomas Aquinas refutations (ed. Giglioni); to eastern France, where Laurens Pignon (1368–1449), a Dominican friar, wrote the vernacular Contre les devineurs at the Burgundy court in 1411 (ed. Veenstra); to central Spain, where the Spanish bishop and inquisitor Lope de Barrientos (1382/1395–1469) wrote the Tratado de la divinança (Treatise on Divination, ed. Cuenca Muñoz; Gernet 2019); to Germany, where Johannes Hartlieb (ca. 1400–1468), compiled the Puch aller verpoten kunst (“The Book of all the Forbidden Arts”) for John “The Alchemist” Margrave of Brandenburg (1456). All of these are fundamentally based on theological refutations; an original exception is the philosopher, mathematician and theologian Nicole Oresme (1320– 1382), who condemns astrology not theologically but mathematically. He uses the same argument of “the potter” in order to cast doubt on the possibility of a scientific astrology. In short, he reverses the argument of the potter in order to demonstrate that forecasting by astrology is impossible because instruments capable of catching celestial phenomena, that move so quickly, are unavailable to humans. Since astrology is technically impossible, kings should recall that it is better to keep one’s mind on the earth rather than gaze up at the stars; a king should practice politics more than astrology. This is especially exposed in his Livre de divinacions, a vernacular French work written for Charles V of Valois, who was deeply involved in predictions. Oresme is not the first to try to refute astrology, but is the first to combine astrology and politics. The others had refuted astrology on a scriptural basis, but Oresme tries to demonstrate its politically harmful effects as well. Princes and men of government are the explicit and direct adressees of the French text, as clerks were the audience of the Latin Tractatus contra astronomos judiciaries and the Quaestio contra divinatores horoscopios (ed. Coopland; ed. Caroti). These texts, especially the Livre de divinacions, were written for the prince’s education, as declared in the foreword: With God’s help, in this little book, it is my intention to show, through experience, the testimony of illustrious men and human reason, how foolish, evil, senseless, as well as mortally dangerous, to persist in divine or predict the fate or future events, or occult things, through astrology, geomancy, necromancy, or any other of these divinatory arts, provided that it is possible to define them as arts; and, above all, how nurturing this kind of curiosity is more dangerous for high-ranking men, such as the princes and regiments to whom the government of public affairs belongs. (Nicole Oresme, Livre de divinacions, trans. Rapisarda 2010, 80)

In chapter II, Oresme analyses each of the branches of astrology from the point of view of his epistemological statute, i.  e. the effectiveness of each and what degree of scientific certainty it can achieve (Nicole Oresme, Contro la Divinazione, ed. Rapisarda, 84–87). The first two are relatively knowable, although with great limitations; the other, connected to prediction, such as horoscopes, elections and interrogations, n’ont point de fondement raisonnable (“have no rational ground”) and n’y a point de verité (“‘do not contain any truth”; translation cf. Rapisarda). Nevertheless, both the I and the II branches suffer from a severe intrinsic limitation, to which Oresme has



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dedicated two of its major physical-mathematical treatises, written for expert scholars; namely, the De configurationibus qualitatum et motuum (ed. Clagett) and De commensurabilitate vel immemensurabilitate motuum celi (ed. Grant), starting from the technical fact that it is impossible to trace mathematically a precise celestial position and motion; Oresme denies, in fact, based on gnoseological assumptions, the same possibility of determining with absolute precision the movement of the stars and their exact position in the sky at every moment in time, and therefore the same possibility of astrological prediction: Sottoponendo ad una critica così radicale quella che, pur non essendo esatta, era considerata nondimeno una scienza, Oresme toglie all’astrologia le basi su cui operare: se tavole e calcoli astronomici sono inesatti e d’altra parte una piccola variazione nella posizione di un pianeta può modificare radicalmente un oroscopo o un’elezione, è evidente che la divinazione non può giustificare la sua esistenza. (Nicole Oresme, Quaestio contra divinatores, ed. Caroti, 585)

The main arguments of the De commensurabilitate vel incommensurabilitate motuum celi are: – the “rationality” of natural causes for the explanation of phenomena happening in the sublunar world – the demonstration of the impossibility that Aristotle gave credit to astrology – criticism of astrologers regarding how they collected data – the insufficiency and imprecision of these data – the denial of an occult power of the stars – the tendency to limit or deny the action of demons. As a matter of fact, Oresme argues for the impossibility of knowing perfectly and scientifically the position of a celestial body or performing exact calculations of astral entities as well of human senses grasping the minute quantities of the sub-lunar world that translate into vast quantities in the super-lunar world: Even by admitting commensurability and thus the possibility of determining the future position of celestial bodies, Oresme denies man the ability to achieve a precise knowledge of the proportiones of the celestial motions, due to the deficiency of his sense organs, which are not given to arrive at those minimum values (fractiones innumerabiles), which, however, can determine commensurability or the insurability of two proportions and consequently of two speeds. (Nicole Oresme, Quaestio contra divinatores, ed. Caroti, 585)

Moreover, several scattered observations profoundly destabilize the astrological science that has been elaborated up to that point: by varying the configuration of the sky and position of the stars over time, the tables drawn up in the past and/or in a place other than the one in which the observer is located are, in fact, unusable. In short, according to Oresme, some branches of astrology can be studied and learned, but the study must remain within the limits of “recreation and honest fun” (recreacion et […] honneste esbat); the prince must have a smattering of astronomy,

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roughly equal to the basic notions that could derive from the basic curriculum of the liberal arts, but it is unnecessary for him to study complicated texts or seek to learn directly by using tools or developing complex conceptual models, and in fact preferable if he abstains from this. The prince must avoid any form of curiosity and, above all, will have to deal with politics, as a ‘modern’ science of the government of his people. The arguments used by Oresme failed to make any immediate impact on the political context. They remained relatively marginal in the short-term: They were occasionally relaunched, as in the two anti-astrological treatises of Henry of Langenstein (1325–1397), the Quaestio de cometa and Tractatus contra coniunctionistas, but, generally speaking, despite the serious theological objections to astrology, in the fifteenth century, its teaching and practice was widespread and enjoyed institutional support. As a matter of fact, the history of “rational” skepticism is not at all linear, considering such periods as the resurgence of astrology in Florence in the sixteenth century. Quite the opposite, despite heavy criticism, astrology as a cultural form reached its apogee in the European Renaissance, when it flourished in the fields of philosophy, literature, art, medicine, science, political expression, and many other areas of endeavor. Even the early history of heliocentrism, from Copernicus up to Galilei and Kepler, is to be framed within the contemporary debate on astrology and astrological prognostication. In Westman’s opinion, “uncertainty about astral powers and planetary order would become one of the problems – perhaps even the crucial one – to which Copernicus’s reordering of the planets was a proposed, if unannounced, solution” (Westman 2011, 3).

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Augustine of Hippo. The City of God. Ed. and English trans. Marcus Dodds. Edinburgh, 1913. Augustinus of Ancona. “Il Tractatus contra divinatores et sompniatores di Agostino d’Ancona.” Ed. Pierangela Giglioni. Analecta Augustiniana 48 (1985): 7–111. Barrientos, Lope de. El tratado de la divinanca de Fray Lope de Barrientos. Edición crítica y estudio. Ed. Paloma Cuenca Muñoz. Madrid, 1992. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. De Divinatione. Latin Text and Facing English Translation by William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge, MA, 1923. Martin of Braga. Contro le superstizioni [De correctione rusticorum]. Ed. Mario Naldini. Bologna, 2015 [Florence, 1991]. Maurach, Gregor (ed.). “Daniel de Morley. Philosophia.” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 14 (1979): 204–255. George W. Coopland. Nicole Oresme and the Astrologers. A Study on his Livre de divinacions. Liverpool, 1952. Oresme, Nicole. Nicole Oresme and the Medieval Geometry of Qualities and Motions. A Treatise on the Uniformity and Difformity of Intensities Known as ‘Tractatus de Configurationibus



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Qualitatum et Motuum’. Edited with an Introduction, English Translation and Commentary by Marshall Clagett. London, 1969 [Madison and Milwaukee, 1968]. Oresme, Nicole. Nicole Oresme and the Kinematics of Circular Motion, Tractatus de commensurabilitate vel incommensurabilitate motuum celi. Edited with an Introduction, English Translation and Commentary by Edward Grant. Madison, 1971. Oresme, Nicole. Quaestio contra divinatores horoscopios. Ed. Stefano Caroti. Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age 43 (1976): 201–310. Oresme, Nicole. Contro la divinazione. Consigli anti-astrologici al Re di Francia (1356). Ed. Stefano Rapisarda. Rome, 2010. Pignon, Laurens. “Contre les devineurs.” Magic and Divination at the Courts of Burgundy and France: Text and Context of Laurens Pignon’s “Contre les devineurs” (1411). Ed. Jan R. Veenstra. Leiden, 1998. Raymond de Marseille. Opera omnia: Traité de l’astrolabe, Liber cursuum planetarum, Tome 1 (Sources d’histoire médiévale). Édition bilingue français-latin. Eds. Marie-Thérèse D’Alverny, Charles Burnett, and Emmanuel Poulle. Paris, 2009.

Secondary Literature Allocco, Luciana. “Le domaine obscur et inconfortable de la ‘magie’.” Recherches sur Diderot et sur l’Encyclopédie (Les branches du savoir dans l’Encyclopédie) 40/41 (2006): 233–250. Bremmer, Rolf H. and László Chardonnens. “Old English Prognostics: Between the Moon and the Monstrous.” Monsters and the Monstrous in Medieval Northwest Europe. Eds. Karin E. Olsen and Luuk A. J. R. Houwen. Louvain, 2001. 153–166. Caroti, Stefano. La critica contro l’astrologia di Nicole Oresme e la sua influenza nel Medioevo e nel Rinascimento. Rome, 1979. Gernert, Folke. “The Tratado de la divinança by Lope de Barrientos, in the European Context.” Fictionalizing Heterodoxy: Various Uses of Knowledge in the Spanish World from the Archpriest of Hita to Mateo Alemán. Berlin and Boston, 2019. 7–19. Lapp, John C. “Three Attitudes toward Astrology: Rabelais, Montaigne, and Pontus de Tyard.” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 64 (1949): 530–548. Machuca, Diego and Baron Reed (eds.). Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present. London, 2018. Westman, Robert S. The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism and Celestial Order. Berkeley, 2011.

Maria Jennifer Falcone

Dream Books and Treatises on Dream Interpretation in the Medieval Western Christian World The experience of dreaming and interpreting dreams was very important during the Middle Ages (↗ Schirrmeister, Dream Interpretation Western Christian World). Its theoretical interpretation is strictly related to the heritage of Late Antique and early Christian thought. In fact, the later medieval tradition owes to the authors of the previous period the twofold attitude toward dreams that we observe within the extant literature. On the one side, the huge number of manuscripts (see below) which transmitted dream books testifies to their popularity (which not only involved the lower classes but also learned audiences). On the other side, the opposition to this kind of superstition, and more broadly to divination as a whole, is widely attested as well. This ambiguous attitude finds its roots primarily in the Holy texts. Particularly important with regard to dream books and dream interpretation, but also to their condemnation, are the following passages and themes: 1. The Book of Daniel, particularly the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams (in particular chapters 2; 4; 7–8; 10–12). The importance of this prophetic figure is conspicuous, as clear from the title given to the dream books, i.  e. Somnialia Danielis. 2. The story of Joseph and the Pharaoh in Genesis (chapters 37; 40; 41). This important figure is also an eponym of dream books, in this case the alphabetic ones, also entitled Somnialia Joseph. 3. Deuteronomy 18, 10 is the locus classicus, later used in canon law, to denigrate the interpretation of dreams to predict the future: Ut nemo sit qui ariolos sciscitetur vel somnia observet, vel ad auguria intendat “Let there be no one who consults soothsayers or observes dreams, or pays attention to omens.”

Regarding legal texts, let it suffice to mention several juridical and canonical passages, such as: 1. Canon XXIV of the Synod of Ankara (314 AD): it sentences Christians who practiced divination to five years of excommunication (three years of kneeling, and two years of prayer, without oblation). 2. Cod. Theod. IX, 16, 4–6 (= Cod. Just. IX, 18, 5–7), promulgated by Constantius II in 357: it sentences to capital punishment, among others, also dream interpreters. 3. The well-known Decretum Gratiani (twelfth century). This work, an influential collection of canon law, condemns in many passages dreams and dream interprehttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-049



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tations (see, for instance, 2, 26, 5, 3; 2, 26, 5, 6; 2, 26, 7, 16) and explicitly once the Somniale Danielis. See 2, 26, 7, 16: qui […] vel prospera vel adversa futura inquirunt, sive qui adtendunt somnialia scripta, et falso in Danielis nomine intitulata […] sciant se fidem Christianam et baptismum prevaricasse […]. – “The ones who […] search for a prosperous or adverse future, or pay attention to dreambooks written and entitled using the false name of Daniel […] must know that they have committed a crime against their Christian faith and against the baptism […].” The coexistence of trust and distrust, and consequently of a positive attitude toward dreams and, at the same time, of an interpretation of them as dangerous experiences, is related to the common distinction drawn between true and false dreams, with the former being sent by God and the latter by demons. Among the Late Antique pagan and early Christian traditions on dreams, which feature in our medieval sources, the following are the most influential: 1. Artemidorus (second century CE): His five books on Oneirocritica are one of the few extant dream books from the Greek tradition. The treatise analyzes the dream as a complex phenomenon, distinguishing between prophetic and symbolic dreams. In particular, the last two books have influenced the later tradition, since they are devoted to a list of dreams with the corresponding interpretation while, in the first part of the book, the author focuses on the bodily conditions of the dreamer. 2. Calcidius (fourth century CE): In his commentary on Plato’s Timaeus (partially translated into Latin, and so widespread during the Middle Ages), he distinguishes between dreams coming from the soul itself, which are not predictive, and dreams coming from God, which are predictive. In his works, there is also a complex categorization of dreams; in particular, he stresses the variety of this phenomenon: multiformis ergo est ratio somniorum – “so the motive of dreams is manifold” (chap. 256). 3. Macrobius (fourth/fifth century CE): In his Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, two books dedicated to the son, we find a categorization of five types of dreams (somnium, visio, oraculum, insomnium, visum). Widespread during the Middle Ages, this book has been influential on the overall interpretation of dreams. In particular, it mentions the topos of the two gates, one made of ivory and the other of horn, through which respectively true and false dreams pass. Through Macrobius, this Neo-Platonic adaptation of a topos, already found in Vergil’s Aeneid, spreads to Western culture. 4. Tertullian (second/third century CE) De anima: In this work, the Church Father understands the dream as an experience due to which humans, free from bodily constrictions, can pursue the truth. At the same time, and this leads to a double interpretation of the dreams themselves, the moment when a human being’s dreams makes him/her more vulnerable in face of the devil, and he/she is not free from illusionary dreams as well.

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5. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430): In the works and life of the Church Father, the importance of dreams is conspicuous. In particular, he describes predictive dreams in the elaboration of his autobiography. On the other side, he devotes theoretical works to the comprehension and categorization of dreams, and, like Macrobius and Calcidius, distinguishes between false and true dreams. The difficulty for the dreamer is related to the ambiguous nature of all dreams, even true ones. The most complete works dedicated to this theme are: De Genesi ad litteram XII, where he focuses on the nature of visions, and De cura pro mortuis gerenda, where he analyzes the nature of ghostly apparitions. 6. The most comprehensive works on dreams and dream interpretation are those by Gregory the Great (d. 604) (in the Moralia in Iob) and Isidore of Seville (d. 636) (Sententiae 3, 6): here, the dreams are considered mainly illusionary and coming from the devil, and so dream interpretation is condemned. During the Middle Ages, a complex literature on dream books and dream interpretation developed on this basis. We distinguish the following kinds of dream books (I have selected the most widespread, as the large number of extant manuscripts testifies):

Somnialia Danielis: “Dream Book Proper” This kind of book, named after the biblical Daniel and hinting at his interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams, is considered “the medievalist’s primary tool for the identification and interpretation of dream topoi in medieval literature” (Fischer 1982, 5). Its vast spread is testified by the impressive number of manuscripts and incunabula (around 260) that scholars continue to find. They are written in different languages: above all, in Latin, then in numerous vernaculars; from a Greek version seems to derive the byzantine dream book of Nicephorus. Consequently, it is impossible to reconstruct the original text of the book. Nonetheless, three Latin manuscripts are considered the most important source for this text: I) Ms. Cotton Tiberius A.III (T), late eleventh century (British Library), which contains 302 dreams and interpretations; II) Vienna Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Ms. 271, tenth century, which contains 158 dreams; III) Uppsala Universitätsbibliothek Ms. C, ninth century, which is the earlier witness of the text.

Derived from a Greek original (lost and hitherto unidentified by scholars), dated to the post-Hellenistic or proto-Byzantine period, the typical version of this book is written in prose, but there are also poetic versions in the vernacular; the different objects of the dreams occur in alphabetical order, followed by an interpretation; for instance:



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Aves in somnis qui viderit et cum ipsis pugnaverit: litem aliquam significat. Aves in somnis caperet: lucrum significat. “If the dreamer sees birds and fights with them in his dreams: it signifies a certain fight. If the dreamer catches the birds: it signifies profit.”

The dream interpretation is based on three possible strategies: a) association; b) contrast; and c) analogy. The content of the dream plays the most important role, but the conditions of the dreamer are also taken into account (as specified in the introduction). Because the fatalism implied in the strategies of interpretation contrasted with the Christian idea of God’s governance over human beings, there was an attempt to connect this kind of dream interpretation to the biblical, divinely-inspired dreams of Nebuchadnezzar, and also to their interpretation by the prophet Daniel. This is testified both by the common title of the book (Somniale Danielis) and by an introductory passage we find in one group of manuscripts: Incipit Somniale Danielis prophetae, quod vidit in Babilonia in diebus Nabuchodonosor regis. “Here begins the dream book of Daniel, which he saw in Babylon during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar.”

Somnialia Joseph, “Dream Alphabet” or “Chancebook” This book, named after the famous dream interpreter of the Old Testament, together with the Somniale Danielis, formed one of the most important sources for dreams and dream interpretation in the Middle Ages. Nonetheless, the strategy for interpretation is completely different, as it is based on a highly random process, which has nothing to do with the content of the dream itself. The book consists of an introductory section, which explains the rules, followed by a list of the key meanings related to the letters of the alphabet: Si quis aliquid sompniaverit, querat librum quemcumque voluerit et dicat “in nomine patris, et filii et spiritus sancti. Amen”. Et per primam literam quam scriptam inveniet in prima pagina quando liber aperitur significationem sompni inveniet. A significat prosperum iter et viam felicem. B dominacionem in plebe. “If someone has a dream, he has to seek out whatever book he wishes and say, ‘In the name of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit, amen,’ and he will know the meaning of his dream by looking at the first letter written on the first page when he opens the book itself. A signifies a lucky journey and a successful way. B signifies power over the people.”

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The attempt to connect this practice to Christianity is evident in the form of prayers quoted in the introductory section, as well as in the books suggested for use in some manuscripts (usually the Psalter). Finally, the link to the biblical, eponymous figure of Joseph is explicitly mentioned at the beginning of several versions: Sompnile Joseph, quod composuit, quando captus fuit a Pharaone “Dreambook of Joseph, which he composed while he was captured by the Pharaoh”

The number of manuscripts and printed editions, which contain the Somnialia Joseph, both in Latin and in many vernaculars, is too large to be fully listed here, and the tradition is characterized by significant variety, so I will restrict our current discussion to German manuscripts alone. All of them are characterized by an introduction in Latin, followed by an interpretation in German. It is possible to divide them into four groups (see Wachinger 2001, 945–946): 1. A similar interpretation of the letters, although with different text: – Vienna, cod. 2245, 83v; – Karlsruhe, LB, cod. Donaueschingen 793, 42v; 2. The peculiar text of Graz, UB, Ms 1228, 32v; 3. Ten manuscripts strictly related to the Latin text of St. Gallen, Stiftsbibl., Hs. 692, S. 491, which also share similarities with the first group: – Vienna, cod. 2907, 92v; – Augsburg, SB u. StB, 2° cod. 25, 81ra-b; – Rome, Vatican Library, Pal. Lat. 461, 278ra-b; – Munich, clm 25005, 80v; – Berlin, mgo 121, 173r-v; – Munich, cgm 5919, 46r-v; – Munich, cgm 270, 201r-v; – Erlangen, UB, Ms. 554, 161c; – Munich, cgm 312, 154v; – Rome, Vatican Library, Pal. Lat. 1257, 2v; 4. An apparently independent tradition in three manuscripts: – Heidelberg, cpg 832, 110ra–110vb; – Kremsmünster, Stiftsbibl., CC 264, 56rv; – Berlin, mgf 103, 57r–59r.



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Lunaria, “Dream-lunar” Also, this kind of dream books is not based on the content of the dreams themselves. More precisely, the key to the interpretation is related to the precise night of the dream, because of the influence of the moon over human lives. The book informs the reader about the reliability of dreams for each day; for instance, the second day is not considered to offer effective outcomes: Luna .ii.da si videris somnium, nullum effectum habet; nec in animo ponas sive bonum sive malum. “If you have seen a dream on the second moon, it will have no effect; you should not consider it, whether it seems good or bad”.

The counting is calendrical rather than astrological, and therefore lunaria always calculate months as lasting 30 days. The complexity of this kind of book is strengthened by their combination with other specialized lunaria and by their occasionally obtuse relations with the so-called lunaria collectiva, handbooks concerned with many different mantic practices, among which dream interpretation is also included. In most cases, it is possible to observe an attempt to link the divinatory practice to Christianity, as happened with the kinds of books mentioned above. In this case, each day was related to an episode from the Old Testament: Luna .ii. Eva creata est. “On the second moon, Eva was created.”

It seems that, in this highly complex manuscript tradition, the general lunarium is often accompanied by the specialized one (Liuzza 2010, 27–30). The Ms. Cotton Tiberius A.III (T), already mentioned in reference to the Somniale Danielis and containing different texts (in Latin and English) on prognostication, provides an example of this. Here, a general lunarium in Latin with an English gloss at 32v–35v is immediately followed by a specialized dreamlunar (again, in Latin with an English gloss) at 35v–36r.

Byzantium and the Christianization of the Arabic Tradition Especially during the ninth century, a huge number of dream books existed in the Byzantine world, generally attributed to important figures or even emperors (Nicephorus, Gregory of Nazianzus, Athanasius, Astrampsychus). The alphabetic dream book is a widespread typology, but there were also more comprehensive treatises, which were devoted not only to specific dreams and their interpretation, but also to an attempt to provide a theory on dreams.

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One of the most important works from this period, probably written during the tenth century, is the Oneirocriticon of Achmet. This work is a comprehensive treatise on dreams, written in Greek. In the introduction, its author, who was a Christian, calls himself ‘Achmet, son of Seirim’, claiming the authority of important Islamic dream interpreters. The main models for the treatise are the Arabic dreambooks; Artemidorus; Christian sources (Astrampsychus and the Greek versions of the Book of Daniel). The pivotal aspect of his theory is that every dream is sent by God and so the interpreter has a duty to understand its meaning, thanks to an association obtained by mental and physical processes, both conscious and unconscious.

Physiological Dream Books Especially during the Late Middle Ages, the importance of the physiological aspects concerning dreams increased, thanks to the influence of Aristotelian thought on Scholasticism. Dreams are considered as coming from the body, and physicians interpret them in order to understand the bodily signs and diagnose a sickness. The most relevant examples of this kind of dream book are Paschalis Romanus, Liber thesauri occulti and Arnaldus of Villanova, Libellus de somniorum interpretatione. The former was written in 1165 (probably not completed by this author), and contains excerpts from the first Latin translation of Artemidorus as well as Achmet’s treatises. Paschalis resorts to Macrobius’ categorization of dreams, but his explanations are more strongly influenced by medical texts and knowledge. More specifically, at the basis of his discourse lies the tradition of humors: the humoral condition of the dreamer, but also other concrete aspects, such as his position while dreaming, have a strong effect on the dream itself. The same interrelation between dream interpretation and medical diagnosis is found in the book of Arnaldus (thirteenth century): as signs coming from the body, dreams can warn of future sickness or problems.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Anglo-Saxon Prognostics. An Edition and Translation of Texts from London, British Library, Ms. Cotton Tiberius A.III. Ed. Roy Liuzza. Cambridge, 2010. The Complete Medieval Dreambook: A Multilingual Alphabetical Somnia Danielis Collation. Ed. Steven R. Fischer. Bern and Frankfurt am Main, 1982. Dreambooks in Byzantium. Six Oneirocritica in Translation, with Commentary and Introduction. Ed. Steven M. Oberhelman. London and New York, 2008. Somniale Danielis. An Edition of a Medieval Latin Dream Interpretation Handbook. Ed. Lawrence T. Martin. Madison, 1977.



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Secondary Literature Chardonnens, László Sándor. “Dream Divination in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books: Patterns of Transmission.” Aspects of Knowledge: Preserving and Reinventing Traditions of Learning in the Middle Ages. Eds. Marilina Cesario and Hugh Magennis. Manchester, 2018. 23–52. DiTommaso, Lorenzo. The Book of Daniel and the Apocryphal Daniel Literature. Leiden and Boston, 2005. Förster, Max. Beiträge zur mittelalterlichen Volkskunde IV. Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 125 (1910): 39–70. Gregory, Tullio (cur.). I sogni nel Medioevo. Rome, 1985. Kruger, Steven F. Dreaming in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, 1992. Palmer, Nigel F., and Klaus Speckenbach. Träume und Kräuter. Studien zur Petroneller “Circa instans“-Handschrift und zu den deutschen Traumbüchern des Mittelalters. Cologne, 1990. Speckenbach, Klaus. Traumbücher, Verfasserlexikon 9. Berlin, 1995. col. 1014–1028. Svenberg, Emanuel. Lunaria et Zodiologia Latina. Gothenburg, 1963. Wachinger, Burghart. Deutschsprachige Literatur des Mittelalters. Studienauswahl von dem ‚Verfasser­lexicon’ (Band 1–10). Berlin and New York, 2001. Wittmer-Butsch, Maria E. Zur Bedeutung von Schlaf und Traum im Mittelalter. Krems, 1990.

Alessandro Scafi

The End is Near: Medieval Mappae mundi and the Apocalypse Predictions and prophecies about the future are found in all civilizations. For medieval Christians the most important future development in human history was its end, predicted in the Book of Revelation. The coming end of the world announced by Holy Scripture was represented on medieval world maps (mappae mundi) (discussed to some extent in Scafi 2012a). A telling example of how medieval mappae mundi aimed to offer a complete description of the world but at the same time alluded to the end of it is offered by the Hereford world map, made towards the end of the thirteenth century in England (cf. Fig. 29). We see at the top of the map an aperture in heaven with the majestic figure of Christ coming to judge the living and the dead and to inaugurate an eternity of joy and of communion between God and the human family (for a general overview about the Hereford map: Westrem 2001; Hereford World Map 2006; Scafi 2006, 144–149; also Kline 2001 and Harvey 1996). We find the Apocalypse depicted on medieval maps of the world because of the characteristics of the mappa mundi as a genre taking in concepts of both time and space and representing the whole of human history and geography, from its beginnings in Eden to the final triumph of Christ (Scafi 2006, 125–131). We do not find explicit representations of the Heavenly Jerusalem described in the Book of Revelation on medieval maps, for this refers to a reality that lies beyond the end of human history and beyond earthly geography. A new heaven and a new earth (Rev. 21:1), the complete restoration of heaven on earth, cannot be visualized cartographically in terms of a direct relationship with this earth. Therefore, the Apocalypse is not represented on maps by explicit depictions of the Heavenly Jerusalem, but rather by images associated with the end of the world. How did mapmakers then depict the Apocalypse, the final moment of human history? One way is with an image of the Second Coming of Christ, as on the Hereford map. On the Psalter map, made in the thirteenth century, and closely related to the Hereford map, we also find the figure of Jesus at the top, flanked by two incense-swinging angels; Jesus raises his right hand in a gesture of blessing and in his left hand he holds a small tripartite globe (cf. Fig. 30; London, British Library, Add. MS 28681, fol. 9r.). But there is yet another way in which medieval mappae mundi alluded to the imminent Second Coming of Christ. The twelfth-century theologian Hugh of Saint Victor taught that God had planned a spatially ordered sequence of historical events running from east to west and that this westward flow of history had reached the extremity of the world as space (that is, in the West), at the moment in which humankind was about to reach the end of the world as time (Hugh of Saint Victor 2001, 111–112; this concept appears also in the https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-050



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Fig. 29: Diagram of the Hereford world map. Lincoln (?and Hereford), ca. 1300 (Hereford Cathedral). Photo credits: Alessandro Scafi.

writings of Honorius Augustodunensis 1982, 92; cf. Scafi 2006, 125–128). His ideas, it has been argued, may have influenced twelfth- and thirteenth-century mapping. Accordingly Gautier-Dalché suggests, for example, that the Isidore map in Munich (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. MS Clm. 10058. fol. 154v) derives from the Descriptio mappae mundi of Hugh of Saint Victor (1988, 81–86; cf. also Lecoq 1989). In fact, on many maps, going westwards after the Garden of Eden, situated in the furthest east, at the place of the rising sun, we find Enoch, the first city ever, founded by Cain before the Flood, then Noah’s Ark, Babylon and so on. From this perspective, medieval mappae mundi show the development of human history from the earthly

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Fig. 30: The Psalter world map. London, ca. 1265 (London, British Library, Add. MS 28681, fol. 9r). Photo credits: The British Library.



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paradise, inhabited by Adam and Eve at the start of the time stream in the Far East, to Western Europe, the place where the civilisation had eventually settled after having flourished in the lands of the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans. The fullness of space on medieval world maps thus bears witness to the fullness of time: we are very near to the end of time, because mankind has reached the uttermost limits of space in the West. Moreover, according to the standard division of the ages of the world, divulgated by Isidore, human history was in the sixth and last age of its development, that one spanning from the Incarnation of Christ to the end of the world (Isidore 1961 [1898], 426–432, 439, 445 and 454. See Guenée 1980, 148–154). This division is found, for example, in the Liber floridus of Lambert of St Omer, who was writing around 1120 (Lecoq 1987, 25–28, 34–37). The world maps found in the various manuscripts of the Liber floridus show, in fact, that earthly geography is the spatial background to retrace the whole history of all human beings, from its dawn to its coming end. There were, nonetheless, ways in which more specific reference was made to the Apocalypse on medieval mappae mundi. This was through representations of the events which will take place during the Last Days. The most frequent allusion is to the tribe of Gog and Magog. The Book of Revelation predicted that after being bound for one thousand years, Satan will be loosed again to deceive the nations and destroy ‘the camp of the saints and the beloved city’ through the agency of ‘Gog and Magog’. God, however, would destroy them with fire descending from heaven (Revelation 20 1–9). In medieval tradition Gog and Magog were identified with the destroyers walled up by Alexander the Great. According to the Revelations of Pseudo-Methodius, translated into Latin in the eighth century and afterwards a very popular text, Alexander, during his journey in Asia, confronted this uncivilized and alien tribe, and forced it between two mountains, asking God to push the mountains together, so that it would be enclosed and prevented from exterminating the other nations of the earth. But at the end of time Gog and Magog would be allowed by God to escape from their enclosure and destroy the Christian world (to obtain rich literature on the legend of Gog and Magog cf. among other studies Anderson 1932; Carey 1956, 130–131; Ross 1988, 34–35; Gow 1995; Donzel and Schmidt 2010 and Embodiments 2011). For example, the Sawley map, now preserved in a copy of the twelfth-century world chronicle Imago mundi of Honorius Augustodunensis (Cambridge, Corpus Christi Cambridge. MS 66. p.  2; Harvey 1997, 33–42), is surrounded by four warning angels, which have been interpreted as the four angels of Revelation 7.1, who restrained the winds after the opening of the sixth seal (cf. Fig. 31; Lecoq 1990, 170–171; Edson 1997, 113–115. Regarding aspects of the iconography Scafi 2012a, 408–409). One of the angels is pointing a warning finger to Gog and Magog gens immunda, “an unclean nation”. Following the Alexander legend, the map shows Gog and Magog on a peninsula surrounded by mountains and locked in by a wall to the south (cf. Fig. 32). On medieval mappae mundi, Gog and Magog usually appear in the far north-east, either on a peninsula or surrounded by a wall or hemmed in by a mountain chain or

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Fig. 31: The Sawley world map. Durham, England, late twelfth century (Cambridge, Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, MS 66, p. 2). Photo credits: The Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

else kept behind a gate, as on the Psalter map. On the Cotton or Anglo-Saxon world map, from the eleventh century, Gog and Magog are placed to the west of the Caspian Sea (London, British Library. Cotton MS Tiberius B.V. fol. 56v). In the world maps in two twelfth-century manuscripts of the Liber floridus, presently in Ghent and Wolfenbüttel, references to Gog/Magog and the tribes enclosed by Alexander the Great can be seen (Ghent, Rijksuniversiteit. MS 92. fol. 92v; Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek. Cod. Guelf. 1 Gud. lat. fol. 69v). On the Hereford map, a savage and accursed people closed off by Alexander the Great is indicated as living in an horrific peninsula, surrounded by mountains and to the south by a wall. The inscription tells of their horrific customs: they feed on human flesh and blood; and they will break out of their enclosure at the time of the Antichrist in order to devastate the world (Westrem 2001, 69–71). On the Ebstorf map (Wolf 2012 and Scafi 2012b), possibly a copy made around 1300 of an earlier map compiled around 1240, they are eating human bodies (cf. Fig. 32). On a Ranulf Higden’s map in the British Library, from the late fourteenth century, Gog and Magog are enclosed to the south of the Caspian Sea, and the accompanying inscription warns of imminent danger (London, British Library. Royal MS 14.C.IX. fols 1v–2r.). The appearance of Gog and Magog on maps is a concrete reference to the impending replacement of time by eternity: they are part of our inhabited world, and yet they are separated from it by their temporary enclosure. As historians of cartography have shown, Gog and Magog had a lengthy career on maps (Brincken 1989, 27–29; Gow 1998, 61–88; concerning Gog and Magog as being depicted variously in different texts and different maps cf. Westrem 1998, 54–75). Gog and Magog, together with the figure of the Antichrist, appeared in late medieval nautical cartography (Sáenz-López Pérez



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Fig. 32: The Ebstorf world map.? Ebstorf, Lower Saxony, ca. 1240 or ca. 1300 (Facsimile in Kloster Ebstorf. Detail of Gog and Magog). Photo credits: The British Library.

2005). We find them on the map of Andrea Bianco, dated 1436, the maps by Giovanni Leardo, drawn in 1442 and 1448, the map of Andreas Walsperger, made in 1448 and the Genoese world map of 1457. Only Fra Mauro, in his world map drawn around 1450, now in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, suggests that the tribes of Gog and Magog are not located near the Caspian Mountains and are unconnected to the Apocalypse. But we find them again on Hans Rust’s map of 1480 (Scafi 2006, 16–18, 207–209, 230, 233 and 238). Another way the Apocalypse is referred to on medieval mappae mundi is through the depiction of Enoch and Elijah in the earthly paradise. On a map from another manuscript of Lambert of St Omer’s Liber floridus, from the fourteenth century (Genoa, Biblioteca Durazzo Giustiniani MS A IX, fols 67v-68r), the earthly paradise is portrayed as a radiant sun in the Far East and is connected to Asia by the four rivers of Eden. The inscription ‘Enoch & Elias’ tells us that it is the resting place of these Old Testament patriarchs. On the so-called Borgia map of 1430 (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Borgiano XVI, gallerie), we see two old men and an angel in paradise. On the Rudimentum noviciorum map (Rudimentum noviciorum. Lübeck, 1475. fols 85v–86r), once again, Enoch and Elijah are in the Garden of Eden located at the top of the map

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Fig. 33: World map from a manuscript of Lambert of St-Omer’s Liber floridus. Flanders, second half of the fifteenth century (Genoa, Biblioteca Durazzo Giustiniani, MS A IX 9, fols 67v–68r. Detail of easter Asia with the inscription about Enoch and Elijah). Photo credits: Biblioteca Durazzo Giustiniani, Genoa.

(cf. Fig. 34; on the Lambert of St Omer’s, Borgia and Rudimentum noviciorum map, cf. Scafi 2006, 146, 204–207 and 210–212). The early Church regarded Enoch and Elijah as the two witnesses mentioned in Revelation, chapter 11 – a widespread belief that is found, for example, in the writings of Iraeneus, Tertullian, Jerome and Augustine (Scafi 2006, 61 note 73). According to this early Christian tradition, the two patriarchs escaped death and were placed in the earthly paradise. But their death is only delayed: at the end of time they will come back to the inhabited earth in order to fight the Antichrist; they will be slain by him, but then they will be resurrected and received into the eternal glory of heaven.



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Fig. 34: World map from the Rudimentum noviciorum (Lübeck: Lucas Brandis, 1475); fols 85v–86r (London, British Library, C3.d.11. Detail of Enoch and Elijah in the earthly paradise). Photo credits: The British Library.

In conclusion, medieval maps made a variety of references to the extraordinary events which will accompany the end of the world, showing that human civilizations had reached the western edge of the earth; that the tribes of Gog and Magog, enclosed by Alexander the Great, were impatient to invade the inhabited world; and that Enoch and Elijah were waiting patiently in Eden, ready to face death and the Last Things.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Hugh of Saint Victor. De archa Noe. Ed. Patrice Sicard. Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis CLXXVI. Turnhout, 2001. Honorius Augustodunensis. Imago Mundi. Ed. Valerie I. J. Flint. Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 49 (1982): 7–154. Isidore of Seville. Chronica majora. Ed. Theodor Mommsen. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores antiquissimi. XI/2. Berlin, 1961 [1898].

Secondary Literature Anderson, Andrew R. Alexander’s Gate, Gog and Magog and the Inclosed Nations. Cambridge, MA, 1932. Brincken, Anna-Dorothee von den. “Gog und Magog.” Die Mongolen. Eds. Walter Heissig and Claudius C. Müller. Innsbruck and Frankfurt am Main, 1989. 27–29. Carey, George. The Medieval Alexander. Cambridge, 1956.

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Donzel, Emeri van, and Andrea Schmidt. Gog and Magog in Early Eastern Christian and Islamic Sources: Sallam’s Quest for Alexander’s Wall. Leiden, 2010. Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte, 2 vols. Ed. Hartmut Kugler. Berlin, 2007. Edson, Evelyn. Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers Viewed their World. London, 1997. Embodiments of Evil: Gog and Magog, Interdisciplinary Studies of the ‘Other’ in Literature & Internet Texts. Eds. ‘Alī Asghar Seyed-Gohrab et al. Leiden, 2011. Gautier-Dalché, Patrick. La “Descriptio Mappe Mundi” de Hugues de Saint-Victor. Paris, 1988. Gow, Andrew C. “Gog and Magog on Mappaemundi and Early Printed World Maps: Orientalizing Ethnography in the Apocalyptic Tradition.” Journal of Early Modern History 2.1 (1998): 61–88. Gow, Andrew C. The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200–1600. Leiden, 1995. Guenée, Bernard. Histoire et culture historique dans l’Occident médiéval. Paris, 1980. Harvey, Paul D. A. “The Sawley (Henry of Mainz) Map.” Imago Mundi 49.1 (1997): 33–42. Harvey, Paul D. A. Mappa Mundi: the Hereford World Map. London and Toronto, 1996. The Hereford World Map: Medieval World Maps and Their Context. Ed. Paul D. A. Harvey. London, 2006. Kline, Naomi R. Maps of Medieval Thought. Woodbridge, 2001. Lecoq, Danielle. “La mappemonde du Liber Floridus ou La Vision du Monde de Lambert de Saint-Omer.” Imago Mundi 39.1 (1987): 9–49. Lecoq, Danielle. “La Mappemonde du De Arca Noe Mystica de Hugues de Saint-Victor (1128–1129).” Géographie du monde au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance. Ed. Monique Pellettier. Paris, 1989. 9–31. Lecoq, Danielle. “La mappemonde d’Henri de Mayence ou l’image du monde au XIIe siècle.” Iconographie médiévale: image, texte, contexte. Ed. Gaston Duchet-Suchauz. Paris, 1990. 155–207. Ross, David J. A. Alexander Historiatus. Second Edition. Frankfurt am Main, 1988. Sáenz-López Pérez, Sandra. “La representación de Gog y Magog y la imagen del Anticristo en las cartas náuticas bajomedievales.” Archivio español de arte 78, tomo 311 (2005): 263–276. Scafi, Alessandro. Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth. London and Chicago, 2006. Scafi, Alessandro. “Mapping the End: The Apocalypse in Medieval Cartography.” Literature and Theology 26.4 (2012a): 400–416. Scafi, Alessandro. “Le premier homme comme microcosme et préfiguration du Christ: la Mappemonde d’Ebstorf et le nom d’Adam.” Micrologus. Adam. Le premier homme. Ed. Agostino Paravicini Bagliani. Florence, 2012 b. 183–197. Westrem, Scott D. The Hereford Map. A Transcription and Translation of the Legends with Commentary. Turnhout, 2001. Westrem, Scott D. “Against Gog and Magog.” Text and Territory. Eds. Sylvia Tomasch and Sealy Gilles. Philadelphia, 1998. 54–75. Westrem, Scott D. The Hereford Map. A Transcription and Translation of the Legends with Commentary. Turnhout, 2001. Wolf, Armin. “The Ebstorf Mappamundi and Gervase of Tilbury: The Controversy Revisited.” Imago Mundi 64.1 (2012): 1–27.

Matthias Heiduk

Games and Prognostication: The Examples of Libro de los Juegos and De vetula Between games and prognostication exists a very ancient connection that has probably existed since the beginning of human culture due to the blurring of the boundaries between games and divination with regard to using the same randomization mechanisms for casting lots (Huizinga 1987, 92–105; Wykes 1964, 28–38). People were drawing sticks, throwing bones or dice, and creating piles through counting rhymes for the purpose of both playing games as well as consulting oracles. Those involved were hoping for the transfer of decisions into an area beyond human manipulation. The use of the same techniques often led to the transmission of meaning; for example, through several terms which cover the whole field of notions of taking a risk, leaving it to chance, gambling, and predicting the future (see also Holländer 1999, 13–15). Alea, the word for dice in the enormously popular games of luck in ancient Rome, develops into a term for risk and coincidence; the word sors, on the other hand, is first used for abstract terms, such as destiny and fate, and later for more concrete things, such as oracle sticks, oracle bones or dice; and the word chance, which exists in all European languages, originates in the games of Antiquity, because it is derived from the Latin verb cadere (to fall down) and is connected with the casting of dice. These examples of words of Latin origin already point to the use of game artefacts for the purpose of divination and the link between the semantic levels of games, chance and divination, as well as to the link between abstract concepts and concrete objects. Medieval vernacular languages also contain examples of the connection between game, chance and prediction. The word ventura in the Romance languages (as well as venture in English) is also of Latin origin. Before ventura became a general term for good luck or a future destiny, it was applied to indicate lucky cards and the luck of the dice. In Latin, ventura is used in the idiom ventura videre, to see the future, a reference to the mantic context. The Los or lot in Germanic languages is based on the verb hliozan for drawing lots and divination. Contact with the Islamic world enriched the European and particularly the Romance languages with another term, hazard, which is derived from the Arabic al-zahr, which stands for the die. In the European context, hazard is used for a particular game of dice. The modern meaning of hazard, as a risk or danger as well as an opportunity, also originates from the world of games of luck involving dice. In addition to these iridescent terms and the transmission of meaning between games and divination, the inquiry of oracles itself could became a game. The late medieval books of fate, for example, explicitly requested the users to avoid taking the consultation of oracles too serious and to regard it instead as a kind of amusement. Such request served also the strategy of pre-empting the moralistic caveats against https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-051

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all kinds of divination in the Christian context (↗ Heiduk, Prognostication Western Christian World, 113–114). The layout of many books of fate also constituted part of the entertainment at convivial gatherings, because they were veiling the way to the oracles through playful riddles also using dice or playing cards (Buland 2010, 43–50; Heiles 2018, 207–217; ↗ Heiles, Sortes). While the books of fate illustrate the development from divination to games, the converse process can be exemplified by card games. Card games emerged in Europe during the fourteenth century and quickly replaced dice games as the most popular mode of gambling. Since the fifteenth century, playing cards also often replaced dice as random generators in books of fate. The allegorical interpretation of the symbols of playing cards was introduced for the first time also in books of fate during the sixteenth century. This allegorical interpretation, combined with a specific system of putting the cards in files, multiplied the options for using playing cards as instruments for divinatory purposes, even without the involvement of books of fate. However, it only became fashionable in the late eighteenth century to read the symbols of tarot trump cards as occult allegories (Hoffmann 1995, 68–70). The following examples indicate further connections between games and prognostication. The “chess of spheres” from the Libro de los Juegos represents the ruler as a scholar, who is well-trained in cosmology and astrology. The poem “De vetula,” on the other hand, testifies to the mathematical predictability of the combinations of certain dice throws during gambling.

Libro de los Juegos The most systematic collection and explication of sit-down games in the Middle Ages is preserved in the codex unicus El Escorial Ms. T. j. 6. This luxury codex, with its 150 illuminations, was ordered by King Alfonso X of Castile at the royal scriptorium in Seville and was probably finished around the time of the king’s death in 1284. A contemporary title is missing from the codex. The following summary of the content was added later to the cover sheet: Juegos diversos de Axedrez, dados, y tablas, con sus explicaçiones, ordenados por mandado del Rey don Alonso el sabio – Different games from chess, games of dice up to board games with explanations and instructions at the behest of King Alfonso the Wise (Alfonso X, Libro de los Juegos, eds. Schädler and Calvo, 13; trans. Heiduk)

To simplify matters, researchers usually refer to this book as the “Libro de los Juegos”. Just as with many of the translations, compilations and treatises ordered by Alfonso, the King was not only the client and sponsor, but contributed his own ideas and helped to edit the book, so it is correct to say that the Book of Games reflects the King’s wish to compile a systematic collection of the most popular games of his time (Alfonso X, Libro de los Juegos, eds. Schädler and Calvo, 16–30; Caflisch 2018, 257–258). The games



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are ordered based on a didactic principle. Chess, as a pure puzzle game, represents the thesis, games of dice as games of chance the antithesis, whereas versions of board games that combine elements of both, such as backgammon and merels, represent the synthesis. The prologue of the book explains the intention that the collection of games should comfort and entertain people who are unable to ride out or go hunting and must stay at home (Alfonso X, Libro de los Juegos, ed. Orellana Calderón 2007, 20). The precious layout, however, illustrates also the didactic purpose in pointing out the relationship between fortuna (“fortune”) and prudentia (“prudence”) with the aid of games. The games became, thereby, a subject with a philosophical status (Wollesen 1990; Musser Golladay 2007). Respectively, the illuminations depict not only courtiers during gaming in highly realistic settings, but also representatives of different ethnic groups and social strata, including some depictions of the instruction of children. The cosmological-astrological board games, which were a category on their own as a concluding highlight of the collection, became most important according to this concept. These games are intellectually highly attractive to scholars who are familiar with astronomy, as Alfonso mentions in the book (Alfonso X, Libro de los Juegos, ed. Orellana Calderón 2007, 359). The illuminations of the astrological board games demonstrate how much Alfonso perceived himself as such a scholar, because they show the king presiding over the games sessions (El Escorial Ms. T. j. 6, fol. 96v and 97v; see also figure 1). The rules of these games followed the basic principles of astrology, so they extended the question of fortune and prudence to the question of free will and predestination. The two games listed at the end of the Libro de los Juegos each represent a variety of chess and a variety of backgammon for seven players which take place at speciallydesigned, seven-sided tables (for an explanation of the games, see Alfonso X, Libro de los Juegos, ed. Orellana Calderón, 359–371). To enhance the symbolic value of the number seven, a seven-sided dice is used in both games. The number seven stands for the seven celestial bodies of the cosmos as it was known back then: the five planets of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn as well as the luminaries of the Sun and the Moon. This is as far as cosmological references go for the game of backgammon, so that is all there is to say on that subject. As far as the game of chess is concerned, however, certain basic rules of astrology define the rules of the game, starting with the lay-out of the board, which reflects the composition of the cosmos. At the center, four rings of color represent the four elements from which the Earth is made. Next are the spheres of the celestial bodies, in the order determined by Ptolemy. Finally, there is the outer ring of the Zodiac. The lines connecting the center of the Earth to the Zodiac divide the game board into equal fields, representing the houses of the celestial bodies; that is, the positions from which those celestial bodies influence what happens on Earth. Each player takes a token of a color which traditionally represents a certain celestial body and places it on the lower edge of the preferred house of the planet – the house in which the impact of the planet is greatest. The seven players then take turns moving their pieces across the fields that follow the pattern of a chessboard. The number of fields differs for each sphere and increases with the distance

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to the center. This reflects the longer periods of circulation of the celestial bodies. When a player places his piece in the next house, the constellation of other planets is determined according to the basic astrological rules: if another planet-token is in opposition, it is located in a house diagonally opposed; if it is in conjunction, it is located in the same house; if it is in sextile, it is two sections apart, either in front of or behind the house; if it is at the quadrature, it is three sections apart; and if in trigon, four sections. Sextile and trigon constellations lead to positive results, meaning that the player whose move it is collects from his fellow two or three of the 12 tokens held by each player. All other constellations have negative results and the player whose turn it is has to surrender three, six or – in case of a conjunction – even all 12 of his tokens, and must quit the game.

Fig. 35: The “Chess of Spheres” according to the Libro de los Juegos (El Escorial Ms. T. j. 6, fol. 96v; date: ca. 1284). Photo credits: Ricardo Calvo.

Beside the singular evidence in the Libro de los Juegos, the astrological board games are unknown in the occidental context of the Middle Ages, but similar versions of the “chess of spheres” probably existed in Byzantium and at several courts of the Islamic World (Schädler 1999–2000).

De vetula Another collection and description of sit-down games predates the Libro de los Juegos of King Alfonso by several decades. It is not a systematic compilation, like in the royal Castilian codex, but rather an excursus in an extensive Latin-verse poem on the supposed life of the ancient poet, Ovid. According to this verse, Ovid himself tells of his debauched lifestyle, before the deception of an old bawd – from whom the poem gets its title De vetula – defrauded him of a rendezvous with his true love. The unfulfilled love triggered the conversion of this Pseudo-Ovid to Christianity and his devotion to the



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sciences, especially astral sciences, which is the main topic of the third and last part of the whole verse. The medieval contemporaries were already highly sceptical about the attribution of the verse to the true Ovid (Pseudo-Ovidius, De vetula, ed. Klopsch, 79–86; Hexter 2011, 308). However, about 50 manuscripts and fragments testify to its widespread circulation (Pseudo-Ovidius, De vetula, ed. Robathan 1968, 23–29). The broad range of topics of the poem – from true love to gentlemanly amusements, cosmology, philosophy, discourses about justice and elements of satire – seemed to promote its popularity and also manifold opportunities for references (Godman 1995; Caflisch 2018, 316–317). Roger Bacon (d. after 1292) provides the terminus ante quem for dating the verse with his reference to De Vetula in his Opus maius from 1267 (Pseudo-Ovidius, De vetula, ed. Robathan 1968, 13–14). According to the oldest manuscript tradition, De vetula seems to originate from a place in mid-thirteenth century Northern France (Caflisch 2018, 317). Arnold Gheylhoven named the cleric, physician, and poet Richard de Fournival (d. 1260) as author of De vetula in his index of authors from 1424. This attribution seems highly plausible considering Richard’s biography, his interests, and his knowledge of literature. However, most researchers evaluate the attribution by Arnold Gheylhoven as well as the overlap between Richard de Fournival and De vetula as too vague (for the discussion about the authorship see Pseudo-Ovidius, De vetula, ed. Klopsch 1967, 78–99; Pseudo-Ovidius, De vetula, ed. Robathan 1968, 3–10; Huchet 2018). The recently suggested alternative of attributing the authorship to Roger Bacon appears even less convincing (Burnett 2006, 138; Panti 2018). The first of the three parts of the poem covers mostly the amusements of Pseudo-Ovid prior to his conversion. It describes leisure time in the landscape, swimming, bird-trapping, hunting, fishing and, most prominently, sit-down games (Pseudo-Ovidius, De vetula, ed. Klopsch 1967, 194–223). These games are categorized comparable to the tripartition in the “Libro de los Juegos”, beginning with the malign dice games, followed by chess and some variants of backgammon and merels. The verses about games culminate in a passage about rythmomachia, the medieval numbers game for learning arithmetic, which contrasts with the negative connoted dice games as a dignified amusement for philosophers. Among the verses on dice games, the author interweaves several remarks about the different probabilities of certain combinations of pipes arising from throwing three six-sided dice. These vary in different ways and from them, sixteen compound numbers are produced. They are not, however, of equal value, since the larger and the smaller of them come rarely and the middle ones frequently, and the rest, the closer they are to the middle ones, the better they are and more frequently they come. (Pseudo-Ovidius, De vetula 410–415, ed. Klopsch 1967, 209; transl. Nancy Prior in Bellhouse 2000, 134.)

The author of De vetula, however, continues with an illustration of the probabilities of the combinations in three tables, which were already included in the medieval manuscripts as explanatory attachments to the verses. According to these tables, luck in gambling seems to arise far less by pure chance, as it becomes calculable.

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In the first table (Tab. 23), he lists all possible throws of three dice, and allocates the numbers of pips in lines to their addend. This arrangement shows how often certain addends occur. Tab. 23: The possible throws of three dice lined according to their addend 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11

666 665 664 663 662 661 651 641

655 654 653 652 642 632

631 621 555 644 643 633 551

622 531 611 554 553 552 542

541 522 521 511 445 543 533

532 441 431 421 411 444 443

442 432 422 331 322 311

433 333 332 223 222 221 211 111

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3

In the second table (Tab. 24), the author first starts with pairings of identical numbers of pips and then lists the possible deviations of one out of the three dice. This enumeration points to the fact that the total number of possibilities equals to the arithmetic product of the number of pairings of identical numbers of pips, which is six, multiplied by the number of deviations of one dice, which is five, which equals 30. The 30 possibilities are listed up to the beginning of line six. Then the table lists the probabilities of the combinations of three different numbers of pips. There are 20 such combinations. In total, there are, of course, 56 possible combinations of three dice, which are depicted here systematically. Tab. 24: The pairings of possible throws with three dice 666 664 552 336 224 112 631 421

555 663 551 335 223 654 531 542

444 662 446 334 221 543 653 541

333 661 445 332 116 432 652 643

222 556 443 331 115 321 651 431

111 554 442 226 114 642 621 632

665 553 441 225 113 641 521 532



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In a third table (Tab. 25), the author summarizes how often which combinations of which numbers of pips occur. Tab. 25: The frequency of combinations with three dice 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11

configurations of pips configurations of pips configurations of pips configurations of pips configurations of pips configurations of pips configurations of pips configurations of pips

1 1 2 3 4 5 6 6

way of falling way of falling ways of falling ways of falling ways of falling ways of falling ways of falling ways of falling

1 3 6 10 15 21 25 27

The explanations in De vetula signify an important moment in the prehistory of probability calculation (↗ Franklin, Quantifying Risks Western Christian World), because they contain the first systematic scheme of mathematical probabilities. The frequency of combinations with three six-sided dice, with the allotment of luck in gambling, remained the crucial point in further approaches to the mathematical riddle of probabilities. It was considered again, for example, by Niccolò Tartaglia (d. 1557), Girolamo Cardano (d. 1576), and in the famous correspondence between Pierre de Fermat (d. 1665) and Blaise Pascal (d. 1662) from 1654, which constituted stochastics (David 1962, 33–97; Bellhouse 2000; Ineichen 2002).

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Alfons X. der Weise. Das Buch der Spiele. Eds. Ulrich Schädler and Ricardo Calvo. Münster, 2009. Alfonso X el Sabio. Libro de los Juegos: Acedrex, Dados e Tablas. Ed. Raúl Orellana Calderón. Madrid, 2007. Pseudo-Ovidius. De Vetula. Untersuchungen und Text. Ed. Paul Klopsch. Leiden and Cologne, 1967. The Pseudo-Ovidian De Vetula. Ed. Dorothy M. Robathan. Amsterdam, 1968.

Secondary Literature Bellhouse, David. “De Vetula. A Medieval Manuscript Containing Probability Calculations.” International Statistical Review 68.2 (2000): 123–136. Buland, Rainer. “Orakel als Spiel und Spielerei”. Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 56 (2010): 43–63.

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Burnett, Charles. “The Astrological Categorization of Religions in Abū Maʽshar, the De vetula and Roger Bacon.” Language of Religion – Language of the People. Medieval Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Eds. Ernst Bremer et al. Munich, 2006. 127–138. Caflisch, Sophie. Spielend lernen. Spiel und Spielen in der mittelalterlichen Bildung. Ostfildern, 2018. David, Florence. Games, Gods, and Gambling. The Origins and History of Probability and Statistical Ideas from the Earliest Times to the Newtonian Era. London, 1962. Godman, Peter. “Ovid’s Sex Life. Classical Forgery and Medieval Poetry.” Poetica 27 (1995): 101–112. Heiles, Marco. Das Losbuch. Manuskriptologie einer Textsorte des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts. Cologne et al., 2018. Hexter, Ralph. “Shades of Ovid. Pseudo- (and para-) Ovidiana in the Middle Ages.” Ovid in the Middle Ages. Eds. James G. Clark et al. Cambridge, 2011. 284–309. Hoffmann, Detlef. Kultur- und Kunstgeschichte der Spielkarte. Marburg, 1995. Holländer, Barbara. “Das Spiel mit dem Würfel.” 5000 Jahre Würfelspiele. Ed. Günter G. Bauer. Salzburg, 1999. 13–38. Huchet, Marie-Madelene. “Le Quadrivium dans le De vetula attribué à Richard de Fournival.” Richard de Fournival et les sciences au XIIIe siècle (Micrologus Library 88). Eds. Joëlle Ducos and Christopher Lucken. Florence, 2018. 349–361. Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens. Vom Ursprung der Kultur im Spiel. 2nd ed. Reinbek, 1987 (1st ed. 1956; dut. orig.: Homo Ludens. Haarlem, 1938). Ineichen, Robert. “Würfel, Zufall und Wahrscheinlichkeit. Ein Blick auf die Vorgeschichte der Stochastik.” Magdeburger Wissenschaftsjournal 2 (2002): 39–46. Kennedy, Kirstin. Alfonso X of Castile-Léon. Royal Patronage, Self-Promotion, and Manuscripts in Thirteenth-Century Spain. Amsterdam, 2019. Musser Golladay, Sonja. Los Libros de Acedrex Dados e Tablas. Historical, Artistic and Metaphysical Dimensions of Alfonso X’s Book of Games. 2 vols. Diss. Ann Arbor, 2007. Panti, Cecilia. “An Astrological Path to Wisdom. Richard de Fournival, Roger Bacon and the Attribution of the Pseudo-Ovidian ‘De Vetula’.” Richard de Fournival et les sciences au XIIIe siècle (Micrologus Library 88). Eds. Joëlle Ducos and Christopher Lucken. Florence, 2018. 363–400. Schädler, Ulrich. “Sphären-‘Schach’. Zum sogenannten ‘Astronomischen Schach’ bei al-Masudi, al-Amoli und Alfons X.” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften 13 (1999/2000): 205–242. Wollesen, Jens. “Sub specie ludi. Text and Images in Alfonso El Sabio’s Libro de Acedrex, Dados e Tablas.” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 53.3 (1990): 277–308. Wykes, Alan. The Complete Illustrated Guide to Gambling. London, 1964.

Moshe Idel

Gematria and Prognostication Gematria is an interpretive method operating with the numerical values of a word or a cluster of words, which are equal to that of another word or cluster. The corresponding Greek term is isopsephy. In Jewish texts, the numerical values of the Hebrew alphabet are instrumental in this operation. Each letter has a numerical value – for example, alef, the first letter, is 1; bet, the second letter is 2; yod, the tenth letter, is 10; kaf, the eleventh letter, is 20; and so on until the last letter, tav, which is 400. Those numerical values can be manipulated; for example, alef can be counted also according to the values of the letters that comprise its name: 1+30+80=111. Furthermore, on occasion, letters can refer, not to single numbers, but to thousands. Gematria should be distinguished from numerology, since the latter is based on the special meaning of a certain number, independent of specific words or the relationship between words that correspond numerically. Though known in ancient texts, Mesopotamian and Greek, in the Hebrew literature, gematria played a marginal role prior to 1200, but since then has played a significant role, especially in the treatises written in Southern Germany, known as Hasidei Ashkenaz, and later also in the Kabbalistic literature since the second part of the thirteenth century. By and large, this method formed part of the complex exegetical systems applied mainly to the Hebrew Bible, and there are dozens of commentaries on the Pentateuch based basically on deciphering the meaning of the biblical text, predominantly by resorting to gematria. In some cases, this is done also in order to determine, on the ground of biblical verses, the precise date of the arrival of the eschaton or the Messiah. Two examples will illustrate the use of gematria and prognostication. Firstly, the Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia interprets, in 1286, the Hebrew phrase ‘Et Qetz, in Daniel 12:9, which means “the time of the end,” referring by means of gematria to a secret, seter, which is at the same time also the date of the end: “  ‘Et Qetz, and though I know that there are many Kabbalists who are not perfect, thinking as they do that their perfection consists in not revealing a secret issue [Seter]” (Otzar ‘Eden Ganuz, 1:3, ed. Amnon Gross, 110). The numerical value of the consonants of ‘Et qetz amount to 470 + 190 = 660 = STR. Thus, the secret is a date found in the very phrase dealing with the end. However, the more important interpretation for this Kabbalist of the term Qetz, is envisioned as an allegorical hint at Yeqitzah, awakening – a pseudo-etymology; namely, the redemption is an inner experience, not an apocalyptic event. A second example is a passage found in an anonymous Kabbalistic treatise, Ginnat Beitan, written in the mid-sixteenth century, which states:

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The great purpose of the advent of the king Messiah and of the World to Come, [was not disclosed as it is said] (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin, fol. 99a.): ‘The heart did not disclose to the mouth,’ neither to the vulgus or to all of the elite but to the few ones who merit this [i.  e. the knowledge of the secret]. It is forbidden to the recipient of this secret to disclose it even to the elite, except to a friend who is exceptionally close to him. And in the year of the Messiah, namely in the year whose secret is 358 of the sixth millennium, which is the year [Shannah] when the Messiah will arrive. [However] in an occult manner he has already arrived during the several cycles of the worlds which have already passed before the present one, in which we are, since at the time when he has already arrived, then he will come again also in this time. And when it was said ‘and then he will come’ it means that the Messiah will come in the future at the time he comes in our time; namely, in our world. (Sefer Ginnat Beitan, chapter 52, Oxford, Bodleian Library Ms. Opp. 441, fol. 63b.)

There are two secrets here: one is based on the gematria of the consonants of Messiah, H-MShYH = 358 plus 5000 of the H, which amounts to the Hebrew year 5558 = 1598 CE. The secret now is apocalyptic. However, there is also another secret: the Messiah will arrive in every cosmic cycle of 7,000 years on the same date, which means the his advent is not a unique event but a recurrent type of eschatology. Yet, there are a few examples where a variety of other languages is used in order to interpret the “meaning” of the Hebrew terms, almost all of them found in Abraham Abulafia’s writings. So, for example, the Hebrew word for “imagination”, dimyion, amounts to 110, as does the Hebrew spelling of mediyon – a Greek term for mediation, and diymon, “demon” in Greek, and also mediniy, in Hebrew “political”, which means that the power of the imagination is demonic in nature, and an intermediary between the intellect and the senses, which serves political aims (cf. Otzar ‘Eden Ganuz, 1:3, ed. Amnon Gross, 121–122). The same Kabbalist resorts several times to the gematria shiv‘yim leshonot (“seventy languages”) = tzeruf ’otiyyot (“the combination of letters”) = 1214, which refers to the extraction of all of the languages by means of the permutations of the 22 Hebrew letters. Also, the gematria lashon (“language”) = 386 = Tzeyruf (“combination”). Last but not least, a widespread gematria, ’Elohim (“God”) = 86 = ha-Teva‘ (“nature”), inspired by a view of Maimonides, found first in Abraham Abulafia and Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla, had an impact on Spinoza’s phrase, deus sive natura.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia. Otzar ‘Eden Ganuz. Ed. Amnon Gross. Jerusalem, 2000. Sefer Ginnat Beitan. Oxford, Bodleian Library Ms. Opp. 441 (Neubauer Catalogue No. 1578).



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Secondary Literature Barry, Kieren. The Greek Qabalah: Alphabetic Mysticism and Numerology in the Ancient World. York Beach, ME, 1999. Berliner, Abraham. Ketavim Nivḥarim. Vol. 1. Jerusalem, 1945 [esp. 34–37] [Hebrew]. Bohak, Gideon. “Bereshit Reshit in Gematria: New Sources for the Study of the Jewish Esoteric Tradition in the Talmudic and Gaonic Periods.” Tarbiz 83 (2015): 513–529 [Hebrew]. Dornseiff, Franz. Das Alphabet in Mystik und Magie. Repr. Berlin, 1994 [esp. 91–118]. Gruenwald, Ithamar. “On Applied Gematria in Jewish Literature.” Rabbi Mordechai Breuer Festschrift. Vol. 2. Ed. Moshe bar Asher. Jerusalem, 1992. 823–832 [Hebrew]. Idel, Moshe. “Multilingual Gematrias in Abraham Abulafia and Their Significance: From the Bible to Text to Language.” Nitʻei Ilan: Studies in Hebrew and Related Fields Presented to IIan Eldar. Eds. Moshe Bar Asher and Irit Meir. Jerusalem, 2014. 193–223 [Hebrew]. Idel, Moshe. “Deus sive Natura – The Metamorphosis of a Dictum from Maimonides to Spinoza.” Maimonides and the Sciences. Eds. Robert S. Cohen and Hillel Levine. Dordrecht, 2000. 87–110. Lieberman, Saul. Hellenism in Jewish Palestine. New York, 1950 [esp. 69–74]. Lieberman, Stephen J. “A Mesopotamian Background for the So-Called Aggadic Measures of Biblical Hermeneutics.” Hebrew Union College Annual 58 (1987): 157–225. Scholem, Gershom. Kabbalah. Tel Aviv, 1994 [esp. 337–344]. Tigay, Jeffrey H. “An Early Technique of Aggadic Exegesis.” History, Historiography and Interpretation: Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform Literatures. Eds. Hayim Tadmor and Moshe Weinfeld. Jerusalem, 1983. 169–189.

Matthew Melvin-Koushki

Geomancy in the Islamic World When Francis Bacon (d. 1626) valorized artificial divination over natural as an essential component of his scientific method, he was referring in particular to the Arabic art of geomancy, third in popularity only to astrology and oneiromancy throughout the early modern Western (Islamo-Judeo-Christian) world. Indeed, due to its early incorporation of astrological correspondences, it was often considered a form of “terrestrial astrology” requiring much less astronomical expertise while remaining richly informative. As a complex divinatory science based on a binary code, geomancy stands precise cognate to the ancient Chinese I Ching, but commanded in its prime a far greater territorial spread. It was – and in many cases still is – regularly practiced as a single tradition from Fez, Paris and Timbuktu to Kashgar, Kabul and Delhi, and calved simpler versions throughout sub-Saharan Africa (ifa, gara and sikidy) and thence the western hemisphere that remain very much in use. The Latin term geomantia imprecisely translates the Arabic ʻilm al-raml, the “science of sand”; like other Arabic terms for the art (khaṭṭ al-raml, ḍarb, ṭarq), this refers to its original procedure of drawing 16 random series of lines in the sand or dirt to generate the first four tetragrams of a geomantic reading. (Confusingly, in modern English usage geomancy can also refer to the Chinese art of feng shui, though this is a misnomer; as a system of divining the subtle currents of the earth for the purposes of building or burying, it is more accurately termed “topomancy.”) As with I Ching trigrams, the four lines of a geomantic figure (shakl) are generated by the odd (fard) or even (zawj) result of each line, creating a binary code represented as either one dot (nuqṭa) or two dots respectively – hence the science’s alternative name of ʻilm al-nuqṭa or ʻilm al-niqāṭ, whence its close association with lettrism (ʻilm al-ḥurūf), coeval Arabic twin to Hebrew kabbalah. This binary code is then deployed according to set procedures to capture the flux patterns of the four elemental energies (fire, air, water, earth) as a means to divine past, present and future events, and indeed the status of every thing or being in the sublunar realm. Emilie Savage-Smith (1993) summarizes the geomantic method as follows: The divination is accomplished by forming and then interpreting a design, called a geomantic tableau, consisting of 16 positions, each of which is occupied by a geomantic figure. The figures occupying the first four positions are determined by marking 16 horizontal lines of dots on a piece of paper or a dust board. Each row of dots is examined to determine if it is odd or even and is then represented by one or two dots accordingly. Each figure is then formed of a vertical column of four marks, each of which is either one or two dots. The first four figures, generated by lines made while the questioner concentrates upon the question, are placed side by side in a row from right to left. From these four figures the remaining twelve positions in the tableau are produced according to set procedures. Various interpretative methods are advocated by geomancers for reading the tableau, often depending upon the nature of the question asked. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-053



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Fig. 36: A typical geomantic tableau (Shams al-Dīn Khafrī, Risāla dar Raml, Princeton, University Library MS New Series 1177/2, fol. 24b). Photo credits: Matthew Melvin-Koushki.

From right to left, the first four figures in the top row are termed Mothers (ummahāt), which are combined to produce the second four in the same row, termed Daughters (banāt); the four figures the Mothers and Daughters produce in the next row are termed Nieces (ḥafīdāt, mutawallidāt); and the Nieces are combined to produce the zawāʾid in the rows below: first, the Right and Left Witnesses (shāhidayn), which in turn produce the Judge (mīzān) in the 15th position at the bottom of the geomantic tableau or shield chart (takht). In the 16th and final position, usually drawn below and to the right of the Judge or otherwise bracketed off, is the Result of the Result, or Reconciler (ʻāqibat al-ʻāqiba), produced by the combination of the first Mother and the Judge. The number of possible combinations of figures in a geomantic tableau is 164, or 65,536 in all. Each of the 16 geomantic figures acquired a full suite of specific elemental, astrological, calendrical, numerical, lettrist, humoral, physiognomical and other correspondences; the first 12 houses of the geomantic chart were likewise mapped onto the 12 planetary houses, and occasionally constructed in the form of a horoscope. Detailed information can thus be derived from the figures and their relationships about virtually any aspect of human experience, whether physical, mental or spiritual, whether past, present or future. In the Islamicate world, where the science originated, geomancy was typically associated in the first place with the prophets Idrīs (Enoch or Hermes) and Daniel and the Indian sage Ṭumṭum (Dindimus), not to mention a number of other standard occultist authorities, especially ʻAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (d. 661) and Jaʻfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 765), the first and sixth Shiʻi Imams respectively; prooftexts from the Quran and Hadith were also frequently adduced. Intellectual genealogies of geomancy in Arabic and Persian works on the subject thus presuppose a pre-Islamic Near Eastern or Indian origin, as well as an early North African Berber connection; the otherwise unknown Abū ʻAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Zanātī (fl. before 1232), presumably of the Berber Zanāta tribe, is acclaimed as its first major Arabic exponent. Later Christian authors too associate the science with various venerable prophets of antiquity, including Hermes and even Seth.

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While geomancy fell out of mainstream use in Enlightenment Europe, it experienced no such decline in the “un-Enlightened” Islamicate world, and particularly its vast Persianate subset, where occultist traditions enjoyed smoother continuity and wider practice. Along with astrologers and lettrists, geomancers were in high demand at imperial and regional courts during the early modern period, especially the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal; in particular, geomancy was often combined with astrology and lettrism for military-strategic purposes. And well into the modern period we find vigorous testimony that the science was still considered a scholarly staple from the Maghreb to India. In nineteenth-century Samarqand and Bukhara, for instance, surviving miscellany notebooks kept by judges and physicians suggest that they often employed geomantic readings to help them decide court cases or diagnose patients. Geomancy’s popularity remains unabated in Iran today, though frequent abuse by fraudsters has made its practice into something of a social problem; as a result, rammālī, “geomancing,” often tantamount to “hocus-pocus” in popular usage, is now legally punishable by a fine and up to seven years’ imprisonment. Yet Persian and Arabic manuals on the science have continued to be published, even by preeminent religious scholars like ʻAllāma Ṭabāṭabāʾī (d. 1981) – an index of the great depth to which its prestige was ingrained in Islamicate learned culture over the past millennium, the many colonialist ruptures of that culture all notwithstanding. As with many Arabic sciences, especially of the occult variety, geomancy likewise boomed in popularity among the humanists of the European Renaissance as an obvious technological application of the prisca sapientia; the manuals of (pseudo-) Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (d. 1535), Christophe de Cattan (fl. 1558) and Robert Fludd (d. 1637) represent the high water mark. But here too the Arabic-to-Latin transmission was very partial, and early modern Latinate geomancy remained largely pinned to those texts that happened to be done into Latin, inexpertly, during the translation movement of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, beginning with Hugo of Santalla (fl. 1145), with a few later inputs. Given such a piecemeal reception, various technical applications and procedures of Arabic geomancy became so garbled in Latin as to be unusable, and most of those that became standard in the Islamicate world remained unknown to the Latin Christianate. Byzantine scholars, by contrast, showed interest in contemporary developments in the science (under transliterations like rabolion and ramplion) through the sixteenth century; some even translated directly from Persian treatises. But the later Russian Orthodox reception was even more abbreviated and anxious as to possible heterodoxy. Most notably, Arabo-Persian geomancy in its mature form is predicated on the deployment of cycles (sg. dāʾira), or specific orders of the 16 figures (sg. taskīn), to reveal with precision such categories of data as the following: numbers, letters, days, months, years, astral bodies and divisions, body parts, physical and facial characteristics, minerals, precious stones, plants and plant products, animals and animal products, birds, fruits, tastes, colors, places, directions, regions, topographies, genders, social classes, nations, weapons, diseases, etc. These cycles are successively



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deployed until the desired information is obtained. In Latin and Latinate vernaculars, however, one of the few geomantic cycles to survive transmission, that of the letter (ḥarf), for telling the names of people, places and things, is both tied to the order of the Arabic alphabet and too corrupt to be of use to the modern geomancer, according to recent testimony. That said, Renaissance Latinate geomancy, however truncated, survived through at least the eighteenth century, and was revived – albeit in even more truncated form – by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn around the turn of the ­twentieth. Recent English geomantic manuals, especially that of John Michael Greer, suggest a renewed popularity in Anglo-American culture today. And again, the various derivative, similarly simplified forms of African geomancy are even more prevalent in both the Old World and the New. To understand the importance of geomancy to the history of Western science, however, we must turn to the early modern Persianate realm, where it reached its apex of sophistication and complexity through eager imperial patronage. Epistemologically, Persian geomancy came to occupy the midpoint between astrology and alchemy. The conceptual and sociopolitical association of the science of the sand with the science of the stars is exemplified by the fact that the professional designation munajjim, court astronomer-astrologer, in some cases became synonymous with rammāl, court geomancer, so frequently was mastery of both sciences combined in the same individual. By the same token, in Persian encyclopedias of the sciences, though not in Arabic or Latin ones, geomancy was classified as a mathematical science, together with astrology, from the twelfth century onward, when the eminent philosopher-theologian Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210) introduced it to a persophone readership. This epistemic seachange, in turn, heralded its great interest to early modern Iranian philosophers and astronomers, from Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 1274) to Shams al-Dīn Khafrī (d. 1535), as a scientific means of corroborating Neopythagorean-Neoplatonic emanationist cosmology. Even the Timurid sultan-scientist Ulugh Beg (r. 1409–1449) himself, founder of the Samarqand Observatory, was partial to this terrestrial astrology. But geomancy was just as frequently classed as a physiological science (ʻilm-i ṭabāyiʻ), and hence a natural correlate to both alchemy and medicine: for all surviving Arabic and Persian manuals stress the status of the 16 figures as maps of the four elements and four qualities (and by extension the four humors) in their perpetual reconfigurations – whence geomancy’s claim over all beings and events in the sublunar, physical realm. As adepts of a simultaneously terrestial and celestial science, moreover, Muslim geomancers developed various forms of geomantic magic to further put their starry-earthy art to scientific-imperial use. Given such wide and sustained prestige, surviving copies of Arabic and Persian geomantic manuals outstrip Latinate ones by at least an order of magnitude: over a thousand geomantic manuscripts are preserved in Iran alone, while mere dozens remain in the libraries of Western Europe and North America. Geomancy, in sum, developed from obscure origins to become a mature and mainstream mathematical-natural occult science of wide appeal throughout the early modern Western world, with reverberations to the present. Predicated on a Neopy-

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thagorean-Neoplatonic system and animated by the twin principles of correspondence and secondary causation, geomancy was of particular interest to thinkers and rulers throughout the Persianate world during the thirteenth to seventeenth-century imperial moment most especially. Its great philosophical-scientific virtue lay in its ability to empirically support the cosmology of its scholarly practitioners; its professional virtue lay in its status as magnet for royal patronage. For Mughal, Safavid, Ottoman and other elites, the science became part and parcel of the performance of sainthood and sacral kingship because it promises granular, prophetic-grade insight into and thus power over history. That is to say, such sciences of divination, as the very term connotes, were crucial to the quest for divinization pursued by many Turko-Mongol Perso-Islamic sovereigns and other messianic claimants in the run-up to the Islamic millennium (1592)  – hence the unprecedented and unparalleled sophistication of sixteenth-century Persian geomantic manuals, dimly reflected in their contemporary Latin, French and English cognates. Thus did the Iranian émigré Hidāyat Allāh Munajjim Shīrāzī (fl. 1593) write his manual – the most comprehensive ever produced in the Western tradition  – to celebrate the Mughal emperor Akbar’s (r.  1556–1605) accession as millennial sovereign; thus did Abū l-Fażl ʻAllāmī (d. 1602), chief architect of the new Mughal imperial culture, require that all students and state officials be versed in the science. Despite its deficient reception in Western Europe, and the destruction of much of its scholarly prestige throughout the Islamicate world under the brunt of Enlightened colonialism, geomancy – embraced by Bacon and a host of his Muslim, Jewish, Christian and African peers – remains essential to any history of Western science worth the name: for it pursues, in the most literal and direct way possible, the reading of the earth itself as a mathematical Book.

Selected Bibliography Bascom, William R. Ifa Divination: Communication between Gods and Men in West Africa. Bloomington, 1969. Block, Sam. “Geomancy Posts.” The Digital Ambler. http://digitalambler.com/about/geomancyposts (8 December 2019). Charmasson, Thérèse. Recherches sur une technique divinatoire: la géomancie dans l’occident médiéval. Geneva, 1980. Doostdar, Alireza. The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny. Princeton, 2018. Fahd, Toufic. “Khaṭṭ.” Encyclopaedia of Islam 2. Eds. Peri Bearman et al. Leiden, 1992. Last access on 8 December 2019. Fahd, Toufic. La divination arabe: études religieuses, sociologiques et folkloriques sur le milieu natif de l’Islam. Leiden, 1966.



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Fleischer, Cornell H. “Ancient Wisdom and New Sciences: Prophecies at the Ottoman Court in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries.” Falnama: The Book of Omens. Eds. Massumeh Farhad and Serpil Bağcı. London, 2009. 231–243. Greer, John Michael. The Art and Practice of Geomancy: Divination, Magic, and Earth Wisdom of the Renaissance. San Francisco, 2009. Jaulin, Robert. Géomancie et Islam. Paris, 1991. Klein-Franke, Felix. “The Geomancy of Aḥmad b. ʻAli Zunbul: A Study of the Arabic Corpus Hermeticum.” Ambix 20.1 (1973): 26–35. Langman, Pete. “The Future Now: Chance, Time and Natural Divination in the Thought of Francis Bacon.” The Uses of the Future in Early Modern Europe. Eds. Andrea Brady and Emily Butterworth. New York, 2010. 142–158. Mavroudi, Maria. “Islamic Divination in the Context of Its ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ Counterparts.” Falnama: The Book of Omens. Eds. Massumeh Farhad and Serpil Bağcı. London, 2009. 221–229. Melvin-Koushki, Matthew. “Persianate Geomancy from Ṭūsī to the Millennium: A Preliminary Survey.” Occult Sciences in Pre-modern Islamic Cultures. Eds. Nader El-Bizri and Eva Orthmann. Beirut, 2018. 151–199. Melvin-Koushki, Matthew. “Powers of One: The Mathematicalization of the Occult Sciences in the High Persianate Tradition.” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 5.1 (2017): 127–199. Palazzo, Alessandro, and Irene Zavattero (eds.). Geomancy and Other Forms of Divination. Florence, 2017. Peek, Philip M. (ed.). African Divination Systems: Ways of Knowing. Bloomington, 1991. Regourd, Annick. “Pratiques de géomancie au Yémen.” Religion et pratiques de puissance. Ed. Albert de Surgy. Paris, 1997. 105–128. Ryan, William F. The Bathhouse at Midnight: Magic in Russia. University Park, PA, 1999. Savage-Smith, Emilie. “Geomancy.” Encyclopaedia of Islam 3. Eds. Kate Fleet et al. Leiden, 1993. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_27406 (8 December 2019). Savage-Smith, Emilie, and Marion B. Smith. “Islamic Geomancy and a Thirteenth-Century Divinatory Device: Another Look.” Magic and Divination in Early Islam. Ed. Emilie Savage-Smith. Aldershot, 2004. 211–276. Skinner, Stephen. Geomancy in Theory and Practice. Second Edition. St. Paul, MN, 2011. Smith, Marion B. “The Nature of Islamic Geomancy with a Critique of a Structuralist’s Approach.” Studia Islamica 49 (1979): 5–38. Tannery, Paul. “Le Rabolion.” Mémoires scientifiques. Ed. Johan Ludvig Heiburg. Paris, 1920. 4: 318–344. Villuendas Sabaté, Blanca. Judaeo-Islamica. La geomancia en los manuscritos judeo-árabes de la Gueniza de El Cairo. Cordoba, 2015.

Glen M. Cooper and Petra G. Schmidl

Geomantic Artefacts in the Medieval Islamic World Geomancy (ʻilm al-raml, lit. “the science of sand”, but also khaṭṭ al-raml, lit. “the line in the sand” and ḍarb al-raml, lit. “the striking of the sand”), after astrology the most popular pre-modern mantic practice in Islamic societies, is based on the random, unconscious writing of dots, usually on sand. In its common manifestation, four sets of four lines of dots are reduced to one of the 16 geomantic figures (shakl, pl. ashkāl). These four mothers (umm, pl. ummahāt) are further regrouped and arranged in 16 places or houses (bayt, pl. buyūt) that form the geomantic tableau, then i­nterpreted (for more details, see ↗ Regourd, Mantic Arts Islamic World, 470). To perform this practice, the practitioner might use a dust board (takht; also the term for the ­geomantic tableau itself) and write on it with a stylus. In addition to this tool, which might be also used for other, not only prognostic practices, there exists, similar to astrology and different to other mantic practices, at least one instrument designed and applied to geomantic practices. This most elaborate geomantic device was made in 1241/1242 by Muḥammad ibn Khutlukh al-Mawṣilī, who is associated with an undated metal incense-burner, but no further biographical details are known. Preserved in the British Museum (no. 1888,0526.1), this otherwise unknown unique artefact provides a fine example of the metalwork carried out in Syria, Egypt and Iraq in the thirteenth century and witnesses, by its lavish design, the high esteem in which geomancy was held in these places and times. It simplifies the process of generating a geomantic tableau, the diagram that was used by the diviner to answer questions and predict the future. A rectangular metal tablet of ca. 33.7 cm in length, 1.6 cm in depth and 19.6 cm in height forms the basic element of this geomantic device. A suspensory apparatus adds to the instrument’s height a further 5.4 cm, that resembles the throne (kursī) of an astrolabe (↗ Rodríguez-Arribas, Mathematical Instruments), but without any similarly clear use. While the back is decorated with ribbons, either filled with inscriptions bestowing blessings or a floral design, and bears an owner’s note that was probably added subsequently, the front presents the actual geomantic device (see Fig. 37). Altogether, it consists of 19 small dials, each with a window through which appear the geomantic figures, along with their names inlaid in silver, a large dial and four 90° sliding arcs. 16 of the windows, through which the dials containing the figures can be observed, occupy the left three quarters of the rectangle, and are inscribed with the names of the 16 traditional places or houses of the geomantic tableau, the most important of which are the 15th and 16th, which give a composite result of the first 14. Framed by six of these small dials, the device bears, in its lower half, a large dial whose upper part is visible through a semi-circular window and that is aligned with https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-054



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Fig. 37: The front of the geomantic device preserved in the British Museum (London, British Museum Inv. No. 1888,0526.1). Photo credits: The Trustees of the British Museum.

Fig. 38: The mechanisms behind the front cover of the same geomantic device. Photo credits: The Trustees of the British Museum.

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the four cardinal directions, south on the top, west on the right, north at the bottom, and east on the left, as on an astrolabe. It associates risings and/or settings of some of the lunar mansions, geomantic figures and short prognostications. In the upper part of the right quarter are nested four 90°-arcs, each containing 16 geomantic figures and with slides that move independently. Below these arcs, a short inscription states the maker and the year of making. The other three of the 19 small dials generate according to the inscription “the geomantic triplet” (muthallathat al-raml). While the purpose of Muḥammad ibn Khutlukh al-Mawṣilī’s geomantic device is obvious, namely generating a geomantic tableau and then interpreting it, the single steps to accomplish this task are somewhat unclear, so interpretations are not included. Manuals would still be needed, since the device has no instructions regarding its use. Nevertheless, the first step concerns determining the four mothers by using the four 90°-arcs and moving their slides purposelessly, unconsciously, and probably even blindly. The results were then transferred to the first four houses, and the dials set. Then, the following 12 houses are determined by the rules for casting a geomantic tableau and set accordingly. There is no gear mechanism that allows the automatic generation of the houses (see Fig. 38). Further, the large dial and the three smaller ones below the arcs must be set also. The generation of their figures and the role they play regarding those placed in the geomantic tableau is, however, less clear. Seemingly, they assist the user in interpreting the figures, particularly the large dial that indicates the benefic or malefic characteristics of the figures and opens up further possibilities for interpretation by associating them with the lunar mansions and aligning them with the seasons. Although this geomantic device is a unique example, what it displays is consistent with the main authorities on geomancy. However, it exhibits several innovations. While manuals provide associations between the geomantic figures and several items that are also known from astrology, e.  g., gender and the elements, the lunar mansions do not seem to appear, so the maker has combined traditional geomancy with astrology in a unique way. In an inscription, he even announces that his device is superior to the manuals so, in this regard, he also implies his familiarity with these. The associations of the geomantic figures are also documented on a late brass plate from seventeenth- or eighteenth-century Iran and preserved in the Nasser D. Khalīlī collection (no. SCI33). Resembling, through its suspensory apparatus, an astrolabe mater and measuring ca. 16–17 cm in diameter, both of its sides contain Persian inscriptions, including a gazetteer of 34 cities with their coordinates and the inḥirāf angle that describes the direction of Mecca, the qibla. On the reverse, the 16 geomantic figures are associated, for example, with planets, zodiacal signs, elements and colors. Therefore, the brass plate might be used to perform religious obligations and mantic practices. Finally, due to the confusion concerning their name, geomantic dice, such as those preserved in the Nasser D. Khalīlī collections (no. SCI135A-M), should not go unmentioned. They consist of four dice connected by a string or wire, displaying four



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sides inscribed with two, three or four dots. Despite their name, these geomantic dice were used for other lot-casting, cleromantic practices rather than geomancy proper (see also ↗ Schmidl, Medieval Traditions Islamic World, 217, and ↗ Ludwig, Prognostication Early Modern Times, 260, Fig. 11).

Selected Bibliography Maddison, Francis R., and Emilie Savage-Smith (eds.). Science, Tools & Magic. 2 vols. (The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art 12). London, 1997. Savage-Smith, Emilie, and Marion B. Smith. “Islamic Geomancy and a Thirteenth-Century Divinatory Device: Another Look.” Magic and Divination in Early Islam. Ed. Emilie Savage-Smith. Aldershot, 2004. 211–276. https://islamicworld.britishmuseum.org/collection/RRM10451/ (10 March 2020).

Wolfram Brandes

Hagiography in the Medieval Eastern Christian World An important component of Byzantine literature are the many Lives of the Saints. A sign of holiness is the ability to receive visions also about the future and the end of the world. The existent apocalyptic literature also at times influenced hagiographical texts. Some examples will be presented here: In the Life of the Holy Golindouch (BHG 700–701; CPG 7521; Garitte 1956; Papadopoulos-Kerameus 1897, 149–174; see Peeters 1944; Magdalino 1993, 18; Brandes 1997, 49; Efthymiadis 2011, 65), a Persian lady who converted from Zoroastrianism to Christianity (baptized Maria; d. 591), the author Eustratius reports on a vision experienced by this holy woman. After spending a long time in a Persian prison, she arrived in Jerusalem and met an old monk. He gave her a prophecy: “the end is near and the Antichrist is coming” (appropinquavit finis et adventus Antichristi). Holy Golinduch informed him that, when she was in prison, an angel visited her, who said almost the same thing (Domine, cum ego etiam detenta essem in carceris…audivi ab angelo qui dixit: ‘Appropinquavit adventus Antichristi et prope est super portas’ [see Matt. 24:33]) (Garitte 1956, 437; Papadopoulos-Kerameus 1897, 167squ.). Later, she met in Hierapolis the Persian king Khosrow who was living in exile there. She prophesized to him that, with help of the Roman emperor Maurice, he would attain the throne of the Persian Empire. Then, she spoke again of the coming of the Antichrist who was standing outside the door and on the future of the Roman Empire (Deinde etiam dixit de Antichristo, quia appropinquavit adventus eius et super ianuas stat et de regno Graecorum quid eventurum esset. Quod tacuerunt et nemini narraverunt [following the words of Mark 13:15 = Matt. 24:42: “So you are to keep watch: because you are not certain when the master of the house is coming, in the evening, or in the middle of the night, or at the cock’s cry, or in the morning” (from the so-called synoptic apocalypse)]). This prophecy should be seen in connection with a prophecy reported in the History of Theophylact Simocatta (written at the end of the second decade of the seventh century) by the Persian king Khosrow II (d. 628), following the defeat of the Persians against the victorious Byzantine emperor Heraclius (spoken to the Byzantine general John Mystacon): Be assured that troubles will flow back in turn against you Romans. The Babylonian race (i.  e., the Persians) will hold the Roman state in its power for a threefold cyclic hebdomad of years. Thereafter, you Romans will enslave the Persians for a fifth hebdomad of years. When these very things have been accomplished, the day without evening will dwell among mortals and the expected fate will achieve power, when the forces of destruction will be handed over to dissolution and those of the better life hold sway. (De Boor 1972, 216–217; Schreiner 1985, 160; Whitby and Whitby 1986, 153). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-055



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This prophecy is a typical vaticinium ex eventu, as found in the Byzantine apocalyptic literature. The background of the prophecies of Khosrow II and the Holy Golinduch are the Byzantine-Persians wars (ending with the Byzantine victory in 628) and the terrible death of Emperor Maurice (and his family) in 602. The anticipated end of the world in the tenth century resulting from categories of universal eschatology (time reckoning, apocalyptic interpretation of natural phenomena [comets, earthquakes, meteorological incidences, etc.] or political events [the incursion of barbaric people, wars in general, etc.]) has been connected with the so-called individual eschatology (the destiny of the individual soul after death in heaven or hell). Many saints have had the capability of seeing the future and predicting future events, both good and bad. Especially in the tenth century, when awaiting the possible end of time and the world around the year 1000 (↗ Brandes, Eschatology Eastern Christian World), some very long (at times consisting of some hundred printed pages) Lives of Saints were written (Magdalino 1999, 2003). Here, some important points of eschatology are playing a central role. A full scenario of the events that would occur at the end of time could be found here (depending on older apocalyptic material), or some eschatological phenomena like the appearance of Gog and Magog as seen in some foreign peoples at this time (e.  g. the Kievan Rus’) as the people of the Antichrist. They play a central role in the last fighting before the second Parousia of Christ and the Last Judgement. In addition, the literary theme of the journey to heaven and hell and its highly detailed description became a focus of this Saints’ Lives (using older patristic literature). A famous example is the Life of the Holy Basil (the Younger) (BHG 263), which was closely related to the Life of St Andrew the Fool (BHG 115–117). His pupil Gregory wrote his Vita in the tenth century (sometime after 956), at a time when, in Byzantium, the end of history/of the world was viewed as a real possibility – now available in a new edition and translation with notes and a good introduction (Sullivan et al. 2014). It is not the aim here to discuss the (fictitious) Life of the Holy Basil, which is full of wonders of different kinds, but of special interest is his vision of heaven as a celestial (New) Jerusalem, ending in a vision of the Last Judgement (l.c., 344–698 [IV. 1–V.144]). One should observe that this vision has a veritable anti-Jewish character (l.c., 352–363 [IV. 5]; 602–634 [V. 98–109]). Heaven and hell are described in great detail, and the cruel destiny awaiting sinners in hell is depicted particularly vividly. The elaborateness of these descriptions is unique in Byzantine literature and is surely a sign of a developed sorrow that the end of the world is at hand in the near future. Noteworthy is also his prediction of an attack of the Rhos, the “Russians” of the tenth century, which he identified with the apocalyptic people, Gog and Magog (Brandes 1997, 36, and Brandes 2012; Brandes et al. 2016). The Apocalypse of the Theotokos (the mother of God) (James 1893; Delatte 1927, 273–288; other editions noted in Baun 2007 [translation]) and the Apocalypse of Anastasia (Homburg 1903; Radermacher 1898; Braun 2007 [translation]) from the tenth

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century are two further witnesses of an increased interest in the fate of the souls of humans after death. They are not apocalypses stricto sensu (↗ Brandes, Eschatology Eastern Christian World) but revelations of the “other world(s)”, of heaven and hell – in combination with the Last Judgement. The fear of the very different punishments for sinners in hell was clearly a common phenomenon and the accumulation of these texts in the tenth century should be viewed against the background of the looming dangerous dates surrounding the year 1,000 according to our Christian era. In the Apokalypse of the Theotokos, Archangel Michael (or, in some manuscripts, Gabriel) revealed to the panagia theotokos on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem “the punishments, and concerning things in heaven and on earth and in the nether regions.” Famous in this respect is also the so-called Apocalypse of Anastasia. The longest section of the text described the punishments of sinners in hell (also Emperor John I Tzimiskes who murdered his predecessor, Nicephorus II Phokas [in 969] – so the text had been written by the end of the tenth century; see Baun 2007, 410 [§ 42]). Anastasia was a nun during the time of Emperor Theodosius I – according to the story – and, because of her most pious behavior, she received some visions. According to one version, Anastasia had a vision in the year 6015 of the world, what would be according to the common Byzantine year 507 CE (or, according to the Alexandrian era, 523 CE). This may reflect the expectation that the world would end around 500 CE, as a wellknown phenomenon (Brandes 1997; Meier 2003). It is probable that our text from the tenth century depended on a source from the beginning of the sixth century (but see Braun 2007, 216squ.). During a severe illness, the holy Anastasia received visions of heaven, interpreted by the archangel Michael. After three days, she awoke and related all of her visions to the spiritual father of her monastery. Describing the heavenly throne of God and the different hosts of angels and holy persons (Abraham, the Theotokos, Elija, etc.), Anastasia saw also a “regiment” of angels (with wings, four faces, etc. – according to Ezek. 1:5–12 and Rev. 4:6–11). They “cried aloud without ceasing, saying: ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of Sabaoth; Heaven is full of your glory.’ But they did not say ‘earth’, since God is about to go down to earth, and then the earth will be filled with his glory” (Baun 2007, 404 [§ 17]). Written at the end of the tenth century, this and other passages also showed that the end was anticipated, and respectively the Last Judgement, imminently! Of special interest are the descriptions of the punishments for sinners in Hell (§§ 29–36; the Antichrist, together with the Jews, is still bound in Hell [§ 31]) and of Paradise (§§ 37–39). Also, the Vita of St Niphon (Rystenko 1928; BHG 1371z), written in the last years of the tenth century, describes an extended vision of the Last Judgement (chapters 82–94 [82–103]). There are some similarities between this Life and that of St Andrew the Fool (see Magdalino 2003, 269; Rydén 1990; Efthymiadis 2011, 127). Yet, the most important example of descriptions of the lives of holy personages is the Life of Andrew Salos (the fool) (Rydén 1974, 1995). It had a remarkably wide circulation in Byzantium and survived in more than 90 codices; the oldest manuscript dates to the second half of the tenth century (Efthymiadis 2011, 126). It is also a very



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long text, covering more than 300 printed pages (text and translation) (Rydén 1995). The author calls himself Nicephorus (the presbyter of Hagia Sophia) and is introduced in the story as the saint’s contemporary. During the reign of Emperor Leo I in the fifth century (457–474), young Andrew arrived in Constantinople. In fact, the text was written in the tenth century. He became the slave of a protospatharios called Theognostos. Later, he became a “holy fool” and was in permanent contact with the author, Nicephorus. Indeed, this text is not historical in nature but a fiction written in historical guise. “The vita is a succession of narratives, mostly stories about demonic appearances, visons in dream and even ‘questions and answers’ about the meaning of biblical passages. In one such ‘questions and answers’ pattern, the author embeds a long eschatological digression in which Andrew prophesies the end of the world to his disciple Epiphanius” (so Efthymiadis 2012, 126; Rydén 1995, 258–285: the so-called Andrew-Salos-Apocalypse; Magdalino 1999). Andrew lived during his final days in the house of the father of his pupil, Epiphanius. Here, he provides a long, very interesting and detailed answer to Epiphanius’ question about the events that would occur at the end of the world. No enemy would capture Constantinople because the mother of God (and the walls) would protect the city. In particular, he describes in great detail the last Roman emperors (Brandes 1991) – not one, but a series of different rulers before the end. In addition, a “wicked woman” (from the Pontus region) would play a negative role in this listing. Finally, Constantinople would sink into the sea, and “only the column in the forum […] will remain and be saved, because it has the precious nails” (Rydén 1995, 276; Brandes 1999)  – i.  e. the still visible column of Constantine. The Jews would gather at Jerusalem and the earthly power would move to Rome, Syllaion and Thessalonica. The gates, which Alexander the Great erected against the terrible peoples of Gog and Magog, would open and their 32 nations would destroy the world. Moreover, the Antichrist (from the tribe of Dan) would appear. Enoch and Elijah would stand against the Antichrist, but he would kill them. A great part of humankind would perish in wars at the hands of the Antichrist and his host. Finally, God would defeat the antichristian powers and the dead would be resurrected. This apocalypse is based on far older material and is one of our main sources for the eschatological thought of the Byzantines. In many Saints’ Lives, the authors used an “apocalyptic” vocabulary. This does not necessarily indicate that there was a highly eschatological awaiting, but it might do. Using terms like the “antichrist” or “forerunner of the antichrist” assumed that the readership of these texts could understand this reference. A good example is the (iconoclastic) patriarch of Constantinople John the Grammarian (PmbZ 3199). He was often called prodromos tou antichristou or the antichrist in hagiographical texts (also in historiographical works  – see Bréhier 1904) by iconophils in the ninth century; as, for example, in the Life of John, the abbot of the monastery tou Psicha (BHG 896; Efthymiadis 2011, 111–112; Van den Ven 1902, 443–445; Abrahamse 1982, 7), or, in the Life of the Patriarch Nicephorus, written by Ignatius (see PmbZ 2665, 5301; BHG 1335; de Boor 1880, 166; Abrahamse 1982, 8).

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One could add many more examples of apocalyptic elements in various hagiological texts. However, this problem has rarely entered the minds of scholars to date so, one may say, this may prove a fruitful research area in the future.

Selected Bibliography Abbreviations BHG Halkin, François. Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca I–III (= SubHag 8a). Brussels, 1957; Halkin, François. Novum Auctarium Bibliothecae Hagiographicae Graecae (= SubHag 65). Brussels, 1984. CPG Geerard, Maurice. Clavis patrum Graecorum I–V. Turnhout, 1983–1987; Supplementum, cura et studio Maurice Geerard and Jacques Noret (= Corpus Chistianorum. Series Greaca). Turnhout, 1998. PmbZ Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit. Erste Abteilung (641–867) I–VI. Nach Vorarbeiten von F. Winkelmann erstellt von R.-J. Lilie, Cl. Ludwig, Th. Pratsch, I. Rochow, unter Mitarbeit von W. Brandes, J. R. Martindale, und B. Zielke. Berlin and New York, 1999/2002.

Primary Sources Ἀνάλεκτα Ἱεροσολυματικῆς σταχυολογίας, IV. Ed. Athanasios Papadopoulos-Kerameus. Sankt Petersburg, 1897. Andrew the Fool. The Life of St Andrew the Fool I–II (= Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia, 4/1–2). Ed. Lennart Rydén. Uppsala, 1995. Anecdota Atheniensia, I. Ed. Armand Delatte. Paris, 1927. Anonymi Byzantini de caelo et infernis epistula (= Studien zur Geschichte und Theologie der Kirche, III/2). Ed. Ludwig Radermacher. Leipzig, 1908. Apocalypsis Anastasiae, ad trium codicum auctoritatem Panormitani Abrosiani Parisini. Ed. Rudolf Homburg. Leipzig, 1903. Apocrypha anecdota (= Texts and Studies, 2/3). Ed. Monague Rhodes James. Cambridge, 1893. Basil the Younger. The Life of Saint Basil the Younger. Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of the Moscow Version (= Dumbarton Oaks Studies 45). Eds. Dennis F. Sullivan, Alice-Mary Talbot, and Stamatina McGrath. Washington, D.C., 2014. Nicephorus I of Constantinople. “Vita Nicephori patriarchae.” Nicephori archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani opuscula historica. Ed. Carl de Boor. Leipzig, 1880. 139–217. Theophylact Simocatta. Theophylacti Simocattae historiae. Second Edition. Ed. Carl de Boor. Stuttgart, 1972. Theophylact Simocatta. Theophylaktos Simokattes. Geschichte, übersetzt und erläutert von Peter Schreiner. Ed. Peter Schreiner. Stuttgart, 1985. Theophylact Simocatta. The History of Theophylact Simocatta. An English Translation with Introduction and Notes. Trans. Michael Whitby and Mary Whitby. Oxford, 1986.



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Secondary Literature Baun, Jane. Tales from another Byzantium. Celestial Journey and Local Community in the Medieval Greek Apocrypha. Cambridge, 2007. Brandes, Wolfram. “Endzeitvorstellungen und Lebenstrost in mittelbyzantinischer Zeit (7.–9. Jahrhundert).” Varia III (Πoικίλα Bυζαvτιvά, 11). Bonn, 1991. 9–62. Brandes, Wolfram. “Anastasios ὁ δίκoρoς. Endzeiterwartung und Kaiserkritik in Byzanz um 500 n. Chr.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 90 (1997): 24–63. Brandes, Wolfram. “Das ‘Meer’ als Motiv in der byzantinischen apokalyptischen Literatur.” Griechenland und das Meer. Eds. Evangelos Chrysos et al. Mannheim and Möhnesee, 1999. 119–131. Brandes, Wolfram. “Gog, Magog und die Hunnen. Anmerkungen zur eschatologischen ‘Ethnographie’ der Völkerwanderungszeit.” Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World. The West, Byzantium, and the Islamic World. Eds. Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, and Richard Payne. Aldershot, 2012. 477–498. Brandes, Wolfram, Felicitas Schmieder, and Rebekka Voß (eds.). Peoples of the Apocalypse. Eschatological Beliefs and Political Scenarios (= Millennium Studies 63). Berlin and Boston, 2016. Bréhier, Louis. “Un patriarch sorcier à Constantinople.” Revue de l’Orient chrétien 9 (1904): 262–268. Efthymiadis, Stephanos (ed.). The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography. I: Periods and Places. Aldershot, 2011. Efthymiadis, Stephanos (ed.). The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography. II: Genres and Contexts. Aldershot, 2014. Garitte, Gérard. “La Passion géorgienne de Sainte Golindouch.” Analecta Bollandiana 74 (1956): 405–440. Magdalino, Paul. “The History of the Future and its Uses: Prophecy, Policy and Propaganda.” The Making of Byzantine History. Studies Dedicated to Donald M. Nicol. Eds. Roderick Beaton and Charlotte Roueché. Aldershot, 1993. 3–34. Magdalino, Paul. “  ‘What We Heard in the Lives of Saints We Have Seen with Our Own Eyes’: The Holy Man as Literary Text in Tenth-Century Constantinople.” The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown. Eds. James Howard-Johnston and Paul A. Hayward. Oxford, 1999. 83–112. Magdalino, Paul. “The Year 1000 in Byzantium.” Byzantium in the Year 1000 (= The Medieval Mediterranean 45). Ed. Paul Magdalino. Leiden and Boston, 2003. 233–270. Meier, Mischa. Das andere Zeitalter Justinians. Kontingenzerfahrung und Kontingenzbewältigung im 6. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (= Hypomnemata 147). Göttingen, 2003. Peeters, Paul. “Sainte Golindouch, martyre Perse (d. 13 Juillet 591).” Analecta Bollandiana 62 (1944): 74–125. Rydén, Lennart. “The Andreas Salos Apocalypse. Greek Text, Translation and Commentary.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 28 (1974): 197–261. Rydén. Lennart. “The Date of the Life of St. Niphon, BHG 1371z.” Greek and Latin Studies in Memory of Cajus Fabricius (= Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia, 54). Ed. Sven-Tage Teodorsson. Gothenburg, 1990. 33–40. Rystenko, Aleksandr V. Materijaly z istorii vizantijs’ko-slov’jans’koi literatury ta movy. Odessa, 1928 [repr. Leipzig, 1982]. van den Ven, Paul. “La vie grecque de S. Jean le Psichaïte confesseur sous le règne de Léon l’Arménien.” Le Muséon N.S. 3 (1902): 97–125 (text: pp. 103–123).

Klaus Herbers

Hagiography in the Medieval Western Christian World In the medieval world, saints served as companions, role models and mediators, and thus also offered an orientation for future. Therefore, the corresponding sources are important regarding a history of foretelling in the Middle Ages. On a general level, hagiographic texts are characterized as being especially close to prognostics: they not only inspire people to shape their lives, and cope with the future or sanctify themselves (as on pilgrimages) – such as historiographic texts – but are especially relevant for topics related to prophecy and visions, too.

Types of Texts Within the written texts of the Latin Middle Ages, hagiographic sources quantitatively surpass almost all other source corpora, so they provide an inexhaustible variety of possibilities. The so-called “Acta Sanctorum”, which offer the majority of the texts in a printed version, occupy – in whatever edition –, as large folio volumes, six to seven meters of shelf space in most libraries. Around 4,000 life descriptions of about 2,500 saints can be found therein. The term “hagiography” refers to writings that deal with saints (gr. hagios = holy, graphein = to write). The context of the origin and the variety of these writings, in which, above all, Vitae (a), Miracles (b), translation reports (c) and lists of saints (d) are to be distinguished, can be explained by examining the development of the Christian veneration of saints: a) In the early centuries of Christianity, the ancient Church recorded in particular the number of Christian martyrs killed for their faith among the prominent, holy persons. Holy were those who had been chosen by God at an early stage, especially the martyrs (cf. Apoc. 20:4–6). Writings had already been composed about the deeds of Jesus, Mary, and the Apostles, but these new writings did not feature among the approved biblical writings (“Apocrypha”). Writings about the witnesses of the faith (martyrs) concerned, initially, the trial acts (Acta) and, further, the representation of their death in the name of faith (passio). This kind of documentation developed into biographies (vitae): initially, their main focus was the circumstances of one’s death. As the persecution of Christians diminished, other groups of saints gained importance: the confessores, ascetics or bishops. The ascetical-monastic model began to influence the Middle Ages for long periods; so the vita of the desert father Anthony (Gemeinhardt 2013), written by Athanasius of Alexandria, or that of St. Martin, written by Sulpicius Severus (ed. Fontaine; ed. Burton), became significant for the https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-056



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vita literature of the Early and High Middle Ages and provided an orientation for one’s own life. b) The saint’s ability to work miracles was considered as a sign of election. Many of the older vitae contained miracle tales. This applies, for instance, to the “Dialogi”, presented by Pope Gregory I (the Great) (590–604), whose authorship remains controversial. Also, the writings of the famous Bishop Gregory of Tours (573–593) integrated such miracle reports. Saints could work miracles during their lifetime, but showed their special virtus also by revealing signs after their death. The miracles recorded at the Saint’s tomb were primarily linked to the cult of relics – which was reinforced in the Occident by the decisions of the Second Council of Nicaea (787), promoting transfers of relics and later also pilgrimages. In such miracle reports (miracula), the healing of the blind, dumb, deaf and paralyzed dominates, following biblical models. There have been independent miracula collections since Carolingian times; the canonization process, which has been conducted mainly in Rome since the twelfth century, required not only the vita but also evidence of at least two miracles. Among the miracles especially visions focused on human contact with the heavenly sphere. In this way, they offered a glimpse of the future. c) However, a miracle-working corpse was not always bound to a special location. While, in the ecclesiastical Western Late Antiquity, graves were still respected as inviolable, the custom of transferring corpses began to spread in the oriental world. Concerning the Occident, it is mainly the plundering of Roman cemeteries by the Ostrogoths (in 537) and the Norman invasions of the Carolingian Frankish Empire that explain this development. The consecration of numerous new churches sparked a great demand for relics in order to provide altars with the remains of saints. There exist independent reports (translationes or translation reports) on the translation of relics, especially in the eighth to eleventh centuries. Related to this are reports of the miraculous discovery (inventio) or solemn recovery of holy bones. d) Practical cultic needs led to a fourth type of hagiographic documentation. The early cult of martyrs produced indices of martyrs and saints according to the days of their death (feast days). The so-called martyrologies list – similar to calendars at a relatively local level – the feast days of the saints and sometimes add comments about individuals, the circumstances of their death, and their burial place or cult. The collection of tales based on feast days also culminated in compilations called “Legendare” (legenda, things to be read). The best known is the “Legenda Aurea” of Jacobus de Varazze (Voragine), composed between 1263 and 1273. However, calendars could also provide a practical orientation for the work to be done in a year, and could refer to the signs of the zodiac and astrological calculations, even across cultural boundaries: a striking example is the tenth-century Calendar of Córdoba. Thereby, these texts, as well as miracles and visions, sometimes developed a prognostic character. Liturgical-cultic needs, above all, resulted in further types of texts: it is not necessary to systematize them in the context of this handbook. The proposed division [a) – d)] into four main areas reveals overlaps with other documentation, such as, for

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example, the liturgical texts (such as collections of sermons and forms) and historiography. These often aimed, similarly, at an interpretation of people and their actions concerning the history of salvation. Definitions of a uniform genre of “hagiographic texts” or of single parts of hagiographic production as an independent genre are rather avoided in the meantime, due to overlaps.

The Scientific Approaches – Hagiography and Hagiology Since the narrations dealing with the lives of saints were closely connected to the concrete veneration of saints, the scholarly interpretation of the texts was influenced in this regard. About 400 years ago, Heribert Rosweyde (1607) devised a plan to collect saints’ life stories from Belgian libraries. The whole project was later headed by the Jesuit Jean Bolland (1596–1665), who was responsible also for the name of the corresponding journal. Furthermore he extended the conceptions of his colleague Rosweyde, and implemented them in Antwerp. In 1643, the first two volumes of the Acta Sanctorum were published. These were supplemented by a further 52 volumes, up until 1794, which registered the saints from January to October 14 of the year. When the suppression during the revolutionary period had ended, the Bollandists were able to restart their work: they revived the Society in Belgium (Brussels, 1837), which still exists: It is present in the “Acta Sanctorum”, the journal “Analecta Bollandiana” (since 1882), and a supplementary series of publications (“Subsidia Hagiographica”, since 1886). The undertaking initially represented the Catholic answer to the critics of reform; nevertheless, the concept seems highly modern, bearing in mind the standards of that time. The comments provided information about the collected manuscripts as well as those that were used, the value of the sources, and the persons described therein. Another approach was adopted through the vast undertaking of collecting historical sources, such as the “Monumenta Germaniae Historica” since the nineteenth century. They widely excluded hagiographic sources from the editorial documentation, because in the sense of a historical science based on positivism the texts seemed to be completely worthless and superfluous to them. This positivistic view remained dominant until the twentieth century. It was only after the Second World War that a renewed interest in hagiographic sources also inspired historical research. Meanwhile, the tendencies triggered by the so-called “Annales” school, first in France and then in the rest of Europe, promoted new methodological procedures and a modified interpretation of the sources. New questions about the mentality of social groups regarding religious concepts, such as a belief in the afterlife and in miracles, became topics of historical research. The “cultural turn” of the last 20 years has shaped this increasingly. These new approaches were further



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accompanied by the development of scientific paradigms, from the history of gender and imagination to the “linguistic turn” (a strongly text-based mode of interpretation). This development included ways to address the source materials in their situation of transmission, with the purpose of interpreting them appropriately also from a traditional perspective: Frequently, the context of the texts, which are often handed down in collected manuscripts, is sufficient to reveal their motivation, usage, and function with considerable precision. Such a process occurs, for example, in the “Sources hagiographiques de la Gaule”. In the meantime, a seven-volume handbook (Hagiographies 1994–1996) is available. Moreover, a journal (Hagiographica) and accompanying book series (Beiträge zur Hagiographie, Hagiologia) have been published, dealing with many questions besides the continuing work of the Bollandists. At the same time, efforts were made to clarify further historical terms. As the term “hagiography” is already used for recording in its time of origin, it has been suggested that today’s scientific discussion of these texts should be termed “hagiology”.

Prognostics and Hagiography The special proximity of hagiographic texts to prognostics has already been emphasized in the introduction; above all, saints assume the role of prophets. In the Christian tradition, where the Old Testament prophets prevail, the word “prophet” is used in many different ways, because the proclaimer of the divine word can also be considered a prophet, as Augustine emphasizes (Quaestiones in Heptateuchum, Quaestiones Exodii, XVII, 76). Gregory the Great regarded prophets not only as heralds of the future, but also as those who revealed the occult (i.  e. what was hidden): Qua in re animadvertendum est quod recte prophetia dicitur, non quia praedicit ventura, sed quia prodit occulta (Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Hiezechielem, ed. Adriaen, 5). This wide-ranging use of the word “prophet” enables possibilities for classifying sacred paths through life in this context. The connection between hagiography and prophecy was first systematically researched in 2017 (Henriet et al. 2017). In the hagiographic writings, martyrs and confessors (such as saints) often act like the successors of the apostles, and also offer corresponding paths through life. Perhaps the monastic way of life already constituted a modernization of ancient prophecy (Grégoire 1987; Colosimo 2011). Consequently, early hagiography also takes up the lives of Old Testament figures, such as Elijah, a fact that Jerome has already noted (Jerome, Letter 58, 5, ed. Labourt, 79–80). This tradition was continued in the hagiography where Benedict would turn up as a new Moses or Elijah, but later on also Francis of Assisi became a new prophetic proclaimer of the faith (Van Uytfanghe 1984, 455). In many Vitae, especially the early ones, the protagonists appear endowed with prophetic gifts, such as in the Vita Antonii or the Vita Martini of Sulpicius Severus,

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where the saint foretells, for example, the death of the Emperor Maximus or his own death, as it occurs in countless other Vitae (von der Nahmer 2012/2016). Benedict, too, in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, foretold the fall of Rome or various deaths (Gregory the Great, Dialogues, ed. Vogüé, II, XV, 3; II, XXXVII, 1; III, I, 5–8, 260–264 etc.). Therefore, sanctity does not lack the gift of prophecy. The proximity of hagiography to a very broadly understood prophetic model also offers the possibility of addressing the work of false prophets or demons, which the saint usually overcomes (Barthelemy and Große 2014; Herbers 2014). Related to the prophetic gifts of the saint, the visions are important because, in many hagiographic works, they appear as a sign of a person’s sanctity (Herbers 2017). By means of visionary experience, the saint appears like a prophet, as a direct herald of divine truth. Thus, visions and miracle stories prove not only the sanctity but also the expression of the divine will. Classical works open up divination mediated by the dream: Aristotle stated that and Albertus the Great took this up (Albert the Great, De somno et vigilia, ed. Borgnet; Giralt 2013). Independently, the tradition founded in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great was continued (Vogel 2002, 249–250) and also discussed: treatises from the High Middle Ages entitled De miraculis may be mentioned here, as well as Conrad of Eberbach or Caesarius of Heisterbach and his Dialogus Miraculorum. Sanctity has changed, and the saints of the early Middle Ages may differ from those of the later Middle Ages, but the connection between hagiography and prophecy features in later times also. The proclamation of the divine word gained greater political and ecclesiastical importance in the later Middle Ages, and simultaneously the forms of retreat and vision increased during this period. A character uniting both was Birgitta of Sweden (d. 1373). Her life within the aristocratic family structures, pilgrimages, and also her written visions reveal her to have been a seeress who passed on the divine will also regarding future questions. Her Revelationes celestes (Sancta Birgitta, Revelaciones, eds. Undhagen et al.) deal with religious questions and the last things. In addition, political aspects are perceivable, such as the exhortation to good rule, but also the return of the papacy from Avignon to Rome. Even more than in historiography, numerous prognostic aspects become apparent in hagiography, especially prophecy, visions, dreams, and miracles, proclaiming the divine will. Thereby, hagiographic writings create, simultaneously, a counter-image to demons and false prophets. The judgement of the nineteenth century, that miracle tales are worthless, is quickly put into perspective, because what is more valuable than the hope, longing, and beliefs of past times?



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Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Acta Sanctorum, 67 vols. Ed. Societe des Bollandistes. Antwerp et al. 1643–1925. Albert the Great. De somno et vigilia, III, 1, 12 (= Opera omnia editio Parisiensis, vol. 9). Ed. Auguste Borgnet. Paris, 1890. Augustine of Hippo. Quaestiones in Heptateuchum. Ed. Johannes Fraipont. Turnhout, 1958 (= Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 33). Sancta Birgitta. Revelaciones, 8 vols. Eds. Carl-Gustaf Undhagen et al. Stockholm and Uppsala, 1978–2002. Gregory the Great. Homiliae in Hiezechielem prophetam (= Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 142). Ed. Marc Adriaen. Turnhout, 1971. Gregory the Great. Dialogues (= Sources chrétiennes 251, 260, 265), 3 vols. Ed. Adalbert de Vogüé. Paris, 1978–1980. Hieronymus (Saint Jérôme). Lettres, III. Ed. Jérôme Labourt. Paris, 1953. Sulpicius Severus. Vita Martini. Ed. Jacques Fontaine. Paris, 1967–1969. Sulpicius Severus. Vie de St-Martin (= Sources chrétiennes). Ed. Philip Burton. Oxford, 2017.

Secondary Literature Barthelemy, Dominique, and Rolf Große (eds.). Moines et démons. Autobiographie et individualité au Moyen Âge (VIIe–XIIIe siècle) (= Hautes études médiévales et modernes 106). Geneva, 2014. Beiträge zur Hagiographie. Eds. Dieter R. Bauer, Volker Honemann (†), Klaus Herbers, and Hedwig Röckelein. Stuttgart, 2000–2020 (more than 20 volumes). Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis. Vol. 1–2. (= Subsidia Hagiographica 6). Société des Bollandistes, Brussels, 1898–1901 [reprint 1992]. (Index of Manuscripts and Editions) Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis. Novum Supplementum. Ed. Henricus Fros. Brussels, 1986 (Index of Manuscripts and Editions). Colosimo, Jean-François. “Le moine, visage orthodoxe du prophète.” L’intuition prophétique, enjeu pour aujourd’hui. Eds. Sylvie Barnet et al. Paris, 2011. 157–166. Gemeinhardt, Peter. Antonius, der erste Mönch: Leben – Lehre – Legende. Munich, 2013. Giralt, Sebastià. “Aristoteles imperfectus. Natural Divination, Dream and Prophecy in the Latin Middle Ages (1210–1310).” Die mantischen Künste und die Epistemologie prognostischer Wissenschaften im Mittelalter (Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 7). Ed. Alexander Fidora. Cologne et al., 2013. 23–59. Grégoire, Reginald. Manuale di agiologia. Introduzione alla letteratura agiografica. Fabriano, 1987. Hagiographies. Histoire internationale de la litterature hagiographique latine et vernaculare en Occident des origines a 1550, 7 vols. Eds. Guy Philippart and Monique Goullet. Turnhout, 1994–2018 (newest, regionally ordered reference book). Hagiologia. Etudes sur la sainteté et l’hagiographie – Studies on Sanctity and Hagiography. Eds. Gordon Blennemann et al. Turnhout (15 volumes to date). Head, Thomas F. Medieval Hagiography. An Anthology. New York and London, 2001. Henriet, Patrick, Klaus Herbers, and Hans-Christian Lehner (eds.). Hagiographie et prophétie (VIe–XIIIe siècles) (= Micrologus Library 80). Florence, 2017.

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Herbers, Klaus. “Hagiographie.” Aufriß der Historischen Wissenschaften, vol. 4: Quellen. Ed. Michael Maurer. Stuttgart, 2002. 190–214. Herbers, Klaus. “La peur du pèlerin dans l’au-delà. Un regard sur l’hagiographie ibérique.” Moines et démons. Autobiographie et individualité au Moyen Âge (VIIe–XIIIe siècle) (= Hautes études médiévales et modernes 106). Eds. Dominique Barthelemy and Rolf Große. Geneva, 2014. 133–143. Herbers, Klaus. “Pilgrimages to St Patrick’s Purgatory. A Glimpse into Future.” Unterwegs im Namen der Religion. Pilgern als Form von Kontingenzbewältigung und Zukunftssicherung in den Weltreligionen (= Beiträge zur Hagiographie 15). Eds. Klaus Herbers and Hans-Christian Lehner. Stuttgart, 2014. 45–49. Herbers, Klaus. “Vision et prophétie dans les vies et les miracles hagiographiques comme signes de sainteté?” Hagiographie et prophétie (VIe–XIIIe siècles) (= Micrologus Library 80). Eds. Patrick Henriet, Klaus Herbers, and Hans-Christian Lehner. Florence, 2017. 127–142. Herbers, Klaus. Prognostik und Zukunft im Mittelalter. Praktiken – Kämpfe – Diskussionen (= Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz, Geistes- und sozialwissenschaftliche Klasse, Jahrgang 2019/2). Stuttgart, 2019. Kleine, Uta. “Visionäre, Exegeten und göttliche Orakel: Neue Horizonte der Prophetie im 12. Jahrhundert.” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 97 (2015): 47–88. Lehner, Hans-Christian, and Maximilian Nix (eds.). Visio Tnugdali – Vision des Tnugdal (= Fontes Christiani 74). Darmstadt, 2018. Subsidia Hagiographica. Brussels, 1886– (more than 90 volumes to date). Van Uytfanghe, Marc. “Modèles bibliques dans l’hagiographie.” Le Moyen Âge et la Bible. Eds. Pierre Riché and Guy Lobrichon. Paris, 1984. 449–487. Vogel, Bernhard. “Visionen und Mirakel, Literarische Tradition und hagiographischer Kontext am Beispiel Lantberts von Deutz.” Mirakel im Mittelalter. Konzeptionen, Erscheinungsformen, Deutungen (= Beiträge zur Hagiographie 3). Eds. Martin Heinzelmann, Klaus Herbers, and Dieter R. Bauer. Stuttgart, 2002. 227–251. Von der Nahmer, Dieter. Der Heilige und sein Tod. Sterben im Mittelalter. Darmstadt, 2012. Von der Nahmer, Dieter. Bibelbenutzung in Heiligenviten des Frühen Mittelalters (= Beiträge zur Hagiographie 19). Stuttgart, 2016.

Michael Grünbart

The Importance of Thunder: Brontologia in the Medieval Eastern Christian World Thunder and lightning have constituted important signs in order to interpret human actions since antiquity (see Caudano 2012; cf. Borsch and Carrara 2016). Earthquakes and storms have a biblical tradition, often occurring when God wished to punish people or foretell disasters (e.  g. Amos 8, 8–9). When Jesus died on the cross, the sky darkened and the earth trembled (Matt. 27:51: “And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split”). A natural event behind which God could stand thus always provoked the questioning of human (sinful) action. Since antiquity natural phenomena and the climate have influenced agricultural cultivation, the observation of seasonal changes and the weather, leading to an accumulation of knowledge that allowed the prediction of (possible) future environmental conditions. In the late medieval period, the so-called Bauernkalender (“farmers’ almanacs”) emerged (e.  g. Admonter Bauernkalender from 1481). Texts devoted to the description of thunder (brontologion/βροντολόγιον) and earthquakes (seismologion/σεισμολόγιον) formed an independent prognostic resource in Byzantium. Such manuals are mentioned by John the Lydian (sixth century) in his work on portents or omens (De ostentis). He names three brontologia concerning political predictions and one dealing with agriculture (ascribed by him to a certain Labeon). An outstanding example of the combination of celestial prognostication and agriculture is a text called Geoponica, a compilation of agricultural knowledge. It is dedicated to Emperor Constantine VII (945–959), who is praised as a sponsor of rhetoric and literature in the foreword. The Geoponica is preserved in about 50 manuscripts and has been translated into Arabic, Syriac and Latin (twelfth century). Various topics concerning rural life have been treated, and many passages appear to be excerpts or quotations from unknown or even fictitious works (e.  g. a main source is said to be the prophet Zoroaster). Several celestial signs are combined with agricultural prescriptions. A passage should illustrate this technique of presentation: 10. Schedule of forecasts from the first thunder after the rising of Sirius in any year. Zoroaster. The next thunder after the rising of Sirius must be counted as the first of the year. It is necessary to note which house of the zodiac the moon is in when this first thunder occurs. If the moon is in Aries when this first thunder occurs, it foretells some excitement in the country; there will be contention, men fleeing; afterwards a settled state. If the moon is in Taurus when it thunders, it foretells the failure of wheat and barley, an attack of locusts, joy in a royal house, and affliction and famine in the east. If it is in Gemini when it thunders, this means clamour and sickness, the failure of wheat, and the ruination of Arabs. In Cancer, the failure of barley, lack of rain, death of oxen, and much rain in March and April. In Leo, the failure of wheat and barley in mountainous parts, itch and tetter. In Virgo, the ruin of a king, another to rule the country in his place, danger https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-057

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at sea, and rust in grain crops. In Libra, wars and scourges galore, and the failure of crops. In Sagittarious, earth tremors, a good harvest of wheat in mountain parts, and failure in the plains. If in Capricorn, it foretells rain for 50 days, the treachery of kings, spite and unseemly speech, and the appearance of a new king in the east who shall rule the whole world. There will be fruitfulness, the death of honoured men, and good lambing. In Aquarius, fierce wars on the coast, the ruination of pulse crops and the failure of others. In Pisces, the partial failure of wheat, and the death of a strong man. (Geoponica 1.10; cf. Dalby 2011, 62–63)

During military campaigns, a knowledge of natural phenomena was also indispensable. As mentioned above, a military leader had to provide explanations of unexpected events in order to ease critical situations. Three texts concerning the organisation of a military excursion were compiled at the court of Constantine VII. They include lists containing information about essential equipment. Besides animals and material for establishing a camp, written knowledge was taken along on a military expedition: Books: the liturgy of the Church, military manuals, books on mechanics, including siege machinery and the production of missiles and other information relevant to the enterprise; that is to say: to wars and sieges; historical books, especially those of Polyainos and Syrianos [author’s note: Polyainos wrote in the second century CE tactical treatises, Syrianos flourishing in the sixth century composed a text on naval warfare]; an oneirocritical book; a book of chances and occurrences; a book dealing with good and bad weather and storms, rain and lightning and thunder and the vehemence of the winds; and, in addition to these, a treatise on thunder and a treatise on earthquakes, and other books, such as those to which sailors are wont to refer. (Haldon 1990, C 196–204)

An example of the practical application of a brontologion can be found in the historiography of Nicetas Choniates. In 1156/1157, a theological debate concerning doctrine was held at Constantinople. At the same time, a violent thunderstorm occurred during the military campaign of Emperor Manuel I in Pelagonia (western Macedonia). Nicetas reports: It is said that, while this doctrinal dispute was being decided in a public debate, an unseasonable and portentous thunderclap rent the air, deafening the assembly as well as the emperor, who was sojourning then in Pelagonia. A certain man of letters, one Elias, who was superior to most in his station in life and a sentinel of the army, consulted a book on the subject of thunder and earthquakes and, coming upon the meaning of thunder at that particular season, gave the following interpretation: ‘The fall of the wise.’ These men who were deposed, the most learned of the time, were expelled from the church and ostracized from every holy ministration; many others, who were cloistered, were also evicted from their sacred precincts. (Nicetas Choniates, Historia, ed. van Dieten, 211; trans. Magoulias, 120)

Again, an expert was at hand who could use a manual in order to find a suitable interpretation. The expert was able to appease the unrest immediately. While only a few Greek manuals and compilations on the interpretation of earthquakes and thunder have been preserved for the High Middle Ages, there is a rich manuscript tradition related to the late medieval centuries, the majority of which has not yet been systematically investigated.



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Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Niketas Choniates. Nicetae Choniatae historia. Ed. Jan Louis van Dieten. Berlin and New York, 1975. Niketas Choniates. O City of Byzantium, Annals of Niketas Choniates. Trans. Harry J. Magoulias. Detroit, 1984.

Secondary Literature Borsch, Jonas, and Laura Carrara (eds.). Erdbeben in der Antike. Deutungen – Folgen – Repräsentationen. Tübingen, 2016. Caudano, Anne-Laurence. “Eustratios of Nicaea on Thunder and Lightning.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 105 (2012): 611–634. Dalby, Andrew. Geoponika. Farm Work. A Modern Translation of the Roman and Byzantine Farming Handbook. Totnes, 2011. Haldon, John. Constantine Porphyrogenitus Three Treatises on Imperial Military Expeditions. Introduction, Edition, Translation and Commentary. Vienna, 1990.

Margaret Gaida

Introductions to Astrology Introductory texts on astrology constitute an important genre in premodern practices of prognostication. The genre has its roots in Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, which was translated into Arabic under the ‘Abbasids in early ninth-century Baghdad, along with several other important Greek astrological works. Early Islamic astrologers also assimilated Persian and Indian astrological practices, including interrogations, elections, and astrological history. As a result of the influx of diverse strands of astrological knowledge, several Islamic astrologers of the tenth and eleventh century sought to synthesize this knowledge in introductory texts. The genre of the introduction, denoted by the Arabic titles Kitāb al-mudkhal or simply al-Mudkhal, laid out the basic principles of astrological theory. These introductions did not deal with practical instructions for astrological calculations, such as the casting of horoscopes. Rather, they described the astrological divisions of the celestial sphere and the properties of these divisions, the properties of the planets, and the qualitative outcomes of planetary interactions with each other and with astrological divisions of the sky. The content of introductory texts provided astrologers with the interpretive framework within which they could evaluate the planetary positions observed in various celestial configurations, and determine prognostications based upon this evaluation. This knowledge encompasses descriptions of the astrological properties of the twelve signs of the zodiac, the planets, and the relationships between all of them. Introductions pay special attention to the different kinds of relationships (referred to as dignities or shares) shared between signs and planets (including houses, exaltations, terms, triplicities, and decans) and between planets and other planets. In the latter case, the most frequently used relationship is that of the astrological aspect, or the number of degrees separating the planets in the sky (defined by trine, quartile, sextile, conjunction and opposition). There are also descriptions of the properties of relationships between signs and planets that are defined by where the zodiacal circle intersects the horizon. The further division of the sky into astrological houses, a procedure which is often described in tables of planetary motion (zījes) (↗ Gaida, Zījes), gives astrological information about the properties of the houses, as well as the indications (or effects) of a particular planet’s location within the house. Introductory texts often include the medical significance of various celestial configurations as well. Several introductions explain specific concepts that are frequently employed in astrological practice, such as nativities, interrogations, elections, and world-transfers. These topics, which include calculations such as the haylāj, kadkhudhāh, tasyīr, intihā, etc., are astrological parameters that are used in more complex calculations, such as determining the length of life or the length of rule of kings or dynasties. Some of these topics are discussed in the Greek sources, although there are others that originate in Persian texts, such as the fardārīya. Introductions also usually contain an https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-058



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explanation and list of astrological lots. Whereas Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos only included the Lot of Fortune, most Arabic introductions included lots for many other subjects, including knowledge, war, kingship, and commodities such as rice and chickpeas. In the ninth century, Abū Maʻshar al-Balkhī composed two introductory texts, a Great Introduction (Kitāb al-mudkhal al-kabīr) and an Abbreviation (Mukhtaṣar) of it. The Great Introduction provides a philosophical justification of astrology within an Aristotelian framework, in addition to a comprehensive treatment of the basic principles. The Abbreviation rearranged most of the same information in the Tetrabiblos, and synthesized new information from Persian sources. Another tenth-century synthesis of basic astrological principles, al-Qabīṣī’s Kitāb al‐mudkhal ilā ṣināʻat aḥkām al‐nujūm (“Introduction to the Art of Astrology”), appears to have struck a chord with centuries of later readers due to its organizational structure and clear explanation of topics. Unlike his predecessors and contemporaries, al-Qabīṣī devoted an entire chapter to the technical terms (haylāj, kadkhudhāh, tasyīr, intihā, etc.). Another notable introduction from this period is Kūshyār ibn Labbān’s early eleventh-century Kitāb al-Mudkhal, which also employs its own unique arrangement of topics, as well as his own tables for the calculation of the tasyīr. This appears to be the only mudkhal to contain tables, and possibly one of the only examples of tasyīr tables within the Islamic context. Two other noteworthy introductory texts appeared in this period, but diverge somewhat from the genre of the mudkhal in terms of organization and the breadth of content included in the texts. The first is the eleventh-century Kitāb al-Bari’ of ʻAlī ibn Abi al-Rijāl. The second is al-Bīrūnī’s Kitāb tafhīm li-awā’il ṣinaʻat al-tanjīm. al-Bīrūnī’s consideration of both astronomical and astrological subjects instead of just theoretical astrology was an innovative shift within the genre of the introductory text. Indeed, he included all of the information necessary for making prognostications: astronomical theory, astronomical calculations, basic astrology (the zodiac, planets, houses), and astrological judgments. While the contents of the last two chapters coincide with the mudkhal genre, the treatment of astronomical subjects and especially the inclusion of tables places the Tafhīm well outside the traditional mudkhal. After the eleventh century in the Islamic world, there were very few, if any, introductory texts composed anew. Rather, the classical introductory texts such as Abū Maʻshar’s Mukhtaṣar, al-Qabīṣī’s Mudkhal, al-Bīrūnī’s Tafhīm, and Kūshyār ibn Labbān’s Mudkhal continued to be read and circulated widely. The latter two were translated into Persian. The introductions of Abū Maʻshar and al-Qabīṣī, however, made their way into Andalusia and were translated into Latin along with scores of other astronomical and astrological texts in the twelfth century. The transmission of the Arabic astrological tradition – including texts which demanded an understanding of complex astronomical knowledge and techniques – was particularly significant given the highly qualitative nature of early medieval astrological knowledge in Europe. In the case of Abū Maʻshar, or Albumasar as he became known in the Latin West, both his Great Introduction and the Abbreviation were translated into Latin early in

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the twelfth century. The Great Introduction was translated by both John of Seville and Hermann of Carinthia. As the Great Introduction was translated prior to Aristotle’s oeuvre, Richard Lemay has argued that Latin scholars were first acquainted with Aristotelian philosophy through the astrological considerations in the Great Introduction. As a result, astrology and Aristotelian natural philosophy were highly integrated as a much more quantitatively-oriented astrology was assimilated into the Western intellectual tradition. The Abbreviation was also an important early conduit for the dissemination of Arabic astrological knowledge. The popularity of Albumasar’s Abbreviation, however, was eclipsed by his near contemporary, al-Qabīṣī, whose Introduction (under the Latinized Alcabitius) became arguably the most widely read astrological text in premodern Europe. After its translation by John of Seville in the 1130s, the Introduction of Alcabitius circulated under the Latin title Introductorius ad magisterium iudiciorum astrorum and became immensely popular over the following centuries. There are over two hundred and thirty extant Latin manuscripts, and it was also translated into English, French, Italian, Dutch, Hebrew, and Castilian. John of Saxony, the well-known author of the Canons of the Alfonsine Tables, composed a commentary on Alcabitius’s Introduction in 1324, suggesting its reading at the University of Paris. Manuscript evidence suggests that the Introduction was taught in the Faculty of Arts and Medicine alongside Sacrobosco’s Sphaera at several other universities, including Paris, Oxford, Erfurt, Bologna, and Padua, until well into the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. While originating in the Islamic world, the genre of the introductory astrological text appears to have served the European university setting particularly well. The popularity of Alcabitius’s Introduction persisted despite the attempts of medieval Latin authors to produce their own synthetic accounts of astrological theory, including those of Peter of Abano, Guido Bonatti, and Pierre d’Ailly. This fact is illustrated especially by the numbers of extant manuscripts, which have been carefully documented by David Juste. Alcabitius’s Introduction was also printed twelve times, and had substantial commentaries written on it in 1560 by the astrologers Valentin Naibod and Jeronimo Muñoz. In his preface, al-Qabīṣī himself noted his careful attention to his content, providing just the right amount of information for an introductory text. His thorough descriptions of astrological principles, and especially his explanations of important technical terms, firmly established his Introduction as the prototype for this special genre of astrological text.



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Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Abū Maʻshar. The Abbreviation of the Introduction to Astrology, Together with the Medieval Latin Translation of Adelard of Bath. Eds. and trans. Charles Burnett, Keiji Yamamoto, and Michio Yano. Leiden, 1994. Abū Maʻshar. The Great Introduction to Astrology. Eds. and trans. Charles Burnett and Keiji Yamamoto. Leiden, 2018. Al-Bīrūnī. Kitāb tafhīm li-awā’il ṣinaʻat al-tanjīm. Ed. and trans. Ramsay Wright. London, 1934. ibn Labbān, Kūshyār. Kūshyār ibn Labbān’s Introduction to Astrology (Studia culturae islamicae 62). Ed. and trans. Michio Yano. Tokyo, 1997. al-Qabīṣī, Abū-’ṣ-Ṣaqr ʻAbd-al-ʻAzīz Ibn-ʻUtmān. ̲ The Introduction to Astrology: Editions of the Arabic and Latin Texts and an English Translation. Eds. and trans. Charles Burnett, Keiji Yamamoto, and Michio Yano. London, 2004. Valentin Naboth. Enarratio elementorum astrologiae. Cologne, 1560.

Secondary Literature Arnzen, Rüdiger. “Vergessene Pflichtlektüre: al-Qabīṣīs astrologische Lehrschrift im europäischen Mittelalter.” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften 13 (1999): 93–128. Burnett, Charles. “Al-Qabīṣī’s Introduction to Astrology: From Courtly Entertainment to University Textbook.” Studies in the History of Culture and Science: A Tribute to Gad Freudenthal. Ed. Resianne Fontaine. Leiden, 2011. Burnett, Charles. “Translation and Transmission of Greek and Islamic Science to Latin Christendom.” The Cambridge History of Science. Vol. 2. Eds. Michael H. Shank and David C. Lindberg. Cambridge, 2013. Gaida, Margaret. Encounters with Alcabitius: Reading Arabic Astrology in Premodern Europe. PhD Thesis. University of Oklahoma, 2017. Juste, David. “The Impact of Arabic Sources on European Astrology: Some Facts and Numbers.” Micrologus 24 (2016): 173–194. Lemay, Richard. Abū Maʻshar and Latin Aristotelianism in the Twelfth Century. Beirut, 1962. Sezgin, Fuat. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. Vol. 7. Leiden, 1967.

Michael T. Miller

Journeys to the Other World: Medieval Jewish Traditions The Hekhalot (“palaces”) literature is an early medieval phenomenon, written mostly, we now believe, in Babylonia, between the fourth and tenth centuries CE. The manuscript witnesses are convoluted, being mostly copies made by the Hasidei Ashkenaz (mystical group in German communities concurrent with the early kabbalists) several centuries later. Passages and motifs combine in different ways in different manuscripts, making the search for any “original texts” nigh impossible (some texts from the Cairo Genizah [↗ Saar, Divination in the Cairo Genizah] have proved, on the one hand, the antiquity of some parts, while also proving on the other the extent of the corruption of the German texts). Scholars now talk in terms of “macroforms” rather than texts. The major macroforms are Hekhalot Zutarti (“The Lesser Palaces”), Hekhalot Rabbati (“The Greater Palaces”), Ma’aseh Merkavah (“The Work of the Chariot”), Merkavah Rabbah (“The Great Chariot”) and 3 Enoch (also known as Sefer Hekhalot, the “Book of Palaces”). This body of literature describes a small variety of ritualistic methods such as chanting or singing phrases and divine names, prayer and meditation, and/or procedures including seclusion and fasting. These practices are usually provided within a narrative framework which also describes the results gained by some practitioner (often rabbi Akiva or Ishmael). The techniques facilitate two eventualities, either together or separately: the conjuring and command over an angel, and a temporary ascent into the heavenly palaces. The conjured angel can themselves divulge information about the future, grant protection, and knowledge of Torah, as well as accompanying, protecting and advising the practitioner on their journey. The ascent through the various layers of heaven (either led by the angel or achieved automatically), incorporates the joining into the angelic liturgy and the vision of God enthroned, interspersed with frequent conversations with angels who describe what is being perceived. Prognostication is thus only one part of the intention, as is made clear in the opening passage of Hekhalot Rabbati which instructs to “bind oneself to Him so as to make one enter and to bring one into the chambers of the palace of the Aravot firmament so as to make one stand on the right side of the throne of His glory, and the times that one stands opposite YHWH, God of Israel, to see whatever they do before the throne of His glory and to know whatever shall happen in the future in the world.” (§ 81; Davila 2013, 51). Apart from those texts which prioritise the summoning of an angel, who will then reveal secret information to the practitioner (e.  g. the short Sar Torah macroform), the precise method of receiving prognostic information is unclear. Although the visionary nature of the ascent and tour of the heavenly palaces is clear, there is also a significant https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-059



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auditory element. The revelation of future events could be a visual-textual matter, as the curtain which separates God’s inner chamber from the surrounding palace is inscribed with the entire history and future of human action (3 En.45); but Metatron, the angelic transformation of the archetypal heavenly traveller and seer Enoch, whose trailblazing course subsequent travellers seem to follow, has the ability to see the actions of humans in their hearts before they occur (3 En.11:3) (↗ Miller, Prophecy Jewish Traditions). There are also formulas in order to receive prognostic information in a dream from one of a few named angels (§ 505; Lesses 1998, 397–398). The style and content of the texts is a mixture of several different precedents: the Jewish apocalyptic literature tells of notable individuals ascending to heaven and receiving secrets (including of the future) from angels; the Greek Magical Papyrae and cognate literature like Sefer HaRazim and The Sword of Moses make heavy use of divine and angelic names to conjure heavenly beings and bind them to one’s will, as do the Aramaic incantation bowls of Babylonia; these are the most obvious, and many characters (human and angelic), and even some narrative motifs are shared with the Babylonian Talmud. Scholarly opinion varies regarding the question of the texts’ practical basis: originally they were assumed to be both descriptive accounts of mystical experiences and prescriptive manuals for the achieving of such, but some later research (Halperin 1988) suggested that they might rather be the product of scriptural exegesis combined with fantasy, and were used not as manuals but as contemplation aids (although this use of text could still be a technique for inducing visionary states). Whatever the case, it is worth noting that they were deeply influential on the development of Kabbalah and the Hasidei Ashkenaz, and the ecstatic-prophetic linguistic techniques employed by Abraham Abulafia can be ultimately traced through these texts. The material exists in various manuscript recensions, almost all of which have now been published in some form or another. These fall into two groups: the first is that preserved by the Hasidei Ashkenaz, of which we have 47 extant manuscripts. These are discussed in Peter Schäfer’s Hekhalot-Studien (1988). The definitive edition is Schäfer et al.’s Synopse Zur Hekhalot-Literatur (1981), which collects seven of the most representative manuscripts in a synoptic format which allows for easy comparison and recognition of both the corruption at the level of letters of the manuscripts, and also of the fluidity of the “texts” which often share and rearrange passages between and within themselves. The now universally used synopse (§) numbers refer to the divisions given in this collection. The second group is a subgroup of the material found in the geniza of Ben Gurion Synagogue in Cairo; this has provided us dozens of fragments, which overlap in content with the German manuscripts but also preserve unique material. These have further emphasised the textual corruption of the German manuscripts, and have also been collected in a definitive edition by Schäfer as Geniza-Fragmente zur Hekhalot-Literatur (1984). A few different translations exist in German and English, the most comprehensive of which are Schäfer et al.’s 4 volume Übersetzung zur Hekhalot-Literatur (1987–1994) and James Davila’s more recent Hek-

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halot Literature in Translation (2013). The latter omits 3 Enoch, deferring to Philip Alexander’s translation in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, but includes much from the Cairo Genizah. A comprehensive analysis of the ritual techniques described in the Hekhalot literature is given in Rebecca Lesses’ Ritual Techniques to Gain Power (1998).

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Davila, James R. (ed.). Hekhalot Literature in Translation: Major Texts of Merkavah Mysticism. Leiden, 2013. Elior, Rachel. Hekhalot Zutarti. Jerusalem, 1982: [Hebrew]. Schäfer, Peter, Margarete Schlüter, and Hans G. von Mutius (eds.). Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur. Tübingen, 1981. Schäfer, Peter. Geniza-Fragmente zur Hekhalot-Literatur. Tübingen, 1984. Schäfer, Peter, et al. (eds.). Übersetzung zur Hekhalot-Literatur. 4 vols. Tübingen, 1987–1995.

Secondary Literature Alexander, Philip S. “3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch.” Old Testament Pseudepigrapha I: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments. Ed. James H. Charlesworth. Garden City, 1983. 223–315. Boustan, Ra’anan, Martha Himmelfarb, and Peter Schäfer. Hekhalot Literature in Context: Between Byzantium and Babylonia. Tübingen, 2013. Halperin, David J. The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel’s Vision. Tübingen, 1988. Lesses, Rebecca Macy. Ritual Practices to Gain Power: Angels, Incantations, and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism. Harrisburg, 1998. Schäfer, Peter, with Gottfried Reeg et al. Konkordanz zur Hekhalot-Literatur, 2 vols. Tübingen, 1986. Schäfer, Peter. Hekhalot-Studien. Tübingen, 1988. Schäfer, Peter. Handschriften zur Hekhalot-Literatur. Tübingen, 1994. Swarz, Michael D. Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism. Princeton, 1996.

Andreas Bihrer

Journeys to the Other World: Medieval Latin Traditions In Latin Europe, the consistent characteristics of literary journeys to the Otherworld in the Christian Middle Ages make this form a genre in its own right, even though medieval transmission usually refers to it under the superordinate category of visiones or revelationes. In modern scholarship, likewise, these texts often operate under unspecific titles such as visions or visionary literature, or revelations or revelatory texts. On these journeys of the soul to various otherworldly places – first and foremost places of punishment – the visionary beholds the past, current or future fates of other souls. These are explained to him either by a companion, such as a saint or an angel, or are elucidated during conversation with the souls themselves, who are often tortured by corporal punishments that reflect their transgressions. The journeys to the Otherworld recorded the accounts of individuals who had, for example, been touched by the Otherworld following sickness or near-death experiences, or who had achieved an ecstatic state as the result of ascetic practices and prayer; while, at first, they were written down in Latin, from the High Middle Ages onward, they were increasingly recorded in the vernacular. The otherworldly revelations are sometimes narrated in the first person, but are often framed by extensive explanatory paratexts. In the Middle Ages, there was already a sense that journeys to the Otherworld constituted a distinct textual group, as evident from prologues and epilogues as well as in groups of texts transmitted together, compilations of visions or manuscripts such as the Liber visionum of Otloh of St Emmeram (ed. Schmidt) or the Liber Revelationum of Peter of Cornwall (eds. Easting and Sharpe), in which visions of this nature were set down side by side. By contrast, the vision and revelation genres are broader in scope, including apparitions and dreams, for example. These, while also revelatory in nature, neither refers to the Otherworld nor contains a journey of the soul, but instead records other forms of transcendental encounters and experiences, such as auditory episodes, divine instructions, Himmelsbriefe (“heavenly letters”) and stigmatisations. A distinction should also be drawn between otherworldly journeys and revelations in which the visionary is taken to locations in this world, such as the Holy Land or Jerusalem, or in which an encounter with Christ, the Holy Virgin or other biblical figures and saints is described (Schmidt 2003). Even though journeys to the Otherworld only play a marginal role in the Old Testament and especially in the New Testament (and thus in the core texts of Christianity), the biblical accounts of Elijah and Enoch, the Second Letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 12:2–5) and Revelation provided both points of reference and biblical legitimation for the medieval texts. The genre of journeys to the Otherworld, however, was shaped most strongly by several apocryphal texts, especially the Visio Pauli (Jirousková 2006). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-060

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The late sixth-century Dialogi of Gregory the Great lent further credibility to this particular form of revelation  – especially the fourth volume, which compiled visions (on the tradition in late antiquity, cf. Benz 2013; Weitbrecht 2011). Latin records of otherworldly journeys peaked during the Early Middle Ages in England and Ireland, the Carolingian epoch and the twelfth century; this is when the majority of, longest and most elaborate texts were produced. Marcus of Regensburg’s Visio Tnugdali (eds. Lehner and Nix), the Purgatorium Patricii (ed. Easting) and the vision of the monk of Eynsham were transmitted most frequently. During the High Middle Ages, the circle of visionaries became wider in social terms, now including larger numbers of knights, peasants, children and – as in the vision of Alpais of Cudot (ed. Stein) – women, even though these visions continued to be written down in monasteries. Accounts written in and translations into the vernacular, of which there is increased evidence from the High Middle Ages onward, confirm the genre’s popularity, as does the use of visions as examples in sermons, a practice attested in particular from the thirteenth century onward (Palmer 1982). In the Late Middle Ages, the genre experienced a further boost, as is evident not only in the numerous fifteenth-century prints but also in the large numbers of copies and new textual versions, such as the Visiones Georgii (ed. Weitemeier); this trend reached its apex in the years leading up to the Reformation (an overview of the key texts is provided in Dinzelbacher 1981; Dinzelbacher 1991; and Carozzi 1994). Journeys to the Otherworld enjoyed wide popularity across the entire Christian Middle Ages and all regions of Western Europe. This is proven not only by the fact that new journeys of this kind continued to be written down, but also by the continuous copying and collecting of older texts and their frequent revision. The popularity of this form of vision was based upon the increased interest in the fate and salvation of the individual soul, which is why the descriptions of punishment and reward in these otherworldly journeys, which were not only specific but even personal, garnered considerable attention. This increased even further the spatial differentiation between the locations in the Otherworld  – especially purgatory  – and made the systems of confession and penitence even more intricate. Despite this popularity, however, the veracity of journeys to the Otherworld always remained controversial, as confirmed by the diverse authentication strategies and debate on the credibility of both individual texts and the genre as a whole, as well as by the fact that otherworldly journeys entered into the genres of poetry, parody and satire. Even though journeys to the Otherworld were used in a range of social contexts, they remain, first and foremost, a monastic genre, as their editors, copyists and collectors tended to be monks; in the Late Middle Ages, the Cistercians (Gebauer 2013) and Carthusians (Mangei 2002) in particular disseminated otherworldly journeys. The texts took on a wide variety of functions; thus, they could be used for the purpose of edification, instruction and negotiating social roles – especially in monastic contexts. They could also serve, however, as political propaganda or to legitimate feast days and ecclesiastical institutions. Accordingly, otherworldly journeys were able to fill the gaps



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left by traditional forms of theological scholarship or reveal possible solutions to religious disputes, often articulating a differentiated or – as in the Visio Thurkilli – even an independent stance toward theological concepts. Depending on the desired effect, the revelations were inserted into other genres, such as saints’ vitae, miracles, chronicles, encyclopaedias, sermons, moralist literature, prayers, exempla collections, treatises, dialogues, letters, personal testimonials and documents for canonisation proceedings, as well as incorporated into other media such as oral sermons or visual representations. The fluidity of these open texts, which were understood precisely not as sacrosanct divine words and instead were adapted to various functions and interests as historical contexts changed, is evident not only in these transgeneric and intermedial intersections, but in the many edits, versifications, translations, excerpts and quotes to which they were subjected (Bihrer 1998). Modern research interest in otherworldly journeys initially focused on the tradition of motifs, leading to Dante’s Divina Commedia (for an extensive overview of the research, see Bihrer 2016; also cf. the bibliographies in Gardiner 1993 and Easting 1997). In the 1980s and 1990s, questions of genre and the investigation of the process of textualisation emerged as new fields of enquiry, as did new issues concerning the history of mentality and piety; furthermore, the debate on the birth of purgatory became a focus of research. In parallel, the history of transmission was investigated and the basic corpus of edited texts gradually expanded (Jirousková 2006), even though only a fraction of the otherworldly journeys surviving in manuscripts has been edited to date. Recently, questions concerning the theology of sin and penitence practices, physicality and bodies, gender roles, and the topography of the Otherworld and the narrative coding of space have been analyzed (Benz and Weitbrecht 2011). By contrast, research on the models of temporality in medieval journeys to the Otherworld remains in its infancy, particularly with regard to the analysis of prognostication and prophecy in otherworldly journeys of the Middle Ages (hitherto covered only by Ebel 1968; Lehner 2015, 68–78, 136–138, 205–206; Kleine 2016). In journeys to the Otherworld, different temporalities concerning the past, present and future were linked: (1) significant amounts of eschatological material were added to the accounts, which told, for example, of the visionary’s visit to the dwelling-places of the souls at the end of days or of his experience of the Last Judgement; (2) besides this outlook onto what was to come, events from the biblical past or a teleologically-oriented history of salvation were evoked through the visionary’s participation in Christ’s crucifixion, for example; (3) links to the Easter liturgy and other patterns of the Church year articulated cyclical concepts of time; (4) personal temporalities were expressed by looking ahead to the visionary’s own death and back to the final hours of others; (5) furthermore, chronological orders associated with a monastery, a kingdom or the papacy were mentioned, formulating temporalities linked to the history of an institution or group; (6) overall, journeys to the Otherworld thus thematized very different time horizons, connecting them furthermore with concepts of eternity, such as everlasting punishment or the infinity of paradise.

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As otherworldly journeys not only placed the past and present in relation to one another, but also made statements about the future, they functioned as a medium of prophecy. Accordingly, besides revealing hitherto hidden knowledge, these texts served to disseminate truths concerning the future, not through divinatory practices such as interpreting signs or natural phenomena, but through revealing otherworldly certainties. Thus, the visionary assumed the authority of a prophet proclaiming divine messages or at least revealing divine secrets (Meier-Staubach and Wagner-Egelhaaf 2014). The prophecies focused upon two time horizons in the future: firstly, the near future, answering the question of what happened to the dead or still living souls in liminal places such as purgatory. Secondly, these texts shed light on the end of days, when the fate of all souls and the world will be revealed at the Last Judgement. However, two distinctions should be made here: (1) these two levels of time were not always clearly distinguished in otherworldly journeys, and these accounts reported journeys to many intermediate forms of time; for example, the line between earthly and heavenly paradise was often blurred, and further competing concepts of space and time were discussed – in fact, their definition and delimitation formed one of the visions’ main topics. Nevertheless, connections between the immediate and remote future and even the simultaneous experience of past, present and future were also possible; and (2), furthermore, one and the same account of an otherworldly journey could be read on different levels and thus in relation to different time horizons (Ebel 1968); for example, journeys to the Otherworld could be interpreted according to the principle of multiple meanings, according to which several layers of meaning coexisted within the same text, such as a moral interpretation concerning the near future or an eschatological interpretation concerning the end of days: thus depictions of punishment typologically referred to a change in lifestyle in the near future on a moral level and to the verdict passed at the Last Judgement on an eschatological level. While one of these interpretations could be more strongly present or even formulated explicitly in the text, the recipients’ understanding would remain anchored in their own perspective and reading, guided by the way in which the account of the Otherworld was used. In regard to the near, earthly future, otherworldly journeys usually dealt with questions of lifestyle, penitence and intercession. The immediate future was neither contingent nor preordained, but could instead be influenced by the confessing of past misdeeds, by changing one’s behaviour in the present, and by prayer and charity; indeed, journeys to the Otherworld were nothing less than a call to make use of the choices open to human beings and thus shape the near future. This proffered meaning and call even applied to the souls of those who had already died, whose otherworldly punishment was described in the visions, as the length and intensity of this punishment could be influenced by the future intercessory prayers of those reading or hearing the visions of the Otherworld. That this near future could be clearly measured and quantified was demonstrated particularly in the catalogues of sins, penances and



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punishments that were depicted in the otherworldly journeys and differentiated from the twelfth century onward. These catalogues linked the transgression, the kind of penance, the amount of intercessory prayer and the time required for purification. Furthermore, the journeys to the Otherworld also – albeit far more rarely – described scenes in which the visionary could look into the close future and see how he himself or especially how familiar, still living persons were punished for their transgressions. The visionary beheld or himself experienced the consequences awaiting him or others in the near future should they fail to mend their ways. Thus, journeys to the Otherworld propagated the idea that human beings could shape the near future. Indeed, this was the texts’ main intent: this glimpse of the future was, on the one hand, a promise of reduced punishment and salvation while, on the other, a threat – especially as the Last Judgement was drawing nigh. The end of the world, which, while its precise timing was unknown, was certain to be soon, was supposed to provide the impetus for shaping one’s own immediate future (Carozzi 1996; Fried 2016). The idea of the approaching end of the world may well have been a major causa scribendi for certain otherworldly journeys; some examples, such as the vision of the monk of Eynsham or the Vision Thurkilli, contain interpretation guidelines in the prologue, suggesting that the increasing number of visions is due to the imminent end of days. Accordingly, journeys to the Otherworld anticipated the end of days not only by dealing with decisions concerning the fate of individual souls at the Last Judgement and providing prospects of eternity in paradise or the never-ending punishments of hell, but also – at least in some texts, such as the Visio Godeschalci – through the experience of apocalyptic events: the visionary was present at the decisions of the Last Judgement or able to see or even enter the heavenly Jerusalem. Thus, the spatial path taken in the Otherworld can also be seen as a path through time, leading toward the end of days. When the accounts evoked these eschatological concepts, they nevertheless mainly restricted themselves to the Last Judgement and to paradise, rarely making use of elements from Revelations, such as the Lamb of the Apocalypse or the Book with the Seven Seals. To conclude, we should point out in particular the late medieval connections between collections of otherworldly journeys and apocalyptic texts (such as the literature on the Antichrist, texts on the Four Last Things – death, judgement, heaven and hell –, the 15 signs preceding the Last Judgement or other lists of signs). However, the transmission of these associated texts has not been the subject of research thus far, nor has the question of whether journeys to the Otherworld were understood as predictions of the future. Likewise, their temporal order has not been subjected to close scrutiny to date.

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Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Alpais of Cudot. Leben und Visionen der Alpais von Cudot (1150–1211). Neuedition des lateinischen Textes mit begleitenden Untersuchungen zu Autor, Werk, Quellen und Nachwirkung (Script Oralia 77). Ed. Elisabeth Stein. Tübingen, 1995. Marcus of Regensburg. Visio Tnugdali (Fontes Christiani 74). Eds. and trans. Hans-Christian Lehner and Maximilian Nix. Freiburg, 2018. Otloh of St. Emmeram. Liber Visionum (MGH Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 13). Ed. Paul Gerhard Schmidt. Weimar, 1989. St Patrick’s Purgatory. Two Versions of Owayne Miles and the Vision of William of Stranton together with the Long Text of the ‘Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii’ (Early English Text Society 298). Ed. Robert Easting. Oxford, 1991. Peter of Cornwall. Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations (Studies and Texts 184; British Writers of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period 5). Eds. Robert Easting and Richard Sharpe. Toronto, 2013. Visiones Georgii. Untersuchung mit synoptischer Edition der Übersetzung und Redaktion C (Texte des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit 43). Ed. Bernd Weitemeier. Berlin, 2006.

Secondary Literature Benz, Maximilian, and Julia Weitbrecht. “Die Formierung des Jenseits als Bewegungsraum in Jenseitsreisen der Spätantike und des Mittelalters (‘Paulus-Apokalypse’, ‘Visio Pauli’, ‘Visio Tnugdali’).” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 46 (2011): 229–243. Benz, Maximilian. Gesicht und Schrift. Die Erzählung von Jenseitsreisen in Antike und Mittelalter (Quellen und Forschungen zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte 78). Berlin and Boston, 2013. Bihrer, Andreas. “Die Bearbeitungspraxis mittelalterlicher Visionsliteratur. Eine spätmittelalterliche Redaktion der ‘Visio Edmundi monachi de Eynsham’.” ‘Visio Edmundi monachi de Eynsham’. Interdisziplinäre Studien zur mittelalterlichen Visionsliteratur. Eds. Thomas Ehlen et al. Tübingen, 1998. 91–112. Bihrer, Andreas. “Variable göttliche Offenbarungen. Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Perspektiven der Forschung zu Visionen und Jenseitsreisen im Mittelalter.” Überlieferungsgeschichte transdisziplinär. Neue Perspektiven auf ein germanistisches Forschungsparadigma. Eds. Dorothea Klein et al. Wiesbaden, 2016. 241–262. Carozzi, Claude. Le voyage de l’âme dans l’Au-delà d’après la littérature latine (Ve–XIIIe siècle). Rome, 1994. Carozzi, Claude. Weltuntergang und Seelenheil. Apokalyptische Visionen im Mittelalter. Frankfurt am Main, 1996. Dinzelbacher, Peter. Vision und Visionsliteratur im Mittelalter (Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 23). Stuttgart, 1981. Dinzelbacher, Peter. Revelationes (Typologie des Sources du Moyen Âge Occidental 57). Turnhout, 1991 [86–108 contains the bibliographical information about the sources cited in this essay]. Easting, Robert. Visions of the Other World in Middle English. Cambridge, 1997. Ebel, Uda. “Die literarischen Formen der Jenseits- und Endzeitvisionen.” Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters 6.1 (1968): 181–215. Fried, Johannes. Dies Irae. Eine Geschichte des Weltuntergangs. Munich, 2016.



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Gardiner, Eileen. Medieval Visions of Heaven and Hell. A Sourcebook (Garland Medieval ­Bibliographies 11). New York, 1993. Gebauer, Christian. Visionskompilationen. Eine bislang unbekannte Textsorte des Hoch- und Spätmittelalters (Arbeiten zur Historischen und Systematischen Theologie 19). Münster, 2013. Jirousková, Lenka. Die Visio Pauli. Wege und Wandlungen einer orientalischen Apokryphe im lateinischen Mittelalter unter Einschluß der alttschechischen und deutschsprachigen Textzeugen (Mittellateinische Texte und Studien 34). Leiden, 2006. Kleine, Uta. “Zukunft zwischen Diesseits und Jenseits. Zeitlichkeit und ihre Visualisierung in der karolingischen Visionsliteratur.” ZeitenWelten. Zur Verschränkung von Zeitwahrnehmung und Weltdeutung (750–1350). Eds. Miriam Czock and Anja Rathmann-Lutz. Cologne et al., 2016. 135–168. Lehner, Hans-Christian. Prophetie zwischen Eschatologie und Politik. Zur Rolle der Vorhersagbarkeit von Zukünftigem in der hochmittelalterlichen Historiografie (Historische Forschungen 29). Mainz, 2015. Mangei, Johannes. “Kartäuserorden und Visionsliteratur im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit.” Bücher, Bibliotheken und Schriftkultur der Kartäuser. Festgabe zum 65. Geburtstag von Edward Potkowski (Contubernium 59). Ed. Sönke Lorenz. Stuttgart, 2002. 289–316. Palmer, Nigel F. ‘Visio Tnugdali’. The German and Dutch Translations and Their Circulation in the Later Middle Ages. Munich and Zurich, 1982. Prophetie und Autorschaft. Charisma, Heilsversprechen und Gefährdung. Eds. Christel Meier-Staubach and Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf. Berlin, 2014. Schmidt, Paul Gerhard. “Visio Alberici. Die Jenseitswanderung des neunjährigen Alberich in der vom Visionär um 1127 in Monte Cassino revidierten Fassung. Kritisch ediert und übersetzt.” Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft an der Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Sitzungsberichte 35 (1997): 149–212. Schmidt, Paul Gerhard. “Vision.” Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft 3 (2003): 784–786. Weitbrecht, Julia. Aus der Welt. Reise und Heiligung in Legenden und Jenseitsreisen der Spätantike und des Mittelalters. Heidelberg, 2011.

Daniel J. Lasker

Karaite Objections to Prognostication Karaism is a form of Judaism which attempts to follow the Bible closely without the addition of what Rabbinic Judaism calls the “Oral Law”, an accumulation of traditions and legal interpretations said to have been given to Moses at Mount Sinai and developed in the Talmud and related literature. Karaites observe Jewish law according to what they consider is the literal meaning of the “Written Law”, as supplemented by “the burden of the inheritance”, the interpretations of the community as formulated over the generations. As a result of this divergence, Karaism is a form of Judaism which is parallel to, but different than, that of most Jews. Karaism seems to have emerged in the Islamic world in the ninth century, perhaps as a conglomeration of earlier anti-Rabbinic groups, such as the Ananites, founded in the eighth century by the Babylonian Jew Anan ben David, who is often mistakenly thought of as the founder of Karaism. Early Karaism was marked by a plethora of different practices and internal divisions, but by the tenth century, Karaism became standardized, partially in response to the attacks by Saadia ben Joseph Gaon (882– 942) in Baghdad. Karaites developed their own observance of Judaism, characterized by independent legal interpretations, biblical exegesis, theology, sacred calendar, liturgy, and linguistics. Although Karaism never gained enough adherents to be an actual demographic threat to the majority practice, their system of Judaism was a major intellectual challenge to the followers of Rabbinic Judaism, called Rabbanites. After their heyday in the tenth and eleventh centuries, Karaites reconciled themselves to minority status among Jews and gradually incorporated more and more Rabbanite practices and understandings. Today, there are at most 50,000 Karaites in the world, most of them living in the State of Israel as immigrants from Egypt and their descendants. In addition to Karaite dissent from the legal interpretations and practices of the Talmud, they also objected to what they considered non-rational or anti-rational aspects of Rabbinic non-legal lore as presented in the Midrash. These included anthropomorphic descriptions of God, attribution of supernatural powers to angels or to certain rabbis, and mystical aspects of Rabbinic theology. Karaite criticism of Rabbanism extended as well to what was considered the partial acceptance of prognostic practices. The Torah outlaws augury in its various forms, e.  g., forbidding the presence of one who practices divination, a soothsayer, an augur, a sorcerer, a charmer, a medium, a wizard, or a necromancer (cf. Deut. 18:10–11; there are disagreements about the exact translation of some of these terms and what kind of prohibited activity they represent). Nevertheless, Rabbinic literature seems to include validation of certain prognostic practices. Thus, the Rabbis generally accepted the efficacy of astrology and recognized the role played by the heavenly bodies in the life of humans, even if they subordinated the power of the stars to the divine power, especially concerning events https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-061



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which have an impact on Jews. Amulets were allowed, and could even be carried on the Sabbath if they were written by an expert. The Rabbis taught that certain divine names, both those that appear in the Bible and others, can be manipulated to effect results desired by the practitioner. Some Rabbinic adoption of occult praxis might have been a concession to popular religion, yet it would appear that many rabbis were themselves believers in non-rational means for making changes in the world. It should be remembered as well that there are a number of biblical stories that could be interpreted as the use of signs as a prediction for the future (e.  g., Gen. 24, where Abraham’s servant, traditionally identified as Eliezer, looks to an omen to find the correct wife for Isaac). Despite possible Biblical precedents, Karaites generally rejected any recourse to prognostication techniques and incorporated criticism of Rabbinic occult practices as part of their overall critique of Rabbinic Judaism. They rejected astrology as a predictive science or the efficacy of other forms of augury. Thus, even though the story of the witch of Endor (1 Sam. 28) seems to substantiate the validity of necromancy, Karaites argued that the spirit of Samuel was not raised by the medium, but rather she engaged in chicanery to fool King Saul into believing that he was perceiving the deceased prophet. Necromancy, then, is both forbidden and false. Eventually, some Karaites in Eastern Europe in the early modern period were more accepting of mysticism and some magical practices, but most generally maintained a skeptical attitude towards the occult. In the tenth century, there were two main Karaite communities, one in the Land of Israel, centered on the ascetic practices of the Mourners of Zion, and the second in Babylonia/Iraq. The Karaites in the Land of Israel believed that active mourning for the destroyed Temple in the Land of Israel, with a special liturgy and self-abnegation, would expedite the coming of the Messiah and the Redemption. In contrast, Iraqi Karaites presented a diasporic form of their religion; apparently those who shared the values of the Mourners of Zion emigrated to the Land of Israel. The major tenth-century Iraqi Karaite intellectual was Jacob al-Qirqisani, a contemporary of Saadia in Baghdad, who wrote his legal major work, Kitab al-anwar wal-maraqib (“Book of Lights and Watch Towers”; ed. Nemoy) in approximately 927. This massive code of Karaite law includes much more than just legal discussions; it has a major section on other Jewish religious movements (a heresiology), theological discussions, and refutations of competing religious movements (Rabbanism, Christianity, Islam and others). He was very familiar with Rabbinic literature and emphasized the differences between Karaite practices and beliefs and those of the Rabbanite majority. The selection presented here (Book of Lights and Watchtowers Part 6, Chapter 10, ed. Nemoy 3, 587–589) is Qirqisani’s refutation of augury in various forms, notably searching for omens and the use of sortilege. Biblical precedents, such as Eliezer’s search for an omen or the division of the Land of Canaan by lots, were permitted actions, but the more common forms of augury are not. Qirqisani provides a number

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of forbidden prognostic techniques familiar to him, such as observing the behavior of snakes, birds, mice and geckos, or the examination of an animal’s liver or a sheep’s shoulder. The chapter on augury is preceded by a discussion of witchcraft, namely, the change of nature by magical means, including the use of divine names. Qirqisani argues that if magic had efficacy, it would be impossible to distinguish between actual miracles performed by true prophets and the results of non-divine manipulations, such as those by Pharaoh’s soothsayers. Likewise amulets are forbidden. The chapter on augury is followed by the rejection of the efficacy of astrology with a distinction between astral judgments and the salutary study of astronomy. Astronomy is a science which is useful, e.  g., in determining when there will be a new moon. Even if astrologers are sometimes correct in their predictions, this is because of guesswork; in fact, they are usually mistaken in their predictions. Despite Qirqisani’s rejection of occult practices, he permits studying these subjects for the purpose of refuting them.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources al-Qirqisani, Jacob. Kitab al-anwar wal-maraqib [“Book of Lights and Watch Towers”]. Ed. Leon Nemoy. New York, 1939–1943. Judah Hadassi. Theological Encounters at a Crossroads: A Preliminary Edition of Judah Hadassi’s Eshkol ha-kofer, First Commandment, and Studies of the Book’s Judaeo-Arabic and Byzantine Contexts (= Karaite Texts and Studies, vol. 77.11). Eds. Daniel J. Lasker, Johannes Niehoff-Panagiotidis, and David Sklare. Leiden and Boston, 2019. Karaite Anthology. Ed. Leon Nemoy. New Haven and London, 1952.

Secondary Literature Ankori, Zvi. Karaites in Byzantium: The Formative Years, 970–1100. New York and Jerusalem, 1959. Nemoy, Leon. “Al-Qirqisani on the Occult Sciences.” Jewish Quarterly Review 76.4 (April 1986): 357–362. Polliack, Meira. Karaite Judaism. Leiden and Boston, 2003. Polliack, Meira. "Wherein Lies the Pesher? Re-Questioning the Connection between the Medieval Karaite and Qumranic Modes of Biblical Interpretation." JSIJ – Jewish Studies; an Internet Journal 4 (2005): 151–200. Walfish, Barry Dov, with Mikhail Kizilov (eds.). Bibliographia Karaitica. An Annotated Bibliography of Karaites and Karaism (= Karaite Texts and Studies, vol. 43.02). Leiden, Boston, and Jerusalem, 2011.

Marco Heiles

Late Medieval German Texts on Superstition In the clerical-academic literature of the European Middle Ages, a variety of prognostic practices were mainly perceived under the paradigm of superstition. The most important definition in this discourse was Augustine’s definition of superstitio in De doctrina christiana 2:20: Superstition is anything instituted by men having to do with crafting or worshipping idols, or worshipping a created thing or any part of a created thing as if it were God, or consultations and pacts concerning prognostications agreed and entered into with demons, such are the efforts of the magic arts, which the poets are more accustomed to mention than to teach. (Augustine, De doctrina christiana, trans. Bailey 2019, 489)

According to Augustine, prognostications which involved communication with or the worship of demons must be understood as magic and superstition. The same constellation is evident in Isidore of Seville’s influential cumulative definition of magic and magicians in his Etymologies 8.9, where he lists mainly divinatory practitioners and practices: necromatii, hydromantii, geomantia, aeromantia, pyromantia, divini, incantatores, harioli, haruspices, augures, phytonissae, astrologi, genethliaci, mathematici, horoscopi, sortilegi, and salisatores (Klingshirn 2003). Although Isidore provided only very basic information about the individual practices, his account became “a sort of stock or stereotyped treatment of the subject with succeeding Christian writers down into the twelfth century” (Thorndike 1923, 630) and beyond. Later accounts on superstition, be they in the theological, pastoral or legal literature, follow Isidore’s example generally in terms of content as well as in form. They offer long lists of superstitious practices without going into details about each individually. As the studies by Filotas (2005), Harmening (1979) and Bayle (2013), inter alia, have shown, for several centuries, there was a strong dependence on the textual tradition. The various authors copied extensively from each other and, in their texts, it remains largely unclear which practices they knew from their own experience and which only from literature. This situation became even more complex because the practices adopted from the Arabic cultural area in the High Middle Ages were also integrated into the traditional terminological system. The best example of this is the term geomancy which, in the first half of the twelfth century, was assigned a new subject area due to Hugo of Santalla’s identification of it with the Arabian divination method ilm al-raml (“sand art”) (Burnett 1992, 1042–1043). German-language texts do not deal comprehensively with superstition before the fourteenth century. Very early examples are the sermon Von den sehs mordern attributed to Berthold of Regensburg (second half of the thirteenth century or later, Pfeiffer/ Strobl 1880, 66–73; Schönbach 1900, 18–34), the confession manual Trierer Beichte (ca. 1300, Roth 2005) and the tract Von den possen Vnglauben by the anonymous Österhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-062

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reichische Bibelübersetzer (ca. 1330, ed. Heiles 2018, 383–384), followed in the second half of the fourteenth century by Marquard of Lindau (Dekalogerklärung, second half of the fourteenth century, printed by Erhard Ratdolt in Venice 1483), Martin of Amberg (Gewissenspiegel, ca. 1370–1382, Werbow 1958) and the anonymous Latin-German Confessionale (ca. 1370, Weidenhiller 1965, 107–121). In the fifteenth century, however, the number of these texts increased rapidly, not only due to the general boom of German literature during this period, but also as part of a Europe-wide phenomenon. Also, the number of Latin texts on superstition increased strongly in the fourteenth and especially in the fifteenth century, and there are now also a large number of texts dedicated exclusively to this topic (Bailey 2009; Bailey 2013, 255–265). These tracts and pastoral manuals were being traded and consulted throughout Europe even prior to the invention of letterpress printing. At the same time, there are now also comprehensive discussions of superstition in other vernacular languages, such as French and English (Rider 2012, 19; Sullens 1983; Ruhe 1993; Veenstra 1998; Jaey/Garay 2006). The criticism of superstition is promoted, on the one hand, by the various reform efforts in the late medieval church and their special concern for the education of priests, and the catechesis and confession of the laity (Bailey 2008, 129–132; Bracha 2013, 47–79; Rider 2012, 17–23). On the other hand, superstition as a violation of the First Commandment came to occupy a particularly prominent position in the commentaries and confessional books due to the Church’s focus on the moral doctrine on the Decalogue following the IV Lateran Council (Morton 2018). Correspondingly, German-language lists of superstitious practices appear particularly frequently in pastoral literature, especially within the explanations of the First Commandment, but also in the treatment of the deadly sin of superbia (Die Sieben Hauptsünden und ihre Töchter; Heiles 2018, 171) or the sins against the sacrament of baptism (Confessionale; Weidenhiller 1965, 116–117). The influence and significance of the so-called Wiener Schule (“Viennese School”) of the fourteenth and fifteenth century, which in the context of the University of Vienna popularised academic knowledge in the vernacular (Müller 2015) and whose writings on superstition were comprehensively examined by Baumann (1989), are particularly emphasized in German Studies. The corresponding texts from Ulrich of Pottenstein (Dekalog-Auslegung; Baptist-Hlawatsch 1995), the Nikolaus-of-Dinkelsbühl-Redaktor (Von den czehen poten ain tractat; Baumann 1989, 495–680), Thomas Peuntner (Beichtbüchlein; Haberkern 2001), and Stephan of Landskron (Himelstraß; Jaspers 1979) are accordingly well edited and have also been partly examined in individual studies (Lasson 2010). Although Upper German pastoral-catechetical literature, which includes the texts of the Wiener Schule, has been best documented since Weidenhiller (1965), Harmening (1987) and Bauman (1989), corresponding texts were written during the fifteenth century in the entire German language area (Geffken 1855; Harmening 1990, 250; Eisermann 2013; Stöllinger-Löser 2017). The addressed audience and recipients of pastoral literature were priests themselves, lay monks and nuns, as well as literate lay people. These were addressed in different types of texts. The spectrum of pastoral texts, with lists of superstitious divinatory practices, ranges



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from scholarly sums and manuals for priests like Der Tugenden Buch, a translation of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologiae II–III (Berg/Kaspers 1984) or the aforementioned Latin-German Confessionale (Rupp 2012), to Kommunionsverbote (the prohibition of communion) which priests announced during Masses (Heiles 2017), up to booklets for preparing for confession like Hans Folz Von der Beichte (printed 1479), commented picture plates like the Heidelberger Bilderkathechismus (Geffken 1855, Beilage I, col. 1–19), and confession prayers like the Gießener Beichte (Bruchhold 2010). From the mid-fifteenth century onward, the concept of witchcraft gains increasing attention in this kind of text (Bailey 2001), as may be clearly observed in the sermon series Die Emeis by Johann Geiler of Kaysersberg from 1509 (printed in 1516). While he certainly discusses prognostication, especially dream interpretation, here, he is above all concerned about witchcraft themes: witches’ flight, maleficia, etc., Satan’s power, and theodicy (Voltmer 2017). Baumann was able to use a variety of examples from the context of the Wiener Schule to demonstrate that the German-language descriptions of the superstitions “in the fourteenth and fifteenth century remain largely dependent on the literary tradition” (Baumann 1989, 1:491). In these texts, the “topoi of superstitions” (ibid.) from the Latin tradition were translated into the vernacular and popularized. The strong interdependence of the lists of divinatory practices in the superstition-critical literature has recently been reaffirmed by Heiles (2018, 169–191): the list from Stephan of Lanskron’s Himelstraß was, for the most part, taken literally from Thomas Peuntner’s Christenlehre. For argumentative support, Stephan used the Decretum Gratiani, whose concrete source in this case is Augustine’s Enchridion. Thomas Peuntner’s list of superstitions, in turn, depends on those in Martin of Amberg’s Gewissenspiegel and in Nikolaus of Dinkelsbühl’s De decem praeceptis. While Martin of Amberg’s sources are not (yet) known, Nikolaus of Dinkelsbühl names his models: the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville and Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologia. The descriptions of divinatory practices in the German pastoral texts of the fourteenth and fifteenth century are thus deeply-rooted in the centuries-old Latin tradition. German lists of superstitious divinatory practices also occur outside the pastoral literature. Short lists are, for example, included in the dialogue of the Ackermann aus Böhmen with Death (ca. 1400, Kiening 2002, 56–58; Bernt/Burdach 1917, 330–372) and in one of Konrad Bollstatter’s lot books (↗Heiles, Sortes), which thus warns against believing in its own prognoses (Heiles 2018, 217–222). A comprehensive examination of superstitio and its associated divinatory practices is offered by three fifteenth-century secular German texts, written for a noble audience: Hans Vintler’s versified moral doctrine Blumen der Tugend (“Flowers of Virtue”, a. 1411; Zingerle 1874, V. 7694–7997), Johannes Hartlieb’s monothematic superstition critical mirror for princes Buch aller verbotenen Kunst (“Book of All Forbidden Arts”, a. 1456; Eisermann/Graf 1989; Kieckhefer 2017) and Michel Beheim’s song Von mancherlai keczere und zaber (“Of various heresies and sorceries”, a. 1459; Gille/Spriewald 1970, 326–330).

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These secular texts also depend on the clerical-pastoral tradition. Michel Beheim’s song, for example, is a versification of the treatise Von den possen Vnglauben by the Österreichische Bibelübersetzer (ca. 1330). His text again depends on a list entitled De divinacionibus of the Passauer Anonymus (ca. 1260/1266), which was taken almost unchanged from the Summa de vitiis et virtutibus of Wilhelm Peraldus (ca. 1236), whose list of divinations is most probably based on the Decretum Gratiani, which in turn combines older sources (Heiles 2018, 189–191). The so-called “list of superstitions” in Hans Vintler’s Blumen der Tugend is, in contrast, only partially dependent on Martin of Amberg’s Gewissenspiegel. Vintler probably knew the other practices described in more detail from his own experience (Ebermann/Bartels 1913). The research of the last decades was particularly interested in Vintler’s position on witchcraft (Ziegeler 1973, 34–60; Schweitzer 1993, 180–184; Schweitzer 1996). Notable besides Vintler’s text are also the pictures illustrating his superstition section in the manuscripts and prints (Zika 1999, 324–341). Also, the first part of Johannes Hartlieb’s Buch aller verbotenen Kunst, which discusses the power of the devil, has a direct model: the Latin treatise De superstitionisbus by the Heidelberg theologian Nicholas Magni de Jawor (Fürbeth 1992, 109–120; on De superstitionibus, see Bracha 2013). In the second part of his book, Hartlieb discusses superstitious practices according to a system of seven forbidden arts that he has developed himself (Heiles 2019). He not only proves to be a profound expert on Latin literature on magic, but also reports in detail on divinatory practices that we know from German-language instructions. Since Johannes Hartlieb has demonstrably dealt with “nigromancy, astrology and other prognostic arts” (quod nigromancie astrologie ceterarumque mathematicarum arcium subtilitatibus insudavit non obstatante) (Hayer and Schnell 2010, 17; Schnell 2007) and has also worked as a translator and editor of instructions on onomatomancy (Heiles forthcomingb; texts edited in Weidemann 1964, 180–194; Schmitt 1962, 298–309), his statements are also relatively credible where he reports his personal experiences and encounters. Hartlieb’s text probably offers the most realistic picture of fifteenth-century divinatory practices that we possess, but he also follows a certain intention and fixed structure, both of which affect his description. For example, his concept of the seven forbidden arts, to which he associatively assigns magical-divinatory practices, effects that he can draw a highly detailed picture of hydromancy that goes far beyond the stereotypical description of the Latin tradition, but was probably hardly shared by any of his contemporaries (Heiles 2019). German superstition-critical texts have been used as sources for the history of prognostics in ethnology (Volkskunde) and German-studies from the nineteenth century to date (Grimm 1875–1878, Hoffmann-Krayer/Bächtold-Stäubli 1927–1942; Birkhan 2010; Tuczay 2011) but, even after the rejection of the mythologische Kontinuitätsprämisse (“mythological assumption of continuity”) (Harmening 1991, 134), according to which remnants of pagan Germanic-German religious practices become visible in the prohibitions, these studies continue to be methodologically problematic. The researchers often fail to exercise the necessary source-critical care and do



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not make the literary traditions of their sources visible. Nonetheless, this is certainly the main condition if one wishes to gain insights into historical prognostic practices from these texts because, on the one hand, prohibitions tend to be transmitted even when the underlying social conflicts no longer exist and, on the other, the discourse of superstition must also be treated “as practice that systematically forms the objects of which it speaks” (Foucault 2002, 54). The literary and verbally communicated prohibitions of superstitious ideas and practices could have provoked their realization or at least their transcription and transmission. Against this background and due to the fact that we possess almost exclusively written sources, the frequently-made distinction between popular (orally transmitted) and learned (script-based) practices seems speculative. Nevertheless, most researchers believe that conclusions on historical reality and practice are possible and they have also developed strategies to improve and strengthen their results (Filotas 2005, 42–64; Rider 2012, 21–34; Bailey 2012, 28–34; Bailey 2019, 496–497). The literary tradition of the concrete individual texts, their models, parallels and their manner of transmission must principally be observed. Additions and variations to the original provide evidence of conscious text editing and active engagement with the subject. Especially non-stereotypical descriptions point to personal observations. Filotas (2005, 48) offers an extended list “of criteria for identifying descriptions based on actual observation,” going back to Künzel (1992, 1060–1062). Notable also are descriptions of practices that are otherwise considered superstitious, for which exculpatory arguments are presented or which are tolerated. Thus Johannes Hartlieb reports that one might try to justify the use of lot books by claiming that one does not believe in them but merely uses them for entertainment (Eisermann/Graf 1989, 62; Kieckhefer 2017, 49), and Marquard of Lindau in his Dekalogerklärung actually condemns only those who use lotbooks, ez wer dann das sie es allain durch kürtzweil triben (“if they don’t use them only for entertainment”) (Heiles 2018, 158, 191–193). Finally, a comparison with other types of sources provides greater certainty about the actual practices. These can be trial documents, as in the case of Werner of Friedberg, who was prosecuted for making superstitious statements in Heidelberg in 1405 (Lerner 1991; Bracha 2013, 39–46), or administrative texts, such as the Basel Öffnungsbuch of 1512, which reports an attempted treasure hunt initiated by the city council that involved the use of various crystals and books containing conjurations (Wackernagel 1924, 599–600). In addition, narrative texts could be considered. Here, Haage (1986) offers an initial overview of relevant passages from Middle High German epic poetry. The most important – but in German reference works still neglected – sources are the texts used for the divinatory practices themselves. German lotbooks, geomancies, and chiromantic and onomatomantic tracts are widespread in fifteenth-century manuscripts and, with the exception of geomancy, were also printed in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. The lot books have now been completely catalogued (Heiles 2018; Stephan forthcoming) and there has been an initial overview of geomancies as well (Fürbeth 2017; Heiles 2018, 98–149). Individual studies and edi-

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tions are available on the chiromantic and onomatomantic treatises (Eis 1956, 13–16 and 49–52; Brévart 1989; Fürbeth 2007; Heiles 2016). Instructions for ritual magical prognostications, on the other hand, have been transmitted less frequently. The most comprehensive collection of such texts can be found in the manuscript Mscr. Dresd.M.206 of the Saxon State and University Library Dresden, written around 1515. The manuscript description of Hoffmann/Heiles (2016) also refers to the older manuscript tradition and the research literature. Rare but all the more valuable additional information is offered by material culture. The remains include magical mirrors (Braekman 2001; Láng 2008, 138–139 with Fig. 24) which were used for scrying and which correspond to that depicted in Mscr.Dresd.M.206 (fol. 97r), or artefacts of the Sigillum Dei, which was used for theurgic practices according to the Liber iuratus of Honorius and the Summa sacre magice of Beringarius Ganellus (Page 2019, 444–445). Only in combination with this variety of source types does the study of the late medieval German texts on superstition become particularly productive.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Abergläubische Lehren und magische (geomantische, astrologische u.s.w.) Künste. Saxon State and University Library Dresden, Mscr.Dresd.M.206 (ca. 1495 [I] / ca. 1515 [II]), http://digital. slub-dresden.de/id278681387 (29 February 2020). Baptist-Hlawatsch, Gabriele. Ulrich von Pottenstein: Dekalog-Auslegung. Das erste Gebot. Tübingen, 1995. Bernt, Alois, and Konrad Burdach. Der Ackermann aus Böhmen. Berlin, 1917. Bruchhold, Ullrich. Deutschsprachige Beichten im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert. Editionen und Typologien zur Überlieferungs-, Text- und Gebrauchsgeschichte vor dem Hintergrund der älteren Tradition. Berlin and New York, 2010. Eis, Gerhard. Wahrsagetexte des Spätmittelalters. Aus Handschriften und Inkunabeln. Bielefeld and Munich, 1956. Eisermann, Falk, and Eckhard Graf (eds.). Johannes Hartlieb, Das Buch aller verbotenen Künste, des Aberglaubens und der Zauberei. Ahlerstedt, 1989. Folz, Hans. Von der Beichte. Nuremberg, Hans Folz, 1979, exemplar: Munich, Bavarian State Library, Rar. 182, http://mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00027008-2 (31 March 2020). Geffcken, Johannes. Der Bildercatechismus des fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts und die catechetischen Hauptstücke in dieser Zeit bis auf Luther, Bd. 1: Die zehn Gebote, mit 12 Bildtafeln nach Cod. Heidelb. 438. Leipzig, 1855. Geiler von Kaysersberg, Johannes. Die Emeis. Straßurg, Johann Grüninger 1516, exemplar: Munich, Bavarian State Library, Res/2 J.pract. 10 m#Beibd.1, http://mdz-nbn-resolving.de/ urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00105845-3 (30 April 2020). Gille, Hans, and Ingeborg Spriewald (eds.). Die Gedichte des Michel Beheim: Nach der Heidelberger Hs.cpg 334 unter Heranziehung der Heidelberger Hs.cpg 312 und der Münchener Hs.cgm 291 sowie sämtlicher Teilhandschriften. Band II. Gedichte Nr. 148–357. Berlin, 1970.



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Haberkern, Ernst. Das ‘Beichtbüchlein’ des Thomas Peuntner nach den Heidelberger, Melker, Münchner und Wiener Handschriften. Göppingen, 2001. Hayer, Gerold, and Bernhard Schnell (eds.). Johannes Hartlieb, ‚Kräuterbuch’. Zum ersten Mal kritisch herausgegeben. Wiesbaden, 2010. Heiles, Marco. “Johann von Eych: Kommunionverbot für die Diözese Eichstätt. Edition und Kommentar.” Mittelalter. Interdisziplinäre Forschung und Rezeptionsgeschichte, 11.09.2017, https://mittelalter.hypotheses.org/11007 (19 March 2020). Jaey, Madeleine, and Kathleen Garay (eds.). The Distaff Gospels: A First Modern English Edition of ‘Les Évangiles des Quenouilles’. Petersborough, 2006. Jaspers, Gerardus Johannes. Stephan von Landskron, Die Hymelstraß. Mit einer Einleitung und vergleichenden Betrachtungen zum Sprachgebrauch in den Frühdrucken (Augsburg 1484, 1501 und 1510). Amsterdam, 1979. Kieckhefer, Richard (ed.). Hazards of the Dark Arts. Advice for Medieval Princes on Witchcraft and Magic. Johannes Hartlieb’s Book of all Forbidden Arts (1456) and Ulrich Molitoris’s On Witches and Pythonesses (1489). University Park, PA, 2017. Kiening, Christian. Johannes von Tepl, Der Ackermann. Frühneuhochdeutsch / Neuhochdeutsch. Stuttgart, 2002. Pfeiffer, Franz, and Joseph Strobl (eds.). Berthold von Regensburg. Vollständige Ausgabe seiner deutschen Predigten. Zweiter Band. Vienna, 1880 (repr. Berlin, 1965). Sullens, Idelle (ed.). Robert Mannyng of Brunne: Handlyng Synne. Brighthampton, 1983. Weidemann, Bodo. “Kunst der Gedächtnüß” und “De mansionibus”, zwei frühe Traktate des Johann Hartlieb. Berlin, 1964. Werbow, Stanley N. (ed.). Martin von Amberg: Der Gewissensspiegel. Berlin, 1958. Zingerle, Ignaz V. (ed.). Die pluemen der tugent des Hans Vintler. Innsbruck, 1874.

Secondary Literature Bailey, Michael D. “From Sorcery to Witchcraft: Clerical Conceptions of Magic in the Later Middle Ages.” Speculum 76 (2001): 960–990. Bailey, Michael D. “Concern over Superstition in Late Medieval Europe.” The Religion of Fools?: Superstition Past and Present. Eds. Stephen A. Smith and Alan E. Knight. Oxford, 2008. 115–133. Bailey, Michael D. “A Late-Medieval Crisis of Superstition?” Speculum 84 (2009): 633–661. Bailey, Michael D. Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies. The Boundaries of Superstition in Late Medieval Europe. Ithaca, NY, and London, 2013. Bailey, Michael D. “Superstition and Sorcery.” The Routledge History of Medieval Magic. Eds. Sophie Page and Cathrine Rider. London and New York, 2019. 487–501. Baumann, Karin. Aberglaube für Laien. Zur Programmatik und Überlieferung spätmittelalterlicher Superstitionenkritik, 2 vols. Würzburg, 1989. Birkhan, Helmut. Magie im Mittelalter. Munich, 2010. Bracha, Krzysztof. Des Teufels Lug und Trug. Nikolaus Magni von Jauer: Ein Reformtheologe des Spätmittelalters gegen Aberglaube und Götzendienst. Dettelbach, 2013. Braekman, Willy L. “A Unique Magical Mirror from the Sixteenth Century.” Societas magica Newsletter 8 (2001): 5–6. Brévart, Francis B. “Gematrisch-onomatomantische Literatur des Spätmittelalters: Überblick, Handschriftenneufunde, Textproben.” Aspekte der Germanistik. Festschrift für Hans-Friedrich Rosenfeld zum 90. Geburtstag. Ed. Walter Tauber. Göppingen, 1989. 237–246.

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Burnett, Charles. “The Translating Activity in Medieval Spain.” The Legacy of Muslim Spain. Ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi. Leiden, 1992. 1036–1058. Ebermann, Oskar, and Max Bartels. “Zur Aberglaubensliste in Vintlers ‘Pluemen der Tugent’ (V. 7694–7997).” Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 23 (1913): 1–18 and 113–136. Eisermann, Falk. “Essen, Trinken, Saitenspiel und Sünden. Zum ‘Licht der Seele’ (Lübeck: Bartholomäus Ghotan, 1484).” Geistliche Literatur des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit. Festgabe für Rudolf Suntrup. Eds. Volker Honemann and Nine Miedema. Frankfurt am Main, 2013. 135–153. Filotas, Bernadette. Pagan Survivals, Superstitions and Popular Cultures in Early Medieval Pastoral Literature. Toronto, 2005. Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. A. M. – Sheridan Smith. London and New York, 2002. Fürbeth, Frank. Johannes Hartlieb. Untersuchungen zu Leben und Werk. Tübingen, 1992. Fürbeth, Frank. “Das Johannes Hartlieb zugeschriebene,Buch von der Hand’ im Kontext der Chiromantie des Mittelalters.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 136 (2007): 449–479. Fürbeth, Frank. “Sandrichter und Dämonen in der Geomantie des Mittelalters.” Turpiloquium. Kommunikation mit Teufeln und Dämonen in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Eds. Jörn Bockmann and Julia Gold. Würzburg, 2017. 161–185. Grimm, Jacob. Deutsche Mythologie. Fourth edition, curated by Elard Hugo Meyer. 3 vols. Berlin, 1875–1878. Haage, Bernhard D. “Aberglaube und Zauberei in der mittelhochdeutschen Dichtung.” Mannheimer Berichte 30 (1986): 53–72. Harmening, Dieter. Superstitio. Überlieferungs- und theoriegeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur kirchlich-theologischen Aberglaubensliteratur des Mittelalters. Berlin, 1979. Harmening, Dieter. “Katechismusliteratur. Grundlagen religiöser Laienbildung im Spätmittelalter.” Wissensorganisierende und wissensvermittelnde Literatur im Mittelalter. Perspektiven ihrer Erforschung. Kolloquium 5.–7. Dezember 1985. Ed. Norbert Richard Wolf. Wiesbaden, 1987. 91–102. Harmening, Dieter. “Spätmittelalterliche Aberglaubenskritik in Dekalog- und Beichtliteratur. Perspektiven ihrer Erforschung.” Volksreligion im hohen und späten Mittelalter. Dokumentation der Wissenschaftlichen Studientagung ‘Glaube und Aberglaube. Aspekte der Volksfrömmigkeit im hohen und Späten Mittelalter’, 27.–30. März 1985 in Weingarten (Oberschwaben). Eds. Peter Dinzelbacher and Dieter R. Bauer. Paderborn, 1990. 243–251. Harmening, Dieter. Zauberei im Abendland. Vom Anteil der Gelehrten am Wahn der Leute. Skizzen zur Geschichte des Aberglaubens. Würzburg, 1991. Heiles, Marco. “Eine bisher unbeachtete deutsche Chiromantie in der Landesbibliothek Linz.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 145 (2016): 70–81. Heiles, Marco. Das Losbuch. Manuskriptologie einer Textsorte des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts. Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2018. Heiles, Marco. “Johannes Hartlieb: Neues zu Leben und Werk. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Methodik des paläographischen Schriftvergleichs.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, forthcominga. Heiles, Marco. “Hydromancia – ein leerer Begriff? Die Hydromantie in der lateinischen Tradition des Mittelalters und bei Johannes Hartlieb.” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 101 (2019): 347–377. Hoffmann, Werner J., and Marco Heiles. “Mscr. Dresd.M.206. Messtexte, lat. – Sammlung von mantischen und magischen Texten, dt.” Werner J. Hoffmann, Die deutschsprachigen mittelalterlichen Handschriften der Sächsischen Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitäts-



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bibliothek (SLUB) Dresden. Vorläufige Beschreibungen (2016), http://www.manuscriptamediaevalia.de/dokumente/html/obj31604515 (29 February 2020). Hoffmann-Krayer, Eduard, and Hans Bächtold-Stäubli (eds.). Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens. 10 vols. Berlin and Leipzig, 1927–1942. Klingshirn, William E. “Isidore of Seville’s Taxonomy of Magicians and Diviners.” Traditio. Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought and Religion 58 (2003): 59–90. Künzel, Rudi. “Paganisme, syncrétisme et culture religieuse populaire au haut Moyen Âge. Réflexions de method.” Annales. Economies, sociétés, civilisations 47 (1992): 1055–1069. Láng, Benedek. Unlocked Books. Manuscripts of Learned Magic in the Medieval Libraries of Central Europe. University Park, PA, 2008. Lasson, Emilie. Superstitions médiévales: Une analyse d’après l’exgégèse du premier commandement d’Ulrich de Pottenstein. Paris, 2010. Lerner, Robert E. “Werner di Friedberg intrappolato dalla legge.” La parola all’accusato. Eds. Jean-Claude Maire Vigeur and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani. Palermo, 1991. 268–281. Morton, Peter A. “Superstition, Witchcraft, and the First Commandment in the Late Middle Ages.” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 13 (2018): 40–70. Müller, Stephan. “Die Wiener Schule: deutsche Texte im Umkreis der Universität Vienna im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert.” Wien 1365 – eine Universität entsteht. Eds. Heidrun Rosenberg and Michael Viktor Schwarz. Vienna, 2015. 162–179. Paige, Sophie. “Medieval Magical Figures. Between Image and Text.” The Routledge History of Medieval Magic. Eds. Sophie Page and Cathrine Rider. London and New York, 2019. 432–457. Rider, Catherine R. Magic and Religion in Medieval England. London, 2012. Ruhe, Doris. Gelehrtes Wissen, ‘Aberglaube’ und pastorale Praxis im französischen Spätmittelalter. Der ‘Second Lucidaire’ und seine Rezeption (14.–17. Jahrhundert). Wiesbaden, 1993. Rupp, Michael. “Wissenssicherung und Katechese. Gebrauchskontexte und Schreibkonzepte in der Überlieferung des lateinisch-deutschen Confessionale.” Wolfram-Studien 22 (2012): 203–218. Schmitt, Wolfram. Hans Hartliebs mantische Schriften und seine Beeinflussung durch Nikolaus von Kues. Heidelberg, 1962. Schnell, Bernhard. “Neues zur Biographie Johannes Hartliebs.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 136 (2007): 444–448. Schönbach, Anton E. Studien zur Geschichte der altdeutschen Predigt. II. Theil: Zeugnisse Bertholds von Regensburg zur Volkskunde. Vienna, 1900. Schweitzer, Franz-Josef. Tugend und Laster in illustrierten didaktischen Dichtungen des späten Mittelalters: Studien zu Hans Vintlers ‚Blumen der Tugend’ und zu ‚Des Teufels Netz’. Hildesheim, 1993. Schweitzer, Franz-Josef. “Hans Vintlers ‘Aberglaubensliste’ und der Hexenbegriff.” Literatur und Sprache in Tirol. Von den Anfängen bis zum 16. Jahrhundert. Akten des 3. Symposiums der Sterzinger Osterspiele (10.–12. April 1995). Eds. Michael Gebhardt and Max Siller. Innsbruck, 1996. 281–292. Stephan, Franziska. “Losbücher (Nr. 80.).” Katalog der deutschsprachigen illustrierten Handschriften des Mittelalters. Band 8. Munich, forthcoming. Stöllinger-Löser, Christine. “Katechetische Literatur (Nr. 67.).” Katalog der deutschsprachigen illustrierten Handschriften des Mittelalters (KdiH). Eds. Ulrike Bodemann et al. Vol. 7. Munich, 2017. http://kdih.badw.de/datenbank/stoffgruppe/67 Thorndike, Lynn. A History of Magic and Experimental Science. During the First Thirteen Centuries of our Era. Vol. 1. New York and London, 1923. Tuczay, Christa Agnes. Kulturgeschichte der mittelalterlichen Wahrsagerei. Berlin, 2011.

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Veenstra, Jan R. Magic and Divination at the Courts of Burgundy and France: Text and Context of Laurens Pignon’s Contre les devineurs (1411). Leiden, 1998. Voltmer, Rita. “Preaching on Witchcraft? The Sermons of Johannes Geiler of Kaysersberg (1445–1510).” Contesting Orthodoxy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft. Eds. Louise N. Kallestrup and Raisa M. Toivo. Cham, 2017. 193–215. Wackernagel, Rudolf. Geschichte der Stadt Basel. Dritter Band. Basel, 1924. Weidenhiller, Egino. Untersuchungen zur deutschsprachigen katechetischen Literatur des späten Mittelalters. Nach den Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek. Munich, 1965. Zika, Charles. “Magie – Zauberei – Hexerei. Bildmedien und kultureller Wandel.” Kulturelle Reformation. Sinnformationen im Umbruch 1400–1600. Eds. Bernhard Jussen and Craig Koslofsky. Göttingen, 1999. 317–382. Ziegeler, Wolfgang. Möglichkeiten der Kritik am Hexen- und Zauberwesen im ausgehenden Mittelalter. Zeitgenössische Stimmen und ihre soziale Zugehörigkeit. Cologne, 1973.

Wolfram Brandes

Legal Sources in the Medieval Eastern Christian World There were no special laws during the Byzantine period in which apocalyptic texts or an apocalyptic world outlook or behavior play any role. Therefore, it is necessary to search circumstances or events where hints of the use of apocalyptic literature and a possible role of eschatological thinking might be found. At times, however, the “classical” regulations of high treason have been used for the punishment of a “political” use of apocalyptic texts or ideas. Because Byzantine (secular) Law was based on Roman law, it is clear that apocalypses or related texts and opinions could not play any role in it (Zachariae 1955; Troianos 2017). Nevertheless, there exist indications that, in special (political) situations, apocalyptic texts could also play a significant role, because a typical element of Byzantine apocalyptic literature is the Last Roman Emperor or sometimes a series of emperors before and after this central figure of eschatological thinking (Möhring 2000; Alexander 1985, 151–184). Therefore, it was possible to “invent” new apocalyptic texts as a medium of propaganda against the ruling system, especially the emperor (“Kaiserkritik”). Of course, this was high treason and the state castigated it, often by imposing a death sentence or mutilation plus, usually, confiscations. An impressive example is an episode from the first half of the ninth century, in the second period of the iconoclastic controversy (Brubaker and Haldon 2011, 366–452). The story itself has well reported because one of those involved has written the details. Moreover, this was the patriarch Methodius himself, who wrote the Vita of Euthymius of Sardis. He was an iconophile bishop who, once expelled from his See in 815, suffered in prison and exile, dying under torture (BHG 2145; Gouillard 1960, 1987; Efthymiadis 2011, 104). Methodius, together with Euthymius and Joseph, the Archbishop of Thessalonica, fought against the iconoclastic emperors Leo V (813–820), Michael II (820–829) and Theophilus (829–842). Methodius relates in the Vita of Euthymius that Emperor Theophilus has charged him with committing high treason. Methodius, Joseph and Euthymius had published “flyers” (mēnytikḗ graphḗ = “denunciation”, “a traitorous text”), in which they prophesied Theophilus’ terrible end in the near future. They had published a similar flyer previously, eight months before the murder of Leo V (on Christmas day 825). In addition, on Michael II they had written such a text five months prior to his death in 829. Now, they prophesied the imminent death of Theophilus. Because the first and second prophecies appeared to have been accurate, the new text had a significant impact in Constantinople. However, this emperor was able to capture the authors and arrested all three. The examination was very intense and old Euthymius did not survive it (and so gained a place among the saints of the Orthodox Church). Methodius wrote his Vita, in which he related this event and even boasted https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-063

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(proudly) that he himself has written the first two texts. The third text had another author (Joseph or Euthymius) (Gouillard 1987, 41squ.; Brandes 2008, 184–186). Several scholars (Treadgold 2004) have shown that the second text (against Michael II) was an apocalypse of (Pseudo-)Daniel, a text which survived only in its Slavonic translation (Alexander 1985, 65–72; Pertusi 1988, 81–89). Methodius’ text was surely shorter than this apocalyptical text, possibly only a one-leaf-flyer. Therefore, the actions of Theophilus against the iconophil authors had no theological cause but were a reaction in the form of political propaganda against the emperor and the empire. In the eyes of the state, this was high treason. The later historiography (after 843 dominated by the iconophil “winners”) has manipulated the actual events in many ways, and so Euthymius and Joseph became saints, as victims of the iconoclasts. Methodius, as the first iconophil patriarch after 843 (and a highly learned man) was, of course, a very important historical figure. However, in 1280, Emperor Michael  VIII Palaeologus (d. December 11, 1282) issued a law on which only the historian George Pachymeres gives us some information (Pachymérès 1984, 619–621 [chap. IV. 24]; Dölger and Wirth 1977; for details, see Brandes 2008). The law forbade flyers (phámousa) with content that opposed the emperor, and their ownership, reading and distribution became punishable. Everybody who owned such a flyer had to burn it, or also face punishment. The writer would receive the death sentence. The passage by George Pachymeres ended with a concretion: everyone associated with a basileiographeīon (even simple ownership was sufficient) would receive the death sentence. This curious law was based on several edicts from the fourth century. In the Codex Theodosianus (book IX, title 34: De famosis libellis), nine laws by Constantine the Great plus the emperors Constantius, Valentinianus, Valens, Theodosius, Arcadius and Honorius against these famosi libelli (“defamatory writings”) have been collected. Codex Theodosianus 9,34,7 (from the year 365) reads as follows: “The name of defamatory writings is infamous, and if any person should suppose that they should be collected or read and should not immediately consume such papers with fire, he shall know that he will be subject to a capital sentence […].” (Pharr 1952, 250). The authors of the Codex Iustinianus in the sixth century incorporated this law (in combination with the beginning of Codex Theodosianus 9,34,9) into the new collection of law (Codex Iustinianus Book IX, title 36.1–2: De famosis libellis): “If anyone should find a defamatory libel in a house, in a public place, or anywhere else, without knowing who placed it there, he must either tear it up before anyone else finds it, or not mention to anyone that he has done so. If, however, he should not immediately tear up, or burn the paper, but should show it to others, he is notified that he will be liable to the punishment of death as the author.” (Scott 1932, 61squ.) The later Byzantine law collections and law books adopted this rule. Thus, in the so-called Basilica – the great collection of Byzantine law from the end of the ninth century – the Codex Iustinianus 9,36,1–2 (in the Greek translation of the sixth century) was incorporated (Scheltema et al. 1985, 3119 [LX, 63]). Here, we find the Greek translation phlyaríai (in terms of “babble” or “nonsense”) for the Latin famosi libelli. A later



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scholiast to this title of the Basilica noted simply that the phámousa are the same as the phlyariai (Scheltema et al. 1988, 3939). He combined the phlyariai with canon 18 of the ecumenical council of Chalcedon (in 451) resp. with canon 34 of the so-called Quinisextum (in 691/692): The crime of conspiracy or forming secret leagues is prohibited altogether by the secular law, and ought all the more to be forbidden in the Church of God”; and “if any clerics or monks are found conspiring or forming a league or contriving plots against bishops or fellow clerics, they shall be demoted from their rank altogether. (Nedungatt and Featherstone 1995, 112)

It seems that monks and clerics also used this kind of flyer, which could (although this was not essential in every case) contain apocalyptical content, or employ features of the apocalyptical literature for political reasons. Also, in the other Byzantine law books or commentaries, one can find passages on the phámousa or phlyaríai (Brandes 2008, 159–161). That George Pachymeres used the Latin loanword phámousa is noteworthy. Nevertheless, more noteworthy is the term basileiographeīon as a version of the phámousa. This was a special kind of Byzantine apocalyptical texts that was very short (maybe a “flyer”), mostly under the name of the prophet Daniel, with a reference to the emperor. There are many examples in the mid-Byzantine literature (Brandes 2008) and contemporary Latin sources (after the end of the twelfth century) of basileiographeīa. Frequently, they predicted the future emperors. Enemies of the present emperors used this kind of text in the hope of a better successor. This, of course, was high treason, the punishment for which was death and confiscation (Brandes 2008, 160squ.). We know that several people (including monks) were tried for high treason for using “secret” texts to calculate the remaining years of the reigning emperor, Michael VIII (Faillier 1984, 617; Brandes 2008, 180). Alternatively, one grammatistes Georgius, and especially Michael Strategopulos (cousin of the empress and member of the nobility), studied “imperial books” to discover Emperor Michael’s destiny. They were arrested and Michael Strategopulos was accused to wishing to become emperor. Similar was the trial (also in 1280) against Ioannes Angelos, also a member of one of the most important families in the Byzantine Empire. He, together with a certain monk Theodore, also attempted to identify the name of the next emperor. While under arrest, he was put to torture and later blinded, before committing suicide in prison (Brandes 2008, 179–180). These (and other) actions by Michael VIII at the end of the thirteenth century are, in an astonishing way, comparable to the trials and persecutions in 371 or 372 by Emperor Valens, on which Ammanius Marcellinus (and, in a shorter manner, other sources too) reports in full (Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, ed. Rolfe, 188–222 [XXIX,1,5–2,12]; Wiebe 1995; Den Boeft 2013, 9–93). This is a surprising similarity, but individuals of all times wished to know the future, especially the name of the next emperor. Moreover, the ruling emperor saw these actions in the thirteenth century, like those in the fourth, as an attack against his régime. Another example comes from the twelfth century. In the year 1159, Emperor Manuel I was far from Constantinople but Theodore Styppeiotes, the head of the impe-

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rial chancery, and so one of the most powerful people in the state, published a “prophecy” insinuating that the emperor must abdicate and that the rule must go to a more experienced man, because Manuel was a meirakion, a young man (in fact, he was 41 years old). Here, Theodore used an apocalyptic figure, the meirakion, a foolish young man who will play a fatal role in the events at the end of time, as everyone could read in certain (Pseudo-)Daniel-Apocalypses (Brandes 2008, 190–191). Theodore, several sources report, spent a lot of time searching for future events. His attempt to usurp the throne ended in tragedy for him. He was imprisoned. After being tried for high treason, he was blinded, his tongue was cut and he spent the rest of his life in prison (Kresten 1978; Brandes 2008, 188–191). Together with him, Michael Glykas, a grammatikos in the imperial chancery, subordinated to Theodore Styppeiotes and a famous Byzantine author and historian, was imprisoned too because he was involved in the plot of his boss, Theodore. During his trial, the judges accused him of using magic and sorcery (against the emperor or to learn about the future of Manuel). He may also have used some kind of basileiographeīa too. He was sentenced to a moderate kind of blinding (he was later able to write further books) (Brandes 2008, 196). As the example of the anonymous scholiast of the Basilica shows, the regulations of secular law influenced the canonical right. The Nomocanon in XIV titles, e.  g., title IX, chapter 36, is concerned with clerics who insulted the emperor (or bishops, high officials, or presbyters). Theodore Balsamon in his commentary, cited at length the Basilica 60,63,1–2 (s.  o.) (Rhalles and Potles 1852, 229).

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Ammianus Marcellinus. Ammianus Marcellinus with an English translation, III. Ed. John C. Rolfe. London and Cambridge, 1972 [reprint]. Basilicorum libri LX. Series A, vol. VIII, textus libri LX. Eds. Herman J. Scheltema, Douwe Holwerda, and Nicolaas van der Wal. Groningen, 1988. Basilicorum libri LX. Series B, vol. IX, scholia in librum LX, 17–69. Eds. Herman J. Scheltema, Douwe Holwerda, and Nicolaas van der Wal. Groningen, 1985. Codex Theodosianus. The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions. A Translation with Commentary, Glossary, and Bibliography. Ed. Clyde Pharr. Princeton, 1952. Justinian the Great. The Civil Law, Including The Twelve Tables, The Institutiones of Gaius, The Rules of Ulpian, The Opinions of Paulus, The Enactments of Justinian, and The Constitutions of Leo. Translated from the Original Latin. Vol. XV. Ed. Samuel P. Scott. Cincinnati, 1932. Regesten der Kaiserurkunden des Oströmischen Reiches von 565–1453, bearbeitet von Franz Dölger, 3. Teil: Regesten von 1204–1282. Second, extended and improved edition by Peter Wirth. Munich, 1977. Georges Pachymérès. Relations historiques, II. Livres IV–VI, édition et notes par Albert Failler, traduction française par Vitalien Laurent. Paris, 1984.



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Secondary Literature Alexander, Paul J. The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition. Ed. with an introduction by Dorothy de F. Abrahamse. Berkeley et al., 1985. Boeft, Jan den, Jan Willem Drijvers, Daniël den Hengst, and Hans C. Teitler. Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXIX. Leiden and Boston, 2013. Brandes, Wolfram. “Kaiserprophetien und Hochverrat. Apokalyptische Schriften und Kaiser­ vaticinien als Medium antikaiserlicher Propaganda.” Endzeiten. Eschatologie in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen. Eds. Wolfram Brandes and Felicitas Schmieder. Berlin and New York, 2008. 157–200. Brubaker, Leslie, and John Haldon. Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era c. 680–850: a History. Cambridge, 2011. Efthymiadis, Stephanos (ed.). The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography. I: Periods and Places. Aldershot, 2011. Gouillard, Jean. “Une oeuvre inédite du patriarche Méthode: La vie d’Euthyme de Sardes.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 53 (1960): 36–46. Gouillard, Jean. “La vie d’Euthyme de Sardes (d. 831) une œuvre du patriarch Méthode.” Travaux et mémoires 10 (1987): 243–307. Kresten, Otto. “Zum Sturz des Theodoros Styppeiotes.” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 27 (1978): 49–103. Nedungatt, George, and Michael Featherstone (eds). The Council in Trullo Revisited (Kanonika 6). Rome, 1995. Möhring, Hannes. Der Weltkaiser der Endzeit. Entstehung, Wandel und Wirkung einer tausendjährigen Weissagung. Stuttgart, 2000. Rhalles, Georgios A., and Michael Potles. Σύνταγμα τῶν θείων καὶ ἱερῶν κανόνων, I. Athens, 1852 [Reprint Athens, 1966]. Treadgold, Warren T. “The Prophecies of the Patriarch Methodius.” Revue des Études Byzantines 62 (2004): 229–237. Troianos, Spyros. Die Quellen des byzantinischen Rechts. Berlin and Boston, 2017. Wiebe, Franz Josef. Kaiser Valens und die heidnische Opposition. Bonn, 1995. Zachariae von Lingenthal, Karl Eduard. Geschichte des griechisch-römischen Rechts. Aalen, 1955 [reprint of the third edition of 1892].

Michael Grünbart

Lekanomanteia in the Medieval Eastern Christian World This type of divination required a person or medium to gaze at a bowl of water or other liquid into which a flame or another kind of light source (eventually stars) was reflected; movements and other optical phenomena (refractions) were observed as well. This technique is recorded in ancient sources several times and was widespread (Johnston 2008, 159). In order to gain an idea of the technique, an object from the Kaiserliche Schatzkammer (“imperial treasury”) at Vienna should be mentioned. A bowl, cut from a single piece of agate, had constituted an “inalienable heirloom of the house of Austria” since Maximilian II obtained it in 1564. The largest carved bowl in the world is said to have been produced for Constantine I in the fourth century and transported from Constantinople after the city was plundered in 1204. It derives its value from an inscription that is said to become visible under certain circumstances: the word XRISTO can be read on the bottom of the bowl (it is unrecorded whether water is required to enhance its legibility). On several occasions, the practice of lekanomanteia is recorded in Byzantine sources in both romances and historiography. In the late-Byzantine Alexander Romance, the Egyptian ruler Nectanebus was said to be an expert in magic, and also knew how to perform fortune-telling by using water in bowls. He travelled to Alexander in Macedonia in order to teach him (esp. astronomy). Alexander was curious about his future life and Nektenabo told him, that he (Nektenabo) will be killed by his son. Then he was surprisingly killed by Alexandros, but his mother Olympias confirmed that Nektenabo was his father (Lolos 1983, 90–93). The manuscripts providing that version are dated to the sixteenth century). However, the practice is mentioned in historiographical sources. The example of Leo V combining lecanomancy and astrology has been discussed in the main article (↗ Grünbart, Prognostication Eastern Christian World, 160), but another occurrence of that technique featured in the political history of Byzantium. Nicetas Choniates, author of one of the main sources for the twelfth century, describes the curiosity of the emperor Andronikos I (1183–1185), who had usurped imperial power step by step and became anxious about the duration of his rulership. He recognized that the ancient divining art of sacrifice had been abolished, that the revelation of future events through this technique had also ceased and wholly vanished, that augury as well had flown away beyond the borders of the Roman empire, together with dream interpretation and the observation of omens, and that only those impostors survived who falsely divined through tubs and basins, together with those who carefully observe the positions of stars and who deceive others no less than they themselves are deceived. He set aside astrology as being https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-064



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both more common and obscure in revealing future events and yielded himself wholly to those who read the signs of the unknown in the waters, wherein certain images of the future are reflected like the shining rays of the sun. Andronikos declined to be present at the mysteries, shunning babbling rumor which sees through the secret rites and divulges them to all. Therefore, he entrusted this loathsome deed of the night to Stephanos Hagiochristophorites [= advisor of Andronikos], of whom we have made frequent mention. He enlisted the services of Seth, who had performed such rituals from boyhood and for which Emperor Manuel gouged out his eyes, as we mentioned when recounting the events of his reign, and asked the question: Who will rule after Emperor Andronikos or who will depose him? How he performed the secret rite I would rather neither learn nor describe, and they who so desire may be informed from another source. The evil demon replied or, rather, dimly indicated, as in murky waters, a certain Isaakios; the entire name, however, was not spelled out, but only a sigma in the shape of a half-moon, behind which was formed an iota. The oracle was unclear and only gave an indication of what was to be, or it would be closer to the truth to say that that which one could not be sure of knowing was beclouded with uncertainty by the multiform demon which feeds on evil by night. Andronikos surmised from what he heard that the letters designated the Isaurian; he contended that this was Isaakios Komnenos, who ruled as tyrant over Cyprus and whom he suspected of aspiring to his throne, since he had sailed from Isauria to Cyprus. […] Andronikos wondered at the oracular response and said, “Ask not only after my successor but inquire also as to the time.” When this question was posed, the earth-loving spirit fell into the water with a loud noise and prophesied by means of incantations that which it should not have revealed, that it would be within the days of the Exaltation of the Annals of Cross [14 September]. It was the beginning of the month of September when these events took place. When he heard the response to his second question, Andronikos displayed an unpleasant, false, and scornful smile, stated and said that the oracle was nonsense (for how could Isaakios set sail from Cyprus and cover such a distance within so few days and remove him from the throne?), and paid no heed to it whatsoever. He asked John Apotyras (he was appointed judge of the velum by Andronikos and consequently was an ardent minister of his wishes) whether it were necessary to arrest Isaakios Angelos, since the responses of the oracle might pertain to him (for they looked into the distance neglecting that which was under foot), but he did not interpret the oracle in that way. Andronikos, for his part, heaped scorn on John Apotyras for even thinking that these things might pertain to Isaakios Angelos, contemning the man for the effeminacy of his character and contending that he was incapable of any clever enterprise; his doom was approaching and the Divinity was wiser than he. (Niketas Choniates, Historia, trans. Magoulias, 187–188)

Nicetas describes an emperor, who is curious about his future reign, but sceptical about certain practices of prognostication. The historiographer mentions some techniques, but no serious traces of augury can be found in Byzantine sources; however, birds were still present and figured as semaphores. Dream interpretation was a common practice of prognostication, that supported decision-making in Byzantium (↗ Oberhelman, Dream Interpretation Eastern Christian World, 386) Skleros Seth was a personality of the second half of the twelfth century (Magdalino 2007, 149–150). He was accused of engaging in magical practices, punished by Emperor Manuel and blinded; therefore, he could not see any letters in the water bowl, and was compelled to invoke a demon in order to gain a result. Two letters became visible (in mirror-inverted order Ɔ I [= Sigma and Iota]), imagining that the supernatural power wrote it from the other side). Andronikos tried to figure out its

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meaning, but failed to take the remote solution into consideration. He assumed, that the usurper, Isaakios of Cyprus (1183–1191), was unable to reach the capital within fortnight, but Andronikos oversaw  – according to Nicetas  – another name-bearer: Isaakios Angelos. This episode illustrates clearly how prognostic techniques influenced Byzantine political culture. Manuals and instructions concerning lecanomancy and similar techniques can be found in Late Byzantine and early modern manuscripts accompanied by illustrations. They reflect ancient knowledge, but the practice is often mixed with magic. The best overview still presents Hopfner (1932).

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Niketas Choniates. Nicetae Choniatae historia. Ed. Jan Louis van Dieten. Berlin and New York, 1975. Niketas Choniates. O City of Byzantium, Annals of Niketas Choniates. Ed. and trans. Harry J. Magoulias. Detroit, 1984.

Secondary Literature Grünbart, Michael. “Unter einem guten Stern? Externe Instanzen bei kaiserlichen Entscheidungs­ prozessen in Byzanz.” Prosopon Rhomaikon. Ergänzende Studien zur Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit. Eds. Alexander Beihammer, Bettina Krönung, and Claudia Ludwig. Berlin and Boston, 2017. 17–29. Hopfner, Theodor. “Mittel- und Neugriechische Lekano-, Lychno-, Katoptro- und Onychomantien.” Studies Presented to F. Ll. Griffith. Ed. Egypt Exploration Society. Oxford, 1932. 218–232. Johnston, Sarah Iles. Ancient Greek Divination. Malden, MA, and Oxford, 2008. Lolos, Anastasios. Ps.-Kallisthenes: Zwei mittelgriechische Prosa-Fassungen des Alexanderromans. Teil I. Königstein (Taunus), 1983. Magdalino, Paul. “Occult Sciences and Imperial Power in Byzantine History and Historiography (9th–12th Centuries).” The Occult Sciences in Byzantium. Eds. Paul Magdalino and Maria Mavroudi. Geneva, 2007. 119–162.

Helena Avelar de Carvalho

Libro de las Suertes: an Example of Inter-Cultural Exchanges in Late-Medieval Iberia The Libro de las Suertes, the “Book of the Lots,” is an interesting example of complex intercultural interchanges, combining Arabic and Iberian cultures. One of the copies of this book is Manuscrito Aljamiado BRAH 11/9415 (previously designated T-19), which was thoroughly analyzed by Nuria de Castilla in her PhD thesis (Castilla 2004). It is written in the old Castilian language using Arabic characters, a form of writing called aljamiado (Montaner 2001, 1035–1042). The term aljamiado is applied to manuscripts written in a romance language using the Arabic or Hebrew alphabets. It encompasses the languages spoken in Spain (such as Castilian, Aragonese, or Catalan) and Portuguese, as well as the Mozarab (Arabic) and Ladino (Hebrew) idioms. The variant found in Libro de Suertes, that is, Castilian language written in Arabic script, was a form of writing frequently adopted by the Moriscos, the Iberian Muslims who were forcibly converted to Christianity (Martínez-Gonzaga 2003, 19–34). It was used as a way of preserving the distinctions of cultural identity, and at the same time ensuring that texts, particularly those of a religious or hermetic nature, could not be read by outsiders (Medina 2015, 251–266; Pons 2010, 27–44). Equally interesting from the perspective of cultural interchange is the book’s contents: it provides detailed instructions for a system of divination based on cleromancy, that is, the casting of lots (such as a coin or dice). Although the system is, in itself, relatively simple, the process of casting was not taken lightly. It had to be preceded by a prayer to Allah and had to follow certain rules: the question should not be asked more than once (even if the answer were unpalatable), nor could the casting take place under certain phases of the Moon (Castilla 2004, 391–392): Do not do it in the first [day] of the Moon, nor in the ninth, nor in the eleventh, nor in the twenty-first, nor in the twenty-seventh.

The person who asked the question (the querent) had to cast the lots several times, and the results were translated into simple images that were, in turn, organized to form a more complex figure. These figures are visually similar to those used in geomancy but the concept underlying the method resembles more that of the Yijing, the “Book of Changes.” In the latter, each casting originates a horizontal line, which can be either broken or unbroken. The querent casts the lots six times, and the resulting lines are then organized into groups of six, thereby forming a hexagram. There are a total of 64 hexagrams, each accompanied by a short text providing the answer. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-065

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In Libro de Suertes, the answer was also obtained by cleromancy and the result was expressed in dots: each casting instigates one, two or no dots. Several practitioners used special dice, with the trigrams drawn on their faces, which made the casting process far quicker. The dots were organized into groups of three (trigrams) each composed of three layers. These were in turn grouped three by three horizontally, to form the final figure. There are a total of 64 possible combinations. Each of these figures is accompanied by a short text providing the answer to the question. All of the answers begin with a direct interjection to the querent and are delivered in vivid language and a narrative style similar to that of the parables. They can be relatively positive, as in the example below (Castilla 2004, 393): Hey, petitioner! Your quest is like that of a man who sows the barren land without water in it, and sows because he needs it. And afterwards it comes good weather, with water [falling] from the sky, and the plantation is fertilized and it can be profited from it more than he ever thought [to be possible]. And thus is the thing you demand. And you will achieve it and will come upon what you want from it, if Allah wants. Therefore, do not cease to endeavour in your quest, which is much profitable to you, if Allah wants.

However, not all answers were so encouraging; some in fact could be quite dire (Castilla 2004, 625): Hey, petitioner! Your quest is like the cattle and the wolf who never agree. So is your result, that you ask about. You have malevolent enemies, and you cannot save yourself from them nor from their evil, except by fleeing them, as fleeing them is good to you, as Allah is the Helper that will help you, so may Allah will.

Either positive or negative, the answers were intended to have a strong impact on the querent and the narrative style could encourage further reflection. In this aspect, the texts resemble the style of the Yijing. Although there is no clear evidence of a direct connection between the Libro de Suertes and geomantic practices or the Yijing, the similarities suggest that some form of cross-cultural exchange had occurred.

Selected Bibliography Castilla, Nuria de. Edición, Estudio Y Glosario del Manuscrito Aljamiado T19 de la Real Academia de la Historia, Ph.D. Diss., Madrid 2004. Córdova, María Teresa Narváez. “Los Moriscos Españoles a través de sus Manuscritos Aljamiados.” Cuadernos de la Facultad de Humanidades 1 (1978): 11–65. García, Manuel C. Feria. “Los Moriscos y el uso de la Aljamía.” Al-Andalus-Magreb, 2, 8–9, (2000/2001): 299–323. Martínez-Gonzaga, Mar. “Política de asimilación y Estatus de Inferioridad em la Tratado acerca de los Moriscos de España de Pedro de Valencia.” Hispanófila 137 (Jan. 2003): 19–34.



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Medina, Esther Fernández. “El Aljamiado, Lengua de Resistencia.” Le Choix du Vulgaire. Espagne, France, Italie (XIIIe–XVIe siècle). Colloques, congrès et conférences sur la Renaissance européenne, 86, (2015): 251–266. Montaner, Alberto. “Literatura Aljamiada.” Diccionario Filológico de Literatura Medieval Española, Textos y Transmission. Eds. Carlos Alvar and José Manuel L. Megías. Madrid, 2002. 1035–1042. Pons, Luis F. Bernabé. “Los Manuscritos Aljamiados como Textos Islámicos.” Memorias de los Moriscos: escritos y relatos de uma diáspora cultural. Eds. Alfredos Mateos Paramio and Juan Carlos Villaverde Amieva. Madrid, 2010. 27–44. Tottoli, Roberto. “The Morisco Hell. The Significance and Relevance of the Aljamiado Texts for Muslim Eschatology and Islamic Literature.” Locating Hell in Islamic Traditions. Ed. Christian Lange. Leiden and Boston, 2006. 268–296.

László Sándor Chardonnens

Mantic Alphabets in the Medieval Western Christian World Dream divination has a long history that antedates its introduction into the early medieval Latin West by thousands of years, but its practice was as popular as ever during the Middle Ages (↗ Schirrmeister, Dream Interpretation Western Christian World). In his Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, a work widely read in medieval times, the late antique philosopher Macrobius observed that some dreams have a supernatural origin and contain a divine message (Eyssenhardt 1868). Medieval dreamers and dream diviners alike mined their dreams for these hidden messages, all the more so because biblical precedent had amply demonstrated the efficacy of dream divination. Two forms of dream divination already practiced in Antiquity were adopted in the early medieval Latin West: the dream book, which converts dream images into their future significance, and the dream lunary, which predicts if and when dreams come true with the help of the phases of the moon. Dream books and dream lunaries survive by the hundreds, in contrast to a third, lesser-known form of dream divination, that of the mantic alphabet (Chardonnens 2018). Sometimes attributed to the Old Testament patriarch Joseph, mantic alphabets might have played a smaller role than dream books and lunaries but are probably one of few original contributions of the Latin West to the history of dream divination. Mantic alphabets are divinatory devices that allow one to predict the future through bibliomancy after experiencing a dream. The majority of texts has a preface followed by an alphabet key with predictions (see Fig. 39). The preface sets the parameters for consulting the alphabet key. After having experienced a dream, the dreamer should engage in a simple ritual of prayer that prepares him for an act of bibliomancy by opening a book at random, usually a psalter. The first letter on the page at which the book was opened is looked up using the alphabet key, where it is linked to a prediction. In the text in Fig. 38, for instance, the letter a signifies prosperitatem, b dominacionem, c cecitatem cordis, and so on. Although each letter represents a specific prediction, the link between that letter and its prediction entirely lacks any discernible logic, as does the link between the prediction and the dream, for that matter. It is the alphabet key that gives this form of divination its modern name of a mantic alphabet or alphabet prognostic (Chardonnens 2013; Hunt 2013). German research, which has long dominated the field, has comparable labels; for instance, Bedeutung der Buchstaben, Orakelalphabet and Buchstabenorakel (Steinmeyer 1874; Förster 1936; Speckenbach 1990). With certain exceptions, the texts themselves do not name themselves after the alphabet key. It is more customary for mantic alphabets to have rubrics that focus on the purpose (Pur sounge esprouer, “to interpret dreams,”

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Fig. 39: Mantic alphabet copied and subsequently censored in a sixteenth-century German ­manuscript (Erlangen, Universitätsbibliothek, MS 475, fol. 51v). Photo credits: Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg.

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Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 86, fol. 48r), or the putative author, the Old Testament patriarch Joseph (Sompnile Ioseph, St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 692, 491). 104 texts have been identified so far, two in Welsh, four in Italian, six in French, seven in English, 27 in German, and 58 in Latin (Chardonnens 2019). The majority of surviving text witnesses comes from a German-speaking area, now consisting of Southern Germany, Western Austria, Switzerland and Northern Italy (Chardonnens 2014a). Others hail from France, the Netherlands, the British Isles and Southern Italy. With so many attestations, considerable textual variation inevitably exists. The attribution to Joseph, for instance, occurs in about a third of the texts and seems to have emerged in the fourteenth century in the German-speaking area. These mantic alphabets are known in German research as Somnialia Joseph (Speckenbach 1978–2008). Texts that predate the fourteenth century or come from other regions tend to be unattributed. Several mantic alphabets from the British Isles are uniquely associated with philosophers; for example, with Aristotle, or with wysse clerkys (“wise clerks,” Aberystwyth, Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru, Llanstephan 88, 49; Oxford, All Souls College, MS 81, fol. 186v). Aristotle was widely known to have written extensively on dreaming, even though he was skeptical about dream divination. Philosophers in general (wysse clerkys), on the other hand, were renowned in literary culture for their supernatural powers. The attributions to Joseph and philosophers are probably strategies for authenticating this form of divination. Another major point of textual variation is the fact that not all mantic alphabets refer to dream divination, turning them into unspecified lot casting devices. Lynn Thorndike surmised that the alphabet key “might be employed without having any dream at all,” and not without reason (Thorndike 1923–1958). A handful of early attestations from England, France and Italy do not claim to clarify dreams, but to cast light on any matter instead. One such text from a thirteenth-century Italian manuscript starts: Si de aliqua re sire [sic] uolueris hoc modo sire [sic] poteris (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Hamilton 390, fol. 26v). Together with the rubric, which reads Sortes apostolice ad explanandum, the incipit seems to promise a generic form of sortilege. The image beneath the text, however, depicts a priest with a book speaking to another man, and is labelled iste splanat somnia, indicating that it was known that the mantic alphabet might be used for dream divination. Some eight mantic alphabets lack a preface altogether, consisting of an alphabet key alone. These texts are similar in that they are written in the vernacular and hail from the German-speaking area. The later attestations of such bare alphabet keys are found alongside texts in which lot casting is used for diversion, as a prototypical party game. One bare alphabet key even has an alphabetical wheel of fortune (Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 75.10 Aug. 2°, fol. 1r). The majority of mantic alphabets, however, are unambiguously identified as dream divination devices. Mantic alphabets are attested in manuscripts from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries, with a steady rise from three texts in the twelfth century to 42 in the fifteenth, and a sharp decline to eighteen texts in the sixteenth century, dwindling to



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two in the seventeenth century, and one in the eighteenth. The distribution in print covers circa 1475–1537, with sixteen texts in the fifteenth and three in the sixteenth centuries, respectively. The origin of mantic alphabets is unclear. Older research posited an Antique ancestry for mantic alphabets on the grounds that the alphabet as such had already played a significant role in lot casting for a very long time (Dornseiff 1922; Förster 1936; Assion 1978–2008). That being said, no alphabetical devices even remotely similar to mantic alphabets have been recorded prior to the genesis of the mantic alphabets themselves. It is more likely that mantic alphabets evolved around the twelfth century out of contemporaneous types of abecedaries, notably alphabetical acrostics, which were in vogue from the tenth century onward in areas that also witnessed the first mantic alphabets, such as England and Germany (Günzel 1993; Chardonnens 2012). Verbal echoes from acrostics and remnants of an acrostic descent are still evident in mantic alphabets. The prediction for the letter c, for instance, tends to be a non-acrostic mortem, although certain textual variants predict cecitatem, which is also found for the letter c in an eleventh-century English acrostic riddle. Likewise, the letter t predominantly predicts iram or iracundiam, but sometimes an acrostic tedium or tristiciam. If mantic alphabets are indeed a twelfth-century development, they are the only new type of dream divination to have emerged in the medieval Latin West. The post-medieval demise of mantic alphabets is more easily explained than their origin. With the introduction of moveable type, mantic alphabets were printed alongside alphabetical dream books as early as 1475, mainly in Germany and Italy, but this ended abruptly in 1537. Having experienced its peak in the fifteenth century, the manuscript transmission of mantic alphabets was likewise in serious decline in the sixteenth century. The reason why medieval dream divination, including mantic alphabets, lost its audience in the course of the sixteenth century is twofold (Gantet 2010; Chardonnens 2014b). First, Renaissance scholars had no further use for Latin and vernacular forms of dream divination. They preferred editions of Greek dream books instead, which were being edited and printed by Swiss and Italian humanists as early as 1501. Second, sixteenth-century religious reformers were growing increasingly critical of dream divination. Martin Luther, for instance, cautioned believers not to attach any mantic value to dreams, on the grounds that one could never be certain that a dream and its significance had originated from God. A belief in dream divination, then, amounted to idolatry in the eyes of the religious reformers; that is, a breach of the first commandment. That this viewpoint was taken up by early Protestants is evident from the censorship of manuscript texts, mainly in the areas affected by the Anglican and Lutheran reformation. The mantic alphabet in Fig. 38, for instance, was copied in 1516 by Johannes Wirsing (1488–1552), at that time the Cantor and later the Abbot of the German abbey of Heilsbronn. A censor, presumably Wirsing himself, subsequently crossed out the text and added the comment non est verum. This comment is ambiguous and may reflect religious denunciation, scepticism, or both. In any case, the fact that the veracity of the text fell under suspicion may be symptomatic of the declining faith in dream divination during the sixteenth century.

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Selected Bibliography Primary Source Macrobius. Commentarii in somnium Scipionis. Ed. Franz Eyssenhardt. Leipzig, 1868.

Secondary Literature Ælfwine’s Prayerbook (London, British Library, Cotton Titus D. xxvi + xxvii). Ed. Beate Günzel. London, 1993. Assion, Peter. “Bedeutung der Buchstaben.” Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon. Eds. Wolfgang Stammler et al. Second revised edition. 14 vols. Berlin, 1978–2008. I. 665–666. Chardonnens, László Sándor. “The Old English Alphabet Prognostic as a Prototype for Mantic Alphabets.” Secular Learning in Anglo-Saxon England: Exploring the Vernacular. Eds. László Sándor Chardonnens and Bryan Carella. Amsterdam, 2012. 223–237. Chardonnens, László Sándor. “Mantic Alphabets in Medieval Western Manuscripts and Early Printed Books.” Modern Philology 110 (2013): 340–366. Chardonnens, László Sándor. “‘Thes byne the knoyng off dremys’: Mantic Alphabets in Late Medieval English.” Anglia 132 (2014a): 473–505. Chardonnens, László Sándor. “Mantic Alphabets in Late Medieval England, Early Modern Europe, and Modern America: The Reception and Afterlife of a Medieval Form of Dream Divination.” Anglia 132 (2014b): 641–675. Chardonnens, László Sándor. “Dream Divination in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books: Patterns of Transmission.” Aspects of Knowledge: Preserving and Reinventing Traditions of Learning in the Middle Ages. Eds. Marilina Cesario and Hugh Magennis. Manchester, 2018. 23–52. Chardonnens, László Sándor. Handlist of Dream Divination and Lunar Prognostication in Western Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. https://radboud.academia.edu/LaszloSandorChardonnens. 2019 (18 March 2020). Dornseiff, Franz. Das Alphabet in Mystik und Magie. Leipzig, 1922. Förster, Max. “Zwei kymrische Orakelalphabete für Psalterwahrsagung.” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 20 (1936): 228–243. Gantet, Claire. Der Traum in der Frühen Neuzeit: Ansätze zu einer kulturellen Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Berlin, 2010. Speckenbach, Klaus. “Traumbücher.” Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon. Eds. Wolfgang Stammler et al. Second revised edition. 14 vols. Berlin, 1978–2008. IX.1014–1028. Speckenbach, Klaus. “Die deutschen Traumbücher des Mittelalters.” Träume und Kräuter: Studien zur Petroneller ‘Circa instans’-Handschrift und zu den deutschen Traumbüchern des Mittelalters. Eds. Nigel F. Palmer and Klaus Speckenbach. Cologne, 1990. 121–210. Steinmeyer, Elias. “Bedeutung der Buchstaben.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 17 (1874): 84. Thorndike, Lynn. A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols. New York, 1923–1958. Writing the Future: Prognostic Texts of Medieval England. Ed. Tony Hunt. Paris, 2013.

Cornelia Scherer

Mantic Practices in the Collectio Hispana The Collectio Hispana is a chronological collection of texts referring to councils and letters. Created on the seventh-century Iberian Peninsula it is preserved in three versions which had been gradually enriched, in particular with the Council Acts of the Iberian Assemblies. For that reason it is assumed that it originated in Spain (Kéry 1999, 61). There is some controversy on the question to which scholar the collection originally goes back: Many Spanish researchers, recently – as the most prominent one – the editor of the collection, Gonzalo Martínez Díez, stated that it was Isidore of Seville (Martínez Díez 1966, 309–310). But nevertheless the attribution remains controversial (Kéry 1999, 61). The oldest review dates from the phase of the fourth Council of Toledo (633). It is not preserved (Maassen 1870, 677–683). The manuscripts made pass on two younger editorial forms of the seventh century: the “Juliana” and the “Vulgata”. The latter is regarded as the “final” and the most frequently preserved form. It contains the seventeenth Council of Toledo (694) and probably dates from this period (Kéry 1999, 61). Only the Council Acts within the collection do mention mantic practices whereas the letters, mostly composed by popes, do not. The same also applies to practices that could be described as – in the broadest sense – “magical”: In the Decretum Gelasianum solely, which is contained in the section on letters and did most certainly not come up in Rome, there is talk of amulets (in the fifth chapter; Migne 1850, 848). The mantic practices discussed in the Council Acts can be divided into two large (main-) groups: the first and more extensive group bans consulting and/or supporting prophets or seers. For example in c. 42 of the Council of Agde (506): XLII That those who admire sortilegi and augures shall be separated from the Church. And to not let it seem as if something, that endangers Catholic faith heavily, has been left aside, namely that quite a few clerics or laymen have an high interest in the art of divination and openly and under the code name of a fictitious religion – they call their lots ‘lots of saints’ – profess the science of divination or promise to predict the future by looking through whatever scriptures: all the clerics and all the lay people who are caught consulting them or spreading such teachings are to be removed from Church. (Martínez Díez 1984, 139; trans. Eric Schlager)

The second group expresses a prohibition of mantic procedures attempting to predict the duration of the “current” king’s life, for example in c.  4 of the fifth Council of Toledo (636):

Acknowledgement: The author and the editors are very grateful to Eric Schlager for the English translation of the Latin passages. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-067

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IIII About those who feel good when they hope for the kingdom, while the king is still alive. Thus, as it is known to be both pernicious/hostile for faith and superstitious for men/humans to considerate future things without permission, to inquire about the days when rulers would die and, on this basis, to provide for their (the men/humans) own future, although it is written: ‘It is not up to you to know the times or the moment which the father has set in His power’ (Acts 1:7), we decide by means of this decree: if someone is convicted of having investigated such matters and has, while the king was still alive – in the hope of inheriting his kingdom in the future, directed his gaze to something else or has won more people for this mission, he will be expelled from the Catholic community by excommunication. (Martínez Díez 1992, 282–283; trans. Eric Schlager)

This canon was designed in the context of a whole series of Council regulations conceived to protect the king (Zeddies 2003, 181). Considering the extent of the Collectio Hispana, the number of provisions dealing with mantic practices is small. The systematic versions of the Collectio Hispana also show that. They all arrange their reading material in ten books and, in contrast to later collections, do not comprise a book that deals solely with magical and mantic practices. They clearly point out the two contexts for provisions on mantic practices in the Visigothic kingdom: to ensure the right faith and to safeguard the royal rule. Both occasions refer to Visigothic kingdom specifics. Due to the ‘late’ conversion of the Visigoths to the Catholic faith at the end of the 580s, the regular reassurance of right faith was part of the Visigoth identity (Orlandis, Ramos-Lissón, 1982, 341-343). The notorious insecurity of royal authority and the violent changes of throne in the Visigothic kingdom are another constant that found its way into medieval historiography as morbus gothorum (Hartmann, 2017, 67–88; Stadermann 2017, 411–415; Esders, 2019, 176–177). What does this mean for the practice of mantic practices in the Visigothic kingdom? To answer this question, provisions that originated in the Visigothic kingdom and canons that originated from sources of the Collectio Hispana have to be distinguished. Five provisions originate from the Greek councils of late antiquity (Martínez Diez 1966, 281), the Gallic councils (Martínez Diez 1966, 290) and the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua, a collection that also originated in Gallia in the 5th century (Munier, 1960, 235). Four references of mantic practices are from Iberian councils, and two others are part of the Capitula Martini, which is a collection that also originated in the Visigothic kingdom. Although one of them is a provision of the Council of Ancyra, Martin of Braga seems to have adapted it to the needs of his time and environment (Gaudemet, 1988, 55). This suggests a connection between the latter and the time of origin of the Collectio Hispana (Herbers, 2019, 14) The differentiated terminology concerning fortune-tellers and magicians is remarkable. For example, a canon of the fourth Council of Toledo mentions magi, haruspices, harioli and augures (Martínez Díez, Rodríguez 1992, 218). In ancient Rome, the augurs were mainly responsible for the interpretation of the flight of birds, and the haruspices for the viscera. Questionalbe is, whether these distinctions were still known in the Visigothic kingdom. Although Isidor mentions the visceral vision per-



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formed by the haruspices in Etymologies VIII/9, he derived the word from hora (hour). In addition, he attributes to them the task of recognizing the right time for certain actions. (Lindsay, 1911). This suggests that the differentiated terminology refers to the literary heritage of antiquity, not to common practice in the Visigothic kingdom. The provisions determinations contained in the Collectio Hispana were subsequently further handed down and found their way into Carolingian and finally into high medieval collections. Especially the Capitula Martini of Martin of Braga were strongly received (Harmening, 1979, 279 and 322–324). Seven canons of the Collectio Hispana are part of the decree of Burchard of Worms, most of them occur in book 10 (Hofmann, Pokorny, 1991, 215–218 and 226). Thus, the Collectio Hispana is an important repository and mediator of knowledge about mantic practices in the middle Ages.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Isidor of Sevilla. Ethymologiarum sive originum libri 20. Ed. Wallis M. Lindsay. Oxford, 1911. La colección canónica Hispana, 6 vols. Eds. Gonzalo Martínez Díez and Félix Rodríguez. Madrid, 1966–2002. Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina. Ed. Jacques-Paul Migne. Vol. 84. Paris, 1850.

Secondary Literature Esders, Stefan. “Chindasvinth, the ‘Gothic disease’, and Monothelite Crisis.” Millenium Jahrbuch 16 (2019): 175–212. Gaudemet, Jean. “Traduttore, traditore – Les Capitula Martini.” Fälschungen im Mittelalter. Internationaler Kongreß der Monumenta Germaniae Historica München (16.–19. September 1986), Teil II: Gefälschte Rechtstexte. Der bestrafte Fälscher. Hanover, 1988. 51–65. Harmening, Dieter. Superstitio. Überlieferungs- und theoriegeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur kirchlich-theologischen Aberglaubensliteratur des Mittelalters. Berlin, 1979. Hartmann, Wilfried. “Das Westgotenreich: Misslingen ‚konsensualer‛ Herrschaft?” Recht und Konsens im Frühen Mittelalter. Eds. Verena Epp and Christoph H. F. Meyer. Sigmaringen, 2017. 87–115. Herbers, Klaus. Prognostik und Zukunft im Mittelalter. Praktiken – Kämpfe – Diskussionen. Stuttgart, 2019. Hoffmann, Hartmut, and Rudolf Pokorny (eds.). Das Dekret des Bischofs Burchard von Worms. Textstufen – Frühe Verbreitung – Vorlagen. München, 1991. Kéry, Lotte. Canonical Collections of the Early Middle Ages (ca. 400–1140), A Bibliographical Guide to the Manuscripts and Literature. Washington, D.C., 1999. Maaßen, Friedrich. Geschichte der Quellen und der Literatur des canonischen Rechts im Abendlande. Graz, 1870 [reprint 1956]. Orlandis, José, and Domingo Ramos-Lissón. Die Synoden auf der Iberischen Halbinsel bis zum Einbruch des Islam (711). Paderborn, 1981.

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Scherer, Cornelia. “Die Collectio Hispana als Quelle für mantische Praktiken.” Mittelalterliche Rechtstexte als Quellen mantischer Praktiken. Eds. Klaus Herbers and Hans-Christian Lehner. Cologne, 2020. 39–54. Stadermann, Christian. Gothus. Konstruktionen und Rezeption von Gotenbildern in narrativen Schriften des merowingischen Gallien. Stuttgart, 2017. Thompson, Edward A. The Goths in Spain. Oxford, 1969. Zeddies, Nicole. Religio et sacrilegium, Studien zur Inkriminierung von Magie, Häresie und Heidentum (4.–7. Jahrhundert). Frankfurt am Main, 2003.

Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas

Mathematical Instruments in Astrology There were many forms of mathematical instruments in the Middle Ages; in the fourteenth century, Najm al-Dīn al-Misrī described a hundred of these, although some were perhaps never constructed and others were certainly never used in the field of astrology. Among those which were used in the practice and teaching of astrology – whose design and use is more frequently reflected in the textual, material, and visual cultures of the medieval period – astrolabes, quadrants and armillary spheres were the most common. Other instruments were also used, such as globes, astronomical rings, and different types of astrological plates, but I will focus my description on the most standard form of the planispheric astrolabe and on a type of astrological plate – one specifically designed to calculate the houses.

Astrolabes: Description, Components, Uses, and Limitations There were several types of astrolabe, of which the most common was the planispheric. The oldest description of the construction and use of a planispheric astrolabe was written in 530 in Greek by Johannes Philoponos of Alexandria. Other types of astrolabes, later and far rarer, were: the universal (ninth century), spherical (ninth century), geared (tenth century?), lineal (thirteenth century), and quadrant (thirteenth century). Finally, what is called the mariner’s astrolabe appears to have been invented in the fifteenth century, possibly by Portuguese navigators. It was a simplification of the astrolabe for the use of navigation aboard ships and could only measure altitudes to determine the latitude. As it has no astrological applications, it is not included in this study. The oldest extant astrolabes are eighth-century (Islamic with Arabic inscriptions, previously in the Museum of Baghdad, but now lost), tenth-century (Christian with Latin inscriptions, the so-called Carolingian astrolabe now in the Institute du Monde Arabe in Paris), and eleventh-century (Byzantine with Greek inscriptions, now at the Museo dell’Età Cristiana in Brescia, ↗ Grünbart, Prognostication Eastern Christian World, 165, Fig. 9). The planispheric astrolabe and the quadrant were the most commonly used instruments in astrology. The quadrant (thirteenth century), also called quadrans novus in Latin sources or the “quadrant of Israel” in Hebrew and Latin sources, is a standard planispheric astrolabe whose components have been folded into a single quadrant. It was more portable and, as it was small, it was easier to handle, and cheaper to construct or to buy than the standard astrolabe, and could nevertheless perform most of its calculations. The standard planispheric astrolabe certainly constihttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-068

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tuted a better representation of the sphere, for the motion of the heaven with respect to the horizon is more clearly visible when the rete (the projection of the heaven) rotates over the latitude plate (the projection of the horizon) to reproduce the exact position of the sky for a specific place and time. The representational value of planispheric astrolabes explains much of their fascination for medieval and modern minds; they became symbols of the highest levels of knowledge. All of the types of astrolabes mentioned above were constructed using a geometrical method, called stereographic projection, that represents the circles of the celestial sphere on a flat surface, projecting spheres and orbs as circles and straight lines and preserving the values of their angles and the relations among them. The projection can be southern (from the north pole onto a plane equivalent to the plane of the equator) or northern (from the south pole). The second form seems to be the most common, but both were used. It is likely that Hipparchus discovered stereographic projection in the second century BCE; Ptolemy, in the second century CE, however, explained its principles in a treatise preserved in an anonymous Arabic version of the eighth-tenth centuries and in the twelfth-century Latin version of Hermann of Carinthia, based in a different non-extant Arabic version of the Greek text. An astrolabe has different components, most of which display the projected circles and their graduations. The graduation of the instrument accounts for its accuracy upon the principle that the greater the number of the divisions in the scales, the more precise the calculations/observations performed with them. Any material, such as metal, wood, carton, and paper, could be used for an astrolabe, but brass was the most common. The standard planispheric astrolabe consists of a mater with its throne and limb, one or more latitude plates, usually engraved on both sides, a rete, an alidade, a pin and its wedge (usually called ‘horse’ due to the shape given to it by Arab astrolabe makers), and one or two rings (Fig. 39). These latter went through a hole in the throne and could be threaded with a chain or cord in order to suspend the astrolabe from the user’s hand, enabling him to perform all of the observations and many of the calculations. The pin goes through a hole that passes through the mater, latitude plate, rete and alidade, and is fixed in place with the wedge; it keeps all of the components together, while allowing the rete and the alidade to rotate freely. The limb, placed on the front of the mater, is an altitude scale, and the rim of the mater frequently displays the equinoctial hours. The throne, together with the ring and its cord, constitute the suspensory part of the astrolabe, for this must be suspended to perform all of the observations and many of the calculations. The back of the mater (Fig. 40) displays another altitude scale, as well as the zodiac and calendar scales, correlated to each other, starting at the spring equinox (0° Aries). The top half of the back may have scales to assist with trigonometric calculations, but most commonly had a double horary diagram that shows the time in seasonal hours. The lower half of the back almost always includes a single or double shadow square to measure height, depth and distance in land surveying.



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The latitude plate (Fig. 41) displays the visible (upper half) and invisible part (lower half) of a specific horizon (or clime). The visible part of the horizon is marked with altitude circles called almucantars, which indicate the altitude of a heavenly object, azimuthal lines which indicate the direction of the movement of a heavenly object, the zenith, upper and lower meridians, and the east-west line or straight horizon. The lower half of the horizon displays the divisions of the seasonal hours, twilight lines (18° below the first almucantar or horizon), and sometimes the divisions of the astrological houses. The alidade (always placed on the back of the mater) serves

Fig. 40: (above, the front) and 41 (below, the back): Astrolabe components of a medieval astrolabe (Toledo?), fourteenth century, inscriptions in Latin, Arabic and Hebrew. (Toronto, Aga Khan Museum AKM 611). Photo credits: The Aga Khan Museum.

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Fig. 42: Latitude plate (32° 30') of an astrolabe constructed by Muḥammad ibn Fattūḥ al-Khamā’irī in Seville in the year 628 Hijra (1230/1231, inscriptions in Arabic). The three standard circles (Cancer, Capricorn, and the equator), the meridian and the east-west lines, the almucantars, the azimuthal lines, and the zenith are clearly visible (Cairo, Museum of Islamic Art, access. no. 15371). Photo credits: Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo.

as the sighting device that points at a heavenly object during an observation, as the indicator of the graduations on the different scales of the back of the mater, and also as a tool to calculate. The rete (Fig. 39) displays the ecliptic or solar path with the zodiac, segments (or exceptionally the complete rings) of the equator and the circle of Capricorn, as well as pointers for several stars that are visible in the inhabited part of the earth, specifically, in the latitudes that the astrolabe serves. The number of the almucantars – one for every one, two, three, five, six, nine, or ten degrees – determines the caliber of the astrolabe, which is frequently mentioned and explained in medieval astrolabe treatises. Astrolabes were used for observation but, above all, for calculation. They also served astrological purposes, which were occasionally visible in the construction and design of the instrument. Many astronomical and astrological calculations overlapped, just as the astronomer and the astrologer were frequently the same person. The lack of any engraving or symbol related to astrology does not imply that a particular astrolabe was not used in astrology. The astrological information engraved on astrolabes was, more often than not, a mnemonic device for amateurs, frequently the rich and powerful. Nevertheless, there were certain astrological engravings that were highly technical and intended for practitioners, even those who did not always understand the construction or the underlying astronomical theory. Astronomers modified and improved the planispheric astrolabe over the centuries, since its first description in Greek, in the sixth century by Philoponos, and in Syriac, in the seventh century by Bishop Severus Sebokht. The standard form of the medieval planispheric astrolabe was perfected by the Arabs for use in astronomy and for religious purposes, such as determining prayer times and locating the qibla. They introduced, between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, several improvements, such as the azimuthal lines, shadow square, calendrical scales, gazetteer (a list of cities with their latitudes, longitudes and, frequently, the azimuth of Mecca for them), and the equinoctial hours.



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An astrolabe was not an autonomous tool either in astronomy or in astrology. Practitioners always needed astronomical and geographical tables to complete or adjust the calculations performed with the astrolabe and a complete set of tables could sometimes replace an astrolabe. In either case, the astronomical and astrological tables had to be updated from time to time. Because of precession or trepidation, the star lists needed to be corrected, and planetary tables were usually based on previously established tables, and thus relied on observations performed many years earlier, such as the Toledan Tables, the Alphonsine Tables, the Tables of Barcelona, and so on. Tables held a variety of information, such as epochs and intervals, the conversion of dates, sines and chords, solar declinations, shadows, right and oblique ascensions of the signs, the length of daylight, the meridian altitude of the sun, the time of day from the altitude of the sun, the equation of time, precession and apogees, trepidation, velocities of the planets, stations and retrogradations of the planets, visibility of the moon and the planets, mean and true motion of the planets, mean and true syzygies, planetary conjunctions, solar and lunar eclipses, lists of fixed stars with their coordinates (ecliptic or equatorial), and geographical lists and their coordinates (longitude and latitude), among other data. There were also tables that were specifically astrological in nature, such as those designed for the division of the houses, the projection of the rays (i.  e. the astrological aspects and the directions), the planetary dignities, the revolution of the year and of the natal horoscope (i.  e. the profection), the revolution of the months, and others. The ultimate purpose of an astrologer, of course, was to cast and then interpret a horoscope. In theory, casting a horoscope involved using an astrolabe and tables to determine the planetary positions at a specific time and place. The horoscope was – again, in theory – grounded in astronomy, and could be more or less reliable, depending on the accuracy of the instrument and tables, and the astronomical expertise of the astrologer. On the other hand, it was the interpretation of the complex interrelations of the planets and their positions in and with respect to different points of the horoscope, with an eye to the past, present, and future of the person, that was the true art of the astrologer and the secret of astrology. As in any art, personal experience and insights could result in very different interpretations, despite general agreement about the nature and character of each component – i.  e., planets, houses, signs of the zodiac, aspects, etc. – and their combinations. In the interpretation, some of the astronomical information was used in derivative ways that fell far away from the actual positions of the heavens. This is not the place to analyse this ‘creative’/derivative uses of astronomical data in astrological calculations by ways of different astrological techniques, but it is important to recall its existence. Whatever his knowledge and experience, any astrologer using an astrolabe was, in the eyes of the majority, a greater expert merely because he held an astrolabe in his hand and knew how to use it, such was the aura of prestige that surrounded this astronomical object. Practitioners of astronomy and astrology were, however, well

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aware of its limitations in terms of observation and calculation, and the medieval treatises explaining its use and construction frequently mention them. Furthermore, are we able to establish how frequently astrolabes were actually used in casting horoscopes? In particular, regarding natal horoscopes, how many medieval people knew their precise date of birth, not to mention their birth hour, which were essential in the construction of this specific horoscope? Leaving aside the many problems arising from the relative accuracy and, at times, faulty performance of the instruments and the mistakes in the data of the tables, if the hour and day of birth were in many cases deduced by a specific method (Ar. namūdār, Lat. nimodar/animodar or Trutina Hermetis, and Heb. moznei Enoch) or merely guessed at or directly made up, how confident could the astrologer feel about his performance and its results? Uncertainty and approximation seem to have been a pervading component of medieval astrology and the researcher must be aware of this when studying the sources and their historical contexts.

Astrological Information Engraved on Planispheric Astrolabes As noted, professional astrologers did not need astrological engravings for the majority of their calculations with astrolabes, but the instrument was frequently intended for wealthy amateurs, who might wish to display his power in the guise of astrological knowledge. Symbolically this might convey the idea that he was an individual capable of controlling the future and anticipating the results of his actions. Hence, the presence on the instrument of engravings that discreetly, yet beautifully, displays the nature of the planets and fixed stars, the geometry of the astrological aspects and their influences, and data related to the four triplicities, the three decans or faces, the five terms or limits, the different dignities of the planets, the planetary hours, and at times markings for specific degrees of the ecliptic that were endowed with special properties. Most of this information appears on the back of the mater but some, such as the nature of the fixed stars, appears on the star pointers of the rete. All of this information was engraved on the astrolabe in a way that embellished the object while still remaining an aide-mémoire. The display of astrological engravings on astrolabes seems to have started in the tenth century. If an astrolabe has a latitude plate that presents the divisions of the seasonal hours, its owner probably used a particular, very popular, method for dividing the houses that uses those divisions. However, some latitude plates also display specific lines for the division of the houses among the hour-line divisions, implying that its owner used a different, also common, method (Fig. 43). The lunar mansions – i.  e., 28 divisions of the lunar path around the ecliptic determined by the stars or groups of stars close to the moon’s path – were a tenth-century contribution of the Arabs to medieval astronomy, although they had already been in



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Fig. 43: An astrolabe with astrological engravings in Latin (anonymous, German, 1521). The hour line divisions (indicated by Hindu-Arabic numbers) are visible on the latitude plate of this astrolabe. Among them, the divisions of the houses are placed, which are labelled using Roman numerals. In addition, the rete displays the nature of the fixed stars engraved on it through the combined nature of the planets which are indicated by their symbols. (Oxford, History of Science Museum, inv. no. 47657). Photo credits: History of Science Museum, Oxford.

use (anwā) among pre-Islamic Arab Bedouin tribes. They were used for horological, calendrical, meteorological, and divinatory purposes, and each mansion had its own specific characteristics, like the signs of the zodiac. The lunar mansions were represented, usually on the back of astrolabes and quadrants, through images of their names, asterisms (stellar groups), or simply numbers, and sometimes in combination

Fig. 44: Astrological plate to cast the rays for latitude 42° (Saraqusṭah, i.  e. Saragossa) from a medieval Arabic astrolabe made in Toledo in 1029/1030 by Muḥammad ibn al-Ṣaffār; Inscriptions in Kuphic Arabic and Hebrew (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, inv. no. 6567). Photo credits: Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas.

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with information related to their nature (humid, dry, temperate) and influence (fortunate or unfortunate). The beginning of the first lunar mansion usually coincided with 0° Aries, but there are discrepancies depending on the period, the tables in use, and the instrument. Some latitude plates, more common among Arabic astrolabes, serve exclusively astrological purposes, i.  e., they enable one to cast the rays (astrological aspects, directions, and the division of the houses). These plates are not very frequent but quite a number of them remain extant.

Astrological Calculations Performed with ­Planispheric Astrolabes (An Example) The first step in casting a horoscope is to determine the ascendant and the other three cardines or angles of the horizon for a particular time and place (for example, the hour and date of birth in natal astrology). The standard procedure consists of the following steps: A On the back of the astrolabe: 1 Find the altitude of the sun on the altitude scale using the alidade. 2 Find the position of the sun in the zodiac using the calendar scale. B On the front of the astrolabe: 1 Place the correct plate for one’s latitude in the mater. 2 Place the altitude of the sun on the corresponding almucantar on the front of the astrolabe. 3 Move the degree of the zodiac in the rete that is the position of the sun until it coincides with the almucantar of the altitude of the sun. 4 If the altitude was taken before noon, the degree of the sun must be in the eastern quadrant but, if after it, it must be in the western one. 5 When everything is in place, the end point of the rule indicates the time among the divisions of the seasonal hours on the plate. 6 Without moving the positions, the zodiac of the rete also indicates the rising degree at the intersection of the ecliptic with the first eastern almucantar or eastern horizon.

The degree of the zodiac or ecliptic of the rete intersecting the east and the west points and the upper and lower meridians of the horizon, determine the ascendant, the descendant, the upper mid-heaven, and the lower mid-heaven of the horoscope, and so the cusps of the first, seventh, tenth and fourth hours, respectively. The remaining houses could be found by at least two methods with an astrolabe; in John North’s terminology, these are known as ‘the fixed-rete’ and ‘the moving-rete’ methods. The fixed-rete method is the simplest and uses the divisions of the seasonal hours engraved on the latitude plate. Maintaining the rising degree as it is on the first almucantar (the horizon), one observes the degree of the zodiac in the rete that intersects the initial line of the uneven hour on the latitude plate (starting from the twelfth



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hour in the east), for these intersections delimit the cusp of the second (eleventh hourline), third (ninth hour-line), fifth (fifth hour-line), and sixth (third hour-line) houses, respectively. The cusps of each of the remaining houses (eighth, ninth, eleventh and twelfth) are the degrees placed diametrically opposite to each of the corresponding previous cusp (i.  e. the cusps of the second, third, fifth and sixth houses, respectively). The moving-rete method also uses the divisions of the hours, but the degree of the zodiac in the rete indicating the ascendant and/or descendant degrees, is moved by two hours, to read off in the upper or in lower mid-heaven the cusps of some of the houses, while the remaining cusps are those placed diametrically opposite to these. The calculation of the aspects, like the calculation of the directions, was performed using different techniques, and there existed plates specifically constructed for these calculations (Fig. 44). The revolution of the natal horoscope (natal astrology) and the revolution of the year or profection (world astrology) were determined by tables or adding to the ascendant of the previous year a certain number of degrees, depending on the sources. This is the explanation in an anonymous Hebrew text that is an elaborated translation of Latin sources related to Hermann Contractus’ text on the astrolabe: If you know, for any year, the hour at which the sun has entered the beginning of Aries and the degree that is rising at that moment in your place, and you are seeking to know the ascendant degree of the following year, you should do the following. Place the degree that was rising the previous year on the first circle [i.  e. the east horizon] and mark the position of the tooth [i.  e. the almuri or indicator] on the limb. Move the tooth ninety-three degrees on the limb [rotating the rete according to the order of the signs], the degree of the circle of the zodiac that is on the first circle [i.  e. the east horizon] is the degree of the ascendant for that year. (Ms. Bodleian Opp. 697, f. 20a, Ashkenazi semi-cursive script, written before 1428)

Fig. 45: Astrological plate (anonymous, 1516, very likely made in Nuremberg) designed exclusively to calculate the division of the houses (Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, no. WI 22). Photo credits: Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas.

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Astrological Plates Astrological plates are specifically astrological in nature and cannot serve astronomical purposes, which makes them a different kind of technical device compared with astrolabes. There are two main types of these plates: those purely astrological and those intended for use in medical astrology. Medical plates are considered in another section (↗ Rodríguez-Arribas, Medical Plates in Astrological Medicine). I will now consider a specific type of astrological plate that is shown and described below. This astrological plate is actually an astrological instrument consisting of three interconnected brass components: a flat plate below, a counter-changed rule in the middle, and a simplified rete on the top. The instrument also has a small plain suspension ring, that was probably added later. The back is blank. The front of the plate is graduated with the three circles that are standard on astrolabes: the circles of Capricorn, the equator, and Cancer. Similarly, it has a meridian line and east-west line (perpendicular to each other) that intersect at the centre of the plate. The outer border of the plate contains the scales of the equinoctial hours and the houses. The scale of the houses is divided into 12 unequal divisions that correspond to the 12 astrological houses of the horizon for which the plate was made. One of these circular arcs – that embraces the cusps of the first house and its opposite, the seventh – is the line of the horizon. Finally, the lower half of the plate contains 12 unequal divisions for the seasonal hours. The rule is fixed by a pin through the centre of the plate and the rete. One of its arms is longer and has a small circle engraved on its end. This is the part of the rule used as a pointer on the plate. All three components of the instrument can move separately. The rete is a simplified form of the astrolabe rete: it contains the zodiac circle or ecliptic but no pointers for the fixed stars. It has three radii that join at the centre, through which a pin was attached to another piece, now missing. The missing part was possibly an alidade with hour divisions for telling the time. This could be done using either of the pinnules as the gnomon of a sundial. One of the radii is attached with a pin to both the rule and the centre of the plate. The centre of the rete is eccentric; it is set 20mm off the centre of the plate. This instrument was specifically created to find the astrological houses at any hour of day for any day of any year at a specific horizon that remains uncertain. All of the horary information displayed on the instrument is included in order to facilitate this calculation, in either equinoctial or seasonal hours. The rising degree at the chosen time is the only coordinate needed in order for the instrument to function. When this degree of the rete is placed on the horizon, the cusps of each of the remaining houses are indicated by numbers around the circle of Capricorn. The cusps are determined by the degrees of the ecliptic aligned with each of the house divisions engraved on the plate. The house division method here is the equatorial method of fixed boundaries, which became popular in the Renaissance and was associated with Regiomontanus.



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The seasonal hour divisions make it possible to calculate the houses using two further methods, already mentioned in relation to the astrolabe: the fixed-rete and the moving-rete methods. Thus, this plate can be used to calculate the houses according to these two methods plus the one mentioned above. The rule works simply as a pointer to facilitate the calculations. This instrument could provide an astrologer with the basic layout of a horoscope with a simple movement of the hand. It too, however, was not autonomous; the astrologer also needed tables of ephemerides (planetary positions) and other astronomical parameters related to the different calculations. A horoscope required the positions of the planets in the zodiacal signs (and thus in the houses). More importantly, an astrolabe or tables would have been essential for finding the rising degree, the only datum required to make the instrument work, but which it could not itself provide.

Selected Bibliography Ackermann, Silke. “Astrological Scales on the National Maritime Museum Astrolabes.” Astrolabes at Greenwich: A Catalogue of the Astrolabes in the National Maritime Museum. Ed. Koenraad van Cleempoel. Greenwich, 2005. 73–89. Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Kathir al-Farghani. Al-Farghānī, On the Astrolabe. Ed. Richard Lorch. Stuttgart, 2005 (a ninth-century Arabic text on the construction of the astrolabe). Calvo, Emilia. “La résolution graphique des questions astrologiques à Al-Andalus.” Histoire des Mathématiques Arabes: Actes du 3me Colloque Maghrébin sur l’Histoire des Mathématiques Arabes (Tipaza, 1–3 Décembre 1990). Algiers, 1998. 31–44. Casulleras, Josep. “Ibn Muadh on the Astrological Rays.” Suhayl 4 (2004): 385–402. Casulleras, Josep. “Mathematical Astrology in the Medieval Islamic West.” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften 18 (2009): 241–268. Casulleras, Josep, and Jan P. Hogendijk. “Progressions, Rays and Houses in Medieval Islamic Astrology: A Mathematical Classification.” Suhayl 11 (2012): 33–102. Casulleras, Josep. “The Instruments and the Exercise of Astrology in the Medieval Arabic Tradition.” Archives internationales d’histoire des sciences 63, no. 170–171 (2013): 517–540. Cleempoel, Koenraad van. Astrolabes at Greenwich: A Catalogue of the Astrolabes in the National Maritime Museum. Oxford, 2006. Chabàs, Josep. “The Astronomical Tables of Jacob ben David Bonjorn.” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 42.4 (1991): 279–314. Chabàs, Josep. “Astronomía andalusí en Cataluña: las Tablas de Barcelona.” From Baghdad to Barcelona: Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences in Honour of Prof. Juan Vernet, 2 vols. Eds. Josep Casulleras and Julio Samsó. Barcelona, 1996. 1:477–525. Chabàs, Josep. “Characteristics and Typologies of Medieval Astronomical Tables.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 43.3 (2012): 269–286. Chabàs, Josep, and Bernard R. Goldstein. A Survey of European Astronomical Tables in the Late Middle Ages. Leiden, 2012. Chabàs, Josep. “A List of Stars ‘Correcte Cum 2 Magnis Armillis’ in 1362.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 46.2 (2015): 206–217. Chandler, Bruce, and John Turner. The Time Museum: Time Measuring Instruments. Part 1. Astrolabes, Astrolabe Related Instruments. Rockford, 1985.

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Charette, François, and Petra Schmidl. “Al-Khwārizmī and Practical Astronomy in Ninth-Century Baghdad. The Earliest Extant Corpus of Texts in Arabic on the Astrolabe and Other Portable Instruments.” SCIAMVS 5 (2004): 101–198. Dalen, Benno van. Islamic Astronomical Tables: Mathematical Analysis and Historical Investigation. Farnham, 2013. Díaz-Fajardo, Monserrat. “Métodos de prorrogación relacionados con la proyección de rayos: la prorrogación de la qisma en la obra de al-Baqqār de Fez.” Archives Internationales d´Histoire des Sciences 60, no. 165 (2010): 299–328. Díaz-Fajardo, Monserrat. “El capítulo sobre el tasyīr en al-Bāri‘ de Ibn Abī-l-Riŷāl y su traducción alfonsí.” Al-Qanṭara. Revista de Estudios Árabes 32.2 (2011): 333–368. Díaz-Fajardo, Monserrat. “El método de los astrólogos en los natalicios: los cuatro ciclos.” Anaquel de Estudios Árabes 22 (2011): 35–56. Díaz-Fajardo, Monserrat. “The Transformation of the ‘World Periods’ in the Islamic West: from Abū Ma‘shar to al-Baqqār.” Islam and Globalisation. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Proceedings of the 25th Congress of L’Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants. Ed. Agostino Cilardo. Louvain and Walpole, MA, 2013. 483–493. Díaz-Fajardo, Monserrat. “The Ptolemaic Concept of the Ruler (al-Mustawlī) Planet in Ibn ‘Azzūz’s Astrological Writing.” Archives Internationales d´Histoire des Sciences 63, no. 170–171 (2013): 541–559. Díaz-Fajardo, Monserrat. “Part Two of al-Baqqār’s Kitāb al-adwār: the Latitude of a Planet in the Calculation of Astrological Aspects.” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften 20–21 (2014): 31–61. Díaz-Fajardo, Monserrat. “Gestation Times Correlated with Lunar Cycles. Ibn al-Kammād’s Animodar of Conception across North Africa.” Suhayl 15 (2017): 129–229. Dunn, Richard, Silke Ackermann, and Giorgio Strano (eds.). Heaven and Earth United: Instruments in Astrological Contexts. Boston and Leiden, 2018. Gandz, Solomon. “The Astrolabe in Jewish Literature.” Studies in Hebrew Astronomy and Mathematics. New York, 1970. 245–262. Goldstein, Bernard R. “The Hebrew Astrolabe in the Adler Planetarium.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 35 (1976): 251–260. Goldstein, Bernard R, with George Saliba. “A Hispano-Arabic Astrolabe with Hebrew Star Names.” Annali dell’Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Florence 8 (1983): 19–28. Goldstein, Bernard R. “Star Lists in Hebrew.” Centaurus 28 (1985): 185–208. Goldstein, Bernard R. “Descriptions of Astronomical Instruments in Hebrew.” From Deferent to Equant, A Volume of Studies in Honor of E. S. Kennedy. Eds. David A. King and George Saliba. New York, 1987. 105–141. Goldstein, Bernard R., and Josep Chabás. “Planetary Velocities and the Astrological Month.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 44.4 (2013): 465–478. Gunther, Robert T. The Astrolabes of the World. 2 vols. Oxford, 1932. Henri, Michel. Traité de l’Astrolabe. Paris, 1947. Hollander, Raymond d’. L’astrolabe: Histoire, théorie et pratique. Paris, 1999. King, David. Islamic Astronomical Instruments. London, 1987 [repr. Aldershot, 1995]. King, David. Astronomy in the Service of Islam. Aldershot, 1993. King, David, with Julio Samsó. “Astronomical Handbooks and Tables from the Islamic World (750–1900): An Interim Report.” Suhayl 2 (2001): 9–105. King, David. In Synchrony with the Heavens: Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization, vol. 2: Instruments of Mass Calculation (Studies X–XVIII). Leiden, 2005. King, David. Astrolabes from Medieval Europe. Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2011.



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Kunitzsch, Paul. Typen von Sternverzeichnissen in astronomischen Handschriften des zehnten bis vierzehnten Jahrhunderts. Wiesbaden, 1966. Kunitzsch, Paul. Glossar der arabischen Fachausdrücke in der mittelalterlichen europäischen Astrolabliteratur. Göttingen, 1982. Millás-Vallicrosa, Jose María. “Los primeros tratados de astrolabio en la España árabe.” Revista del Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos 3 (1955): 47–76 (edition of Ibn al-Ṣaffār’s eleventhcentury Arabic text). Morrison, James E. The Astrolabe. Rehoboth Beach, 2007. North, John. Horoscopes and History. London, 1986. Pingree, David. Historic Scientific Instruments of the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum. Vol. II: Eastern Astrolabes. Chicago, 2009. Poulle, Emmanuel. “L’equatoire de Guillaume Gilliszoon de Wissekerke.” Physis 3 (1961): 223–251. Poulle, Emmanuel. “Astrologie et tables astronomiques au XIIIе siècle: Robert Le Febvre et les tables de Malines, dans Comité des Travaux historiques et scientifiques.” Bulletin philologique et historique (1964): 793–831. Raymond de Marseille. Traité de l’Astrolabe/Liber cursuum planetarum. Eds. Charles Burnett, Emmanuel Poulle, and Marie-Therese D’Alverny. Paris, 2009 (a twelfth-century Latin text on construction and briefly on use). Rodríguez-Arribas, Josefina. “A Treatise on the Construction of Astrolabes by Jacob ben Abi Abraham Isaac al-Corsuno (Barcelona, 1378): Edition, Translation and Commentary.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 49.1 (2018): 27–82 (a fourteenth-century Hebrew text on the construction of the astrolabe). Rodríguez-Arribas, Josefina. “Medical and Astrological Plates: Their Roles in Medieval and Renaissance Knowledge.” Heaven and Earth United: Instruments in Astrological Contexts. Eds. Richard Dunn et al. Boston and Leiden, 2018. 42–60. Rodríguez-Arribas, Josefina, with Charles Burnett, and Silke Ackermann. Astrolabes in Medieval Cultures. Special monograph issue in Medieval Encounters 23, 1–5 (2017) [reprint Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas, Charles Burnett, Silke Ackermann, and Ryan Szpiech. Astrolabes in Medieval Cultures. Leiden and Boston, 2019]. Samsó, Julio. “Lunar Mansions and Timekeeping in Western Islam.” Suhayl 8 (2008): 121–161. Sidoli, Nathan, and J. Len Berggren. “The Arabic Version of Ptolemy’s Planisphere or Flattening the Surface of the Sphere: Text, Translation, Commentary.” SCIAMVS 8 (2007): 37–139. Thomson, Ron B. Jordanus de Nemore and the Mathematics of Astrolabes: De Plana Spera. Toronto, 1978. Webster, Roderick and Marjorie. Historic Scientific Instruments of the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum. Vol. I: Western Astrolabes. Chicago, 2000.

Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas

Medical Plates in Astrological Medicine “Nearly every important treatise on technology produced in Europe during the fourteenth century and the first quarter of the fifteenth century comes to us from the quill of a medical astrologer” (White 1975, 306). As might be expected of two sciences and arts deeply based (albeit not exlusively) in Aristotelian physics, medicine and astrology shared many assumptions about the cosmos, nature, and the human body. Despite acknowledging that “there was no uniform approach to astrological medicine in either the medieval or Renaissance periods, nor did all physicians believe in astrology” (Cooper 2013, 542), “the person most likely to put predictive knowledge to some use was the medical man” (French 2000, 32). Both disciplines were essential in displaying the practical applications of astronomy, which made these sciences visible in the quotidian tasks and endeavors of individuals’ personal lives. Medical practice consisted of diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutics. Medical astrology was associated mainly with prognosis (i.  e., anticipating the development and outcome of an illness) but also with therapeutics (i.  e., the right moment to administer medical care). Medicine and astrology shared an ambiguous status in two respects; namely, their subject and their methodology. From the point of view of the subject, they both either oscillated between ‘art’, which works with particular features of individual cases, and ‘science’ which works with truths deduced from well-established principles, or partook of the two, depending on the author(s) (McVaugh 1990). From the point of view of the methodology, “prognosis was understood to be analogous to forms of intuition, judgement, revelation, and prophecy that operated outside the logic of causality” (Wallis 2000, 265). In this way, medical prediction was an art based on memory and conjecture (rhetoric and logic), whilst the scientific counterpart of the discipline based predictability on mathematical knowledge (e.  g. astronomy/astrology). In any case, it is clear that medieval physicians and patients deemed that astrology brought a degree of certitude to medical practice (Demaitre 2003). As Siraisi (1990, 133) noted, “in a medieval system in which diagnosis was often problematic and the ability to cure was very limited, prognosis must frequently have emerged as the most valued and actually most useful aspect of medical attendance”, and astrology played an essential role in this. Quaternary diagrams and structures in the tradition of Aristotle and Galen were discerned in the components and relations between the microcosm and the macrocosm, and medicine used them to teach and explain the discipline through diagrams, drawings, tables and volvella in manuscripts and prints, or engraving them on metal plates. Volvella appeared in manuscripts at the end of the thirteenth century and remained in use until the end of the sixteenth century. The paper and the metal volvelles are frequently versions of identical devices while the paper/parchment versions appear to be functional instruments rather than models of such (Braswell-Means). Plates without https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-069



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any movable component (volvella, threads, rules, metal or paper pointers, etc.) could simply be a model, a device to display, or an aide-memoire. An example of a medical volvellum is a Middle-English manuscript, Liber uricrisiarum (ca. 1378), attributed to Henry Daniel, in relation to the calculation of the bisextile or leap year and in the context of the treatment of febris planetica, which was associated with the motions of the planets (Braswell-Means). Mathematical instruments were used both to teach medicine in the classroom and in practice, as the case of Andreas Stiborius shows. He was a professor at the University of Vienna (between the end of the fifteenth-century and the first quarter of the sixteenth-century) who “pointed out that a physician could use an astrolabe to predict the flux and reflux of humors or to determine the critical days of a disease” and “drew attention to the astrolabe as a means of facilitating prognosis” (Hayton 2010, 128). Working on the same agenda was Georg Tanstetter, also a professor at the University of Vienna in the first half of the sixteenth-century. He lectured on astrological medicine and focused on the most practical tools (instruments, ephemerides and calendars) to be used in medicine, since “a physician who was surrounded by technical instruments and reference manuals and consulted both an astrolabe and Regiomontanus’s detailed tables of planetary motions would have instilled confidence in his patients” (Hayton 2010, 131–132). One of the central doctrines of astrological medicine was the critical days, which became the arena for “a sophisticated discussion about medical causation and the bases of medical knowledge” (Cooper 2013, 538). Tanstetter, who discussed the different methods available for establishing the critical days, explained the construction of a special chart to determine these. This chart displayed 16 houses related to the true motion of the moon according to the ephemerides, rather than based on the first visibility of the moon, i.  e. the medical month, which was measured from the point when the moon first became visible after a new moon and differed from the Galenic one, which followed the lunar phases and was based on an average of the synodic and sidereal/zodiac periods of the moon (Jacquard 1999). Because of the variations in the lunar speed, whose first visibility oscillated between 1 and 3 days, the concept of the medical month was subjected to different interpretations to make forecasting possible: the first task was to determine the true location of the moon at the moment the disease first appeared and to record it in the first location in the chart, analogous to the ascendent. From this first location, the physician could calculate subsequent critical days, when the moon has travelled one quarter of the way around the zodiac […]. The physician then used a calendar or ephemerides to correlate the moon’s location in the zodiac at the four cardinal points of the chart, analogous to the cardinal points in a typical horoscope, to the actual date […]. Having identified the true critical days using Tanstetter’s more precise technique, the physician then turned his attention to the patient’s horoscope and the effects of the individual planets and inter-planetary aspects. (Hayton 2010, 132–133)

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An example of these medical/astrological tools in metal is the brass plate shown in Fig. 40 (front) and 41 (back). It displays information related to the pivotal contribution of astrology to medical practice: the calculation of the critical days of any acute (i.  e. non-chronic) illness according to the specific positions of the moon in relation to its position at the inception of the illness (the hour of decumbiture, Greek κατάκλισις, Arabic waqt al-iḍṭijāʻ). The lunar theory underlying the construction of this metal plate is similar to Tanstetter’s chart, as there is a system of 32 divisions, but only 16 (those numbered in Fig. 40) of these are directly related to the moon, while the remainder are simply providing information related to the 16 lunar positions. The portability of these plates is equivalent to the portability of the folded books or almanacs containing all of the practical information that any university-trained physician, surgeon, or apothecary might need for the exercise of his profession (Carey 2003). These folded books (for which some of these plates might have been a later companion or, rather, a substitute) constituted the vade-mecum of the physician (Talbot 1961). It might have been suspended from the practitioner’s girdle or belt (hence the name “girdle book”), or kept in a pocket or pouch (hence the name “pocket book”) suspended from the waist (O’Boyle 2005). The tables and figures that constitute the contents of these pocket books (more than 50 have survived) and the information displayed on medical plates are of the same nature and have the same didactic and practical purposes, notably simplifying and accelerating the decision and making available everywhere the astrological information that was needed in medical practice: predicting the crises or outcome of an illness; preparing remedies in auspicious times; administering these at the right moment; and determining whether and when to undertake surgery or make any other kind of medical intervention (bloodletting, bathing, purging, cauterization, etc.). The role of the moon was paramount in all of these calculations. This plate (Fig. 46 and 47) provides evidence of the intrinsic relationship between medieval and early modern medicine and astrology, and displays one of the two branches of medical astrology practiced in the West (the other being a more sophisticated form); namely, lunar medicine (Carey 2008), i.  e. the doctrine of critical days and their calculation (as in Fig. 46). Other astrological parameters related to the moon and its influence were also used, like the equinoctial and seasonal hours of the day and night, the phases of the moon and the relations of the two to the four Hippocratic humours and the four ages of man (as in Fig. 47). This metal plate was presumably made in Prague in 1585: the name of the maker, Erasmus Habermel, and the date are engraved around the middle. The brass plate has an original throne and suspension ring similar to those of a standard astrolabe. This is a beautiful sixteenth-century piece that might equally serve a court physician or astrologer. Habermel, a renowned maker whose life is not much documented, worked in Prague from 1585. He was appointed instrument maker to Emperor Rudolf II in Prague in 1593 (Zinner 1967; Eckhardt 1976/1977). Habermel’s medical plate is almost identical to an unsigned and undated astrological-medical plate in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Ph Z 3524).



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Fig. 46: Front of an astrological-medical plate for calculating the crises of an illness, by Erasmus Habermel, 1585. Dimensions: 120 (diameter)/142 mm (with throne) x 7–10 mm (thickness of the large plate)/, and 19–22 mm (thickness of the whole), inscriptions in Latin (Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, no. WI 1808). Photo credits: Germanisches National­ museum, Nürnberg.

Habermel’s plate consists of two plates, with the smaller on top of the larger, attached by a pin (now missing). The two are now stuck together, although the smaller plate was intended to turn over the larger one. The different sizes of the plates create two clear surfaces: the limb (on the large plate) and the central part (on the small plate). There is also a pointer to indicate the hours on the limb, although the former no longer moves. The limb is divided into 24 equal sections corresponding to the 24 hours of the day and night. These are numbered clockwise from 1 to 12, from top and bottom. Each hour is divided into 15 minute sections. The small plate has a wind rose in the centre. A hole through the middle of the plate indicates that a pin and wedge, and perhaps also a rule for the back, are now missing. Surrounding the wind rose is a square with angles that have been enlarged to include a piece of text. Each is engraved with the crises of an illness starting from its inception: Principium Morbi, Crisis Prima, Crisis Secunda, and Crisis Tertia. Each side of this square is divided by arcs into seven sections. Four of these are numbered consecutively, from the first, after the Principium Morbi (1), to the last, before the Principium Morbi (16). The central section of each side of the square displays the inscription INDICATIVA (“indicative”). The second and sixth divisions of each side also bear the inscription Intercidens (separating). The first, third, fifth and sixth divisions on each side bear the word Vacui (empty). Three lines radiate from the pointer (which is the position of the Principium Morbi) of the small plate to the left and right to indicate the astrological aspects of the sextile (60°), square (90°), and trine (120°). The purpose of the instrument is clearly indicated by the engraving DIES MEDICINALES. Each letter of this phrase is engraved on each of the divisions labelled Vacui, clockwise starting from the first division before Principium Morbi.

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Fig. 47: Back of the same astrologicalmedical plate engraved in Latin (Erasmus Habermel, 1585), showing information related to the lunar cycle. Photo credits: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg.

The back of the instrument (Fig. 47) displays astrological information concerning crises and the phases of the Moon. A missing rule would have pointed to the various days and phases of the Moon, while another on the front could have pointed to the evolution of the illness according to the crises. The back consists of three concentric circles (the circle of Cancer, the equator, and the circle of Capricorn), together with the perpendicular meridian and east-west lines. Twenty-four unequal divisions for the 24 hours are engraved in the Hindu-Arabic numerals 1–12. Dieis, Oriens, Noctis, and Occidens are engraved at the top, east, bottom, and west, respectively, with Horae Inaequales engraved around the centre. Outside the circle of Capricorn lie five concentric circular scales: 1. Equinoctial hours in Roman numerals, divided into 15 minute sections; 2. The humors: Phlegma (top), Cholera (bottom), Melancho (east), and Sanguis (west). The same scale includes the nature of the four seasons according to the humor prevailing in them. Between melancho and phlegma: autumnus senectus occidentali terra semi; between phlegma and sanguis: hiemes decrepitus septentrinali aqua semi; between phlegma and sanguis: orientali masculini aer juventali; and between cholera and melancho: in aestas virilibus merientali ignus; 3. 28 equal divisions starting at the top and numbered anti-clockwise to indicate the days of the lunar cycle, in Hindu-Arabic numerals; 4. The phases of the Moon, indicated with drawings in the four directions of the plate: new (top), crescent (east), full (bottom), and waning (west), and between them the Moon’s nature between its phases. Between the new moon and the crescent: Ab Usquae ad I □ Calida et Humida; between the crescent and the full moon:



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a Prima □ ad ☍ Calida et Sicca; between the full and the waning moon: a ☍ Usquae ad 2 □ Frigida et Sicca; and between the waning and the new moon: Secundum □ ad ☌ Frigida et Humida (where □, ☍, and ☌ stand for the astrological aspects of square, opposition, and conjunction, respectively). 5. The Moon’s influence on the four ages of man. Between the new moon and the crescent: a ☌ in □ Primam Apta est Juvenibus; between the crescent and the full moon: a I □ in ☍ Electa Juvenibus et Virilibus; between the full and the waning moon: a ☍ in 2 □ Bona Virilibus et Senibus; and between the waning and the new moon: a 2 □ Usquae ad ☌ est Felona Senibus. The purpose of this instrument is to calculate the critical days (crises) of an illness. These are determined by the lunar cycle of 28 days so that, every seven days, a change occurs (crisis prima, crisis secunda, and crisis tertia) in the illness, for better or worse. According to this doctrine, the fourth day of each of these critical hebdomadas (“Indicativa” on the plate) is indicative of the outcome of the corresponding critical day that follows it (Klein-Franke 1975; Weisser 1982; Dell’Anna 1999; Cooper 2011). This is not an instrument of calculation, but more likely an instrument for teaching or display during medical practice as a symbol of learning. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, a physician who also mastered astrology excelled in his profession, so physicians might well include astrological terminology in their technical speech and astrological instruments among their equipment, even if their knowledge about the technicalities of practical astrology was frequently superficial.

Fig. 48: A physician’s quadrant engraved with a zodiac man, 1400-1450 (Oxford, Merton College, MER Dunn AST_4). Photo credits: The Warden and Fellows of Merton College, Oxford / Colin Dunn, Scriptura Ltd.

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Fig. 49: Georg Hartmann’s paper plate (Directorium medicorum) displaying ­in Latin astrological and medical information, Nuremberg, 1554. (Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, no. HB 2713). Photo credits: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg.

Forms of more sophisticated astrological medicine were also practiced in Europe, in which not only the moon but also the zodiac, planets, and the natal chart were incorporated into the prognosis. The paper plate below (Fig. 48), perhaps the model for a metal plate or a paper instrument itself, displays information that can be related to other astrological parameters different from the lunar ones. This is also the case with a physician’s quadrant (dated to 1400–1450, Figure Y) in Merton College (Oxford), with which the physician could have measured the angular altitudes of the celestial bodies in order to determine astrological aspects and, by means of a rotary index, determine the position of the sun or moon in the zodiac for any given time. The relevance of the moon (and the remaining planets) in medicine was also reflected by the presence of diagrams such as the zodiac man and the bloodletting, vein and wound man and



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their associated explanations, which frequently take the form of labels inserted into these diagrams, indicating how certain medical procedures should be avoided while the moon was in certain positions; for instance, in different manuscripts of the calendars of John Somer and Nicholas of Lynn (England, fourteenth-fifteenth centuries, see O’Boyle 2005). The quadrant mentioned above is distinctive of a physician because it also displays a zodiac man engraved on the back (Fig. 48) with a volvellum related to it (Bober 1948, 14 and 30–31).

Selected Bibliography Anna, Giuseppe dell’. Dies Critici, La teoria della ciclicità delle patologie nel XIV secolo, 2 vols. Galatina, 1999. 1:43–82. Azzolini, Monica. “Reading Health in the Stars: Prognosis and Astrology in Renaissance Italy.” Horoscopes and Public Spheres: Essays on the History of Astrology. Eds. Gunther Oestmann et al. Berlin and New York, 2005. 183–205. Bober, Harry. “The Zodiacal Miniature of the Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry: Its Sources and Meaning.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948): 1–34. Bott, Gerhard (ed.). Focus Behaim Globus, 2 vols. Nuremberg, 1992. 2:624–625 (no. WI 1808). Braswell-Means, Laurel. “The Vulnerability of Volvelles in Manuscript Codices.” Manuscripta 35 (1991): 43–54. Carey, Hilary M. “What is the Folded Almanac?: The Form and Function of a Key Manuscript Source for Astro-medical Practice in Later Medieval England.” Social History of Medicine 16.3 (2003): 481–509. Carey, Hilary M. “Medieval Latin Astrology and the Cycles of Life: William English and English Medicine in Cambridge, Trinity College MS. O.5.26.” Astro-Medicine: Astrology and Medicine, East and West. Eds. Anna Akasoy et al. Florence, 2008. 33–74. Cooper, Glen M. “Rational and Empirical Medicine in Ninth-century Baghdad: Qusṭā ibn Lūqā’s Questions on the Critical days in Acute Illnesses.” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 24.1 (2014): 69–102. Cooper, Glen M. “Approaches to the Critical Days in Late Medieval and Renaissance Thinkers.” Early Science and Medicine 18 (2013): 536–565. Demaitre, Luke E. “The Art and Science of Prognostication in Early University Medicine.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77.4 (2003): 765–788. Eckhardt, Wolfgang. “Erasmus Habermel: Zur Biographie des Instrumentenmachers Kaiser Rudolfs II.” Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen 21 (1976): 55–92. Eckhardt, Wolfgang. “Erasmus und Josua Habermel: Kunstgeschichtliche Anmerkungen zu den Werken der beiden Instrumentenmacher.” Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen 22 (1977): 13–74. Eckhardt, Wolfgang. “Erasmus Habermel.” Epact: Scientific Instruments of Medieval and Renaissance Europe, www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/epact/maker.php?MakerID=40 (9 March 2020). French, Roger Kenneth. “Foretelling the Future: Arabic Astrology and English Medicine in the Late Twelfth Century.” Isis 87.3 (1996): 453–480. French, Roger Kenneth. “Astrology in Medical Practice.” Ancients and Moderns in the Medical Sciences. Aldershot, 2000. 30–59.

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Galen of Pergamon. Galen. De diebus decretoriis, from Greek into Arabic: A Critical Edition, with Translation and Commentary of Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq’s Kitāb ayyām al-buḥrān. Ed. Glen M. Cooper. Farnham, 2011. 61–76. Galen of Pergamon. The Alexandrian Summaries of Galen’s “On Critical Days”: Editions and Translations of the Two Versions of the Jawāmiʻ, with an Introduction and Notes. Eds. Gerrit Bos and Tzvi Langermann. Leiden and Boston, 2015. Greenbaum, Dorian Gieseler. “Hellenistic Astronomy in Medicine.” Ancient Astronomy in Its Mediterranean and Near Eastern Contexts (300 BC – AD 300). Eds. Alan C. Bowen and Francesca Rochberg. Leiden and Boston, 2019. 306–331. Gunther, Robert T. Early Science in Oxford: Astronomy. Oxford, 1923. 170 (the physician’s quadrant). Hayton, Darin. “Instruments and Demonstrations in the Astrological Curriculum: Evidence from the University of Vienna, 1500–1530.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 41 (2010): 125–134. Hirai, Hiro. “The New Astral Medicine.” A Companion to Astrology in the Renaissance. Ed. Brendan Dooley. London and Leiden, 2014. 267–286. Jacobus, Helen. “A Late Medieval Astrological Hebrew Text.” Zodiac Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Reception: Ancient Astronomy and Astrology in Early Judaism. London and Leiden, 2014. 426–450. Klein-Franke, Felix. “Die Ursachen der Krisen bei akuten Krankheiten: eine wiederentdeckte Schrift al-Kindi’s.” Israel Oriental Studies 5 (1975): 161–188. Langermann, Y. Tzvi. “The Astral Connections of Critical Days. Some Late Antique Sources Preserved in Hebrew and Arabic.” Astro-Medicine: Astrology and Medicine, East and West. Eds. Anna Akasoy et al. Florence, 2008. 99–118. Langermann, Y. Tzvi. “Critical Notes on a Study of Galen’s On Critical Days in Arabic, or A Study in Need of Critical Repairs.” Aestimatio 9 (2012): 220–240. Mc Vaugh, Michael R. “The Nature and Limits of Medical Certitude at Early Fourteenth-Century Montpellier.” Osiris 6 (1990): 62–84. Maddison, Francis. “Early Astronomical and Mathematical Instruments: A Survey of Sources and Modern Studies.” History of Science 2 (1963): 17–50. O’Boyle, Cornelius. Medieval Prognosis and Astrology: A Working Edition of the Aggregationes de crisi et creticis diebus with Introduction and English Summary. Cambridge, 1991. O’Boyle, Cornelius. “Astrology and Medicine in Later Medieval England. The Calendars of John Somer and Nicholas of Lynn.” Sudhoffs Archiv 89.1 (2005): 1–22. Pennuto, Concetta. “The Debate on Critical Days in Renaissance Italy.” Astro-Medicine: Astrology and Medicine, East and West. Eds. Anna Akasoy et al. Florence, 2008. 17–31. Poulle, Emmanuel. “L’equatoire de Guillaume Gilliszoon de Wissekerke.” Physis 3 (1961): 223–251. Poulle, Emmanuel. “Astrologie et tables astronomiques au хше siècle: Robert Le Febvre et les tables de Malines, dans Comité des Travaux historiques et scientifiques.” Bulletin philologique et historique (1964): 793–831. Richard of Wallingford. An Edition of his Writings with Introductions, English Translation and Commentary. 3 vols. Ed. John D. North. Oxford, 1976. 3: 134 (short description of the physician’s quadrant). Rodríguez-Arribas, Josefina. “Medical and Astrological Plates: Their Roles in Medieval and Renaissance Knowledge.” Heaven and Earth United: Instruments in Astrological Contexts. Eds. Richard Dunn et al. Boston and Leiden, 2018. 42–60. Saintyves, Pierre. “De l’influence de la lune sur les maladies d’après les médecins astrologues des origines au XVe siècle.” Hippocrate 2 (1934): 289–313, 405–433 and 492–524.



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Sawday, Jonathan. Engines of the Imagination: Renaissance Culture and the Rise of the Machine. Abingdon, 2007. 83–86 and 96–102. Siraisi, Nancy G. Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice. Chicago and London, 1990. Taavitsainen, Irma. Middle English Lunaries: A Study of the Genre. Helsinki, 1988. Talbot, Charles H. “A Medieval Physician’s Vade Mecum.” Journal of the History of Medicine 16 (1961): 213–233. Wallis, Faith. “Signs and Senses: Diagnosis and Prognosis in Early. Medieval Pulse and Urine Texts.” Social History of Medicine 13 (2000): 265–278. Weisser, Ursula. “Mondphasen und Krisen nach al-Kindī.” Sudhoffs Archive für Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften 66 (1982): 390–395. Welker, Lorenz. Das “Iatromathematische Corpus”: Untersuchungen zu einem alemannischen astrologisch- medizinischen Kompendium des Spätmittelalters mit Textausgabe und einem Anhang. Zurich, 1988. White, Lynn, “Medical Astrologers and Late Medieval Technology.” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 6 (1975): 295–307. Zinner, Ernst. Deutsche und Niederländische astronomische Instrumente des 11. bis 18. Jahrhunderts. Munich, 1967 [reprint of 1956]. 329–346 and 681.

Miriam Czock

Medieval Latin Liturgical Commentaries In western medieval devotion, the liturgy played a central role: it was socially the most far reaching medium in which Christianity ritualised its beliefs and endeavored to make the present an actualization of the biblical past and eschatological expectations. The prolific medieval tradition of liturgical interpretation reflects theological interest in the liturgy and elucidates the different ways worship was to be understood. Commentaries range from short texts treating only one element of the ritual to full-blown interpretations of a whole range of liturgical rituals. Subject matters could include for example the divine service, the Eucharist, the mass, the liturgical hours, baptism, the feastdays, the prayer for the dead, the church building, the vessels and the vestments, as well as any number of other verbal and physical signs. This vast array of different subjects is mirrored by the confusing variety of terms modern authors have employed to define these texts. Included among them are mass commentary, liturgical commentary, expositio missae or treatises on the liturgy (Holmes 2013). The common denominator of this terminology is that all such works include interpretations of the liturgy. Medieval authors used an equally wide range of terms. For example, Amalarius refers to his own work (c. 820–831/832) either as Liber officialis or De ecclesiastico officio (Knibbs 2014 X). Manuscripts labeled John Beleth’s commentary (ca. 1160) Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis (Douteil 1976, 32) or Lothar of Segni’s commentary De missarum mysteriis (ca. 1195; Wright 1977). To narrow down the large scope of the material, this article focuses mainly on commentaries treating the whole mass. Latin liturgical interpretation began in the third century (Reynolds 1986, 625). More rituals were added to the liturgy over the centuries, and this evolution is reflected in the production of liturgical commentaries that increasingly interpreted these rituals symbolically and mystically. Isidore of Seville produced the earliest commentaries in the seventh century (Reynolds 1986, 626), though few commentaries were otherwise written before the Carolingian Renaissance. The Carolingian endeavor of the eighth and ninth century to reform the liturgy, as well as the widely propagated idea that the clergy should understand it, inspired a more prolific creation of theoretical literature on the subject of worship. Crucial for the development of the genre was Amalarius of Metz’ Liber de divinis officiis (ca. 820–831/832; ed. and trans. Knibbs). Although Amalarius’ work was sharply criticized in his own time by Florus of Lyon (d. ca. 860) (eds. Zechiel-Eckes and Frauenknecht), the method of allegorical interpretation he used became highly influential throughout the Middle Ages (Reynolds 1986, 628). Other contemporary examples include Hrabanus Maurus’ De clericorum institutione (ed. and trans. Zimpel, and Walafrid Strabo’s Liber de exordiis et incrementis ecclesiasticis rerum (ca. 840–842), which is a more historical explanation of the liturgy (ed. and trans. Harting-Correa 1996). While the eleventh century saw only a few short tracts on various liturgical subjects (Reynolds 1978, 111), the twelfth century witnessed a https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-070



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climate of renewed spirituality, theological reformation and innovation, which contributed to a thriving production of liturgical commentaries (Reynolds 1978, Schaefer 1983, and Macy 1997). Macy has compiled a list of twelfth-century commentaries on the mass (Macy 1997). Again there were full interpretations of the mass, including for example: Rupert of Deutz’ De divinis officiis (ca. 1111; ed. Haake, trans. Deutz) and the literal-historical interpretation of John Beleth’ Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis (ca. 1160; ed. Douteil, trans. Weinrich). In the thirteenth century, Bishop Durandus of Mende wrote his Rationale divinorum officiorum (1291–1295), which is considered by many liturgical scholars to be the culminating point of the genre (eds. Davril and Thibodeau, trans. Douteil and Suntrup). Nevertheless, liturgical commentaries still flourished up until the sixteenth century (Holmes 2013). Liturgical commentaries were widely disseminated and read in the Middle Ages. For example, Rupert of Deutz’ commentary on the liturgy, De divinis officiis, has survived in 68 manuscripts (Haacke 1967, XLIII), while even more popular ones have remained in hundreds of copies (Reynolds 1986). They were, however, more or less overlooked by historians and church historians alike until a revival of interest in liturgical commentaries began in the late 1970s. Works previously unedited or only available in uncritical editions appeared in new critical editions and in new translations (Holmes 2013). Despite the renewed interest this genre has enjoyed in the last decades, a comprehensive overview is still missing. Up to the 1980s the standard introduction was Adolf Franz’ work on the liturgy published in 1902. Although there are now some short overviews (Reynolds 1986, Häusling 1997), a thorough survey remains lacking (Gary Macy 1997). How little attention has been paid to the genre is shown by the fact that the only extant overview (Mosey 1985) and the most thorough studies of liturgical commentaries dating from the twelfth century are unpublished theses (Macy 1997, 25). The reason liturgical commentaries are a relatively under-researched genre lies in the use of allegory as an interpretative strategy, which fell out of favor with modern theologians (Holmes 2013, 80). Yet this method always had its critics and it existed side by side with literal-historical approaches. Medieval interpretations were based on methods of biblical exegesis, whose two dominating approaches generally speaking were either a historical-literal or an allegorical one. The historical method described liturgical ritual and gave an interpretation using historical or etymological analysis, which traced either the rituals or the terms used back to their historical roots and explained the developments over time. The allegorical one instead revealed the spiritual sense of the ritual and explained the significance of prayers, readings, gestures, things, rituals and so forth (Reynolds 1986, 624, Suntrup). Allegorical interpretations addressed the liturgy as a web of symbols infused with a deeper meaning, which had to be revealed by the interpreter. The allegorical approach understood the liturgy as a commemoration of New Testament events prefigured in the Old Testament and were often imbued with eschatological meaning. Although the commentaries as a whole still await a thorough analysis, the temporal structures of liturgical exegesis oscillating between promise and fulfillment, and the temporal dimensions of the past,

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present, and future in terms of salvation history have been the subject of a few studies (Czock 2016, Pössel 2018, and Ward 2018). Moreover, liturgical commentaries deal with themes that are closely related to future things like the Apocalypse and the resurrection of the dead (Flanigan 1992). Currently, the intersection of prophetic announcements contained in biblical apocalyptic passages and rituals, which form the prognostic dimensions of liturgy, is an understudied subject. The same (underestimation) applies for the question how it was unfolded in the commentaries. The prophetic dimension liturgy has and its inter­ pretation can be exemplified by Rupert of Deutz’ explanation he delivered on the symbolism of the church bells. By talking about the bells he articulates the idea that while in the old Testament trumpets called the faithful to praise god, in his time bells are doing the same. In his view the trumpets as well as the bells symbolise the same thing. They symbolize of the holy preachers of the church who call and prepare the believers for the future judgement of God. What Rupert is suggesting here is to understand the bells in two ways. On the one hand the bells are literally the bells calling the believers to the divine office, on the other hand the bells are considered a symbol for the preacher and his task of proclaiming the incarnation of Christ as well as the judgement that awaits at his second coming (Haacke 1967, 13–15). In Lothar of Segni’s preface to his commentary the inclusion of the future promise is also evident, here he remarks: “There are three (things), in which the divine law especially consists: commands, promises, and sacraments. In commands is merit, in promises is reward, in sacraments is help. We are helped by the sacraments with two things, in following the command and in obtaining the promise.” (ed. Wright 1977, 91; trans. Schaefer 1983, 445). Given the state of recent scholarship, it would be precocious to attempt any definitive determinations, though the commentaries obviously reflect a theological understanding of salvation as enacted and revealed in the liturgy and thus venture a glimpse into the future foretold (Franz 1902, 351). Clearly, then, the study of liturgical commentaries can be a rich source of insight for analyzing medieval understanding of fate, future and prognostics. Yet, the commentaries and the question of how they conceptualized fate and future, and how they used prognostics as a tool, begs much further study.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Amalar of Metz. On the Liturgy, 2 vols. Ed. and trans. Eric Knibbs. Cambridge and London, 2014. Florus von Lyon. Opera polemica. Eds. Klaus Zechiel-Eckes and Erwin Frauenknecht. Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis CCLX. Turnhout, 2014. Habranus Maurus. De institutione clericorum. Über die Unterweisung der Geistlichen. 2 vols. Trans. Detlev Zimpel. Turnhout, 2006. Johannes Beleth. Summa de ecclesiaticis officis. Ed. Heribert Douteil. Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis XLI A-B. Turnhout, 1976.



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Johannes Beleth. Summe der kirchlichen Offizien. Trans. Lorenz Weinrich. Turnhout, 2012. Rupert of Deutz. Liber de divinis officiis. Ed. Rhabanus Haacke. Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis VII. Turnhout, 1967. Rupert of Deutz. De divinis officiis/Der Gottesdienst der Kirche, 4 vols. Trans. Helmut and Ilse Deutz. Freiburg et al., 1999. Wilhelm Durandus. Rationale divinorum officiorum, 3 vols. Trans. Herbert Douteil and Rudolf Suntrup. Münster, 2016. Wilhelm Durandus. Rationale divinorum officiorum. Eds. Anselm Davril and Timothy Thibodeau. Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis CXL and CXL A. Turnhout, 1995.

Secondary Literature Czock, Miriam. “Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft. Konstruktionen von Zeit zwischen Heilsgeschichte und Offenbarung: Liturgieexegese um 800 bei Hrabanus Maurus, Amalarius von Metz und Walahfrid Strabo.” ZeitenWelten. Zur Verschränkung von Zeitwahrnehmung und Weltdeutung (750–1350). Eds. Miriam Czock and Anja Rathmann-Lutz. Cologne, 2016. 113–133. Flanigan, C. Clifford. “The Apocalypse and the Medieval Liturgy.” The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages. Eds. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn. Ithaca, NY, and London, 1992. 333–351. Franz, Adolf. Die Messe im deutschen Mittelalter: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Liturgie und des religiösen Volklebens. Freiburg, 1902. Häusling, Angelus A. “Meßerklärungen (Expositiones Missae).” Christliche Identität aus der Liturgie. Theologische und historische Studien zum Gottesdienst der Kirche. Eds. Martin Klöckener, Benedikt Kranemann, and Michael B. Merz. Münster, 1997. 142–150. Holmes, Stephen. “The Latin Literature of Liturgical Interpretation: Defining a Genre and a Method.” Studia Liturgica 43 (2013): 76–92. Macy, Gary. “Commentaries on the Mass During the Early Scholastic Period.” Medieval Liturgy. A Book of Essays. Ed. Lizette Larson-Miller. New York and London, 1997. 25–59. Mosey, Douglas L. Allegorical Liturgical Interpretations in the West from 800 A. D. to 1200 A. D. Ph.D. Dissertation. Toronto, 1985. Reynolds, Roger E. “Liturgy, Treatises on.” Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Ed. Joseph R. Strayer. Vol. 7. New York, 1986. 624–633. Reynolds, Roger E. “Liturgical Scholarship at the Time of the Investiture Controversy: Past Research and Future Opportunities.” Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978): 109–124. Schaefer, Mary Martina. Twelfth Century Latin Commentaries on the Mass: Christological and Ecclesiological Dimensions. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 1983. Pössel, Christina. “ ‘Appropriate to the Religion of Their Time’: Walahfrid’s Historicisation of the Liturgy.” Writing the Early Medieval West. Studies in Honour of Rosamond McKitterick. Eds. Elena Screen and Charles West. Cambridge, 2018. 80–97. Suntrup, Rudolf. “Zeichenkonzeptionen in der Religion des lateinischen Mittelalters.” Semiotik/ Semiotics. Ein Handbuch zu den zeichentheoretischen Grundlagen von Natur und Kultur. A Handbook on the Sign-Theoretic Foundations of Nature and Culture. Vol. 1. Eds. Roland Posner, Klaus Robering, and Thomas A. Sebeok. Berlin and New York, 1997. 1115–1132. Ward, Graeme. “The Order of History: Liturgical Time and the Rythms of the Past in Amalarius of Metz’s De ordine antiphonarii.” Writing the Early Medieval West. Studies in Honour of Rosamond McKitterick. Eds. Elena Screen and Charles West. Cambridge, 2018. 98–111. Wright, David F. A Medieval Commentary on the Mass: Particulae 2–3 and 5–6 of the De missarum mysteriis (ca. 1195) of Cardinal Lothar of Segni (Pope Innocent III). Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 1977.

Stefano Rapisarda

Novels and Poems in the Medieval Western Christian World The reference to divinatory techniques in literature, both in verse and in prose, and/ or their use in narrative plots or lyrical discourse, demonstrates the importance and pervasiveness of forecasting in Medieval culture, in high as well as in low culture, and even in everyday life, beyond the mere sphere of technicality. If we strictly distinguish magic, superstition and marvels from divination, we can immediately observe that, while many contributions examine their specific appearance in literary texts (to mention but a few: Poirion 1982; Garrosa Resina 1987; Lawrence-Mathers 2012; Classens 2017), divination and diviners are comparatively less studied. For the Romance languages and literature, some research has been conducted on specific literary genres, like the Medieval French epic (e.  g. Braet 1975, with a focus on dream-interpretation; Vallecalxe 1983, especially on astrology) and chivalry romances (e.  g. Colliot 1983), and on single geo-cultural areas, like Medieval and Late Medieval Castilla (Vicente Garcia 2006), and Medieval Sicily and Occitany (Rapisarda 2014; Rapisarda 2018). The most intensively studied divinatory field in relation to literature is undoubtedly dream-interpretation, which commands an extensive bibliography (Corbellari-Tilliette 2007); for astrology in romances, one of the very first surveys was conducted by Wedel 1921, which was seminal and partial in nature, and a comprehensive inventory thereof remains far from available. We undertake here a provisional survey of the major Medieval Romance literature, including French, Provençal, Italian and Spanish works. An overall inventory of the divinatory techniques, themes, motives, facts, episodes and anecdotes mentioned in Western Medieval literature’s novels and poems, including Germanic, Nordic and Slavic ones, is highly desirable. Some narrative themes recur: e.  g. the story of the astrologer who is able to foresee the future of others but is blind to his own, or the widespread variant of the astrologer who falls into a hole. This story is based on a Greek anecdote, whose first source is Plato [Thaetetus 174a], concerning the philosopher Thales of Miletus, and relates how a philosopher tumbles into a well while staring at the stars, meaning that it is better to keep one’s mind on the earth rather than fancifully gazing up at the sky. Nevertheless, with a change of perspective, it reminds us that lifting our eyes heavenward to the higher spheres is so startling that one forgets to look at what lies before one’s feet: this is the sense in which this event is described in a well-known passage from Cicero’s De Republica, 30. Stories focused on astrological predictions are sometimes embedded in fictional narrative, as in the following, respectively from the Roman d’Alexandre (France, twelfth century) and El libre del Buen Amor of the Arciprestre de Hita (Spain, fourteenth century). In the former, Nectanebus is a powerful astrologer and magician who https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-071



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forewarns Alexander the Great that he will kill his own father. Alexander is skeptical about this prediction, but later throws Nectanebus down a slope in a sudden burst of rage, and the magician confesses that he is Alexander’s father, one second before dying (Harf-Lancner 1978, 94–95). The latter relates the story of a boy and the prediction of five astrologers: there was once a Saracen king named Alcaraz who had a newborn son; on the day he was born, the king consulted the five most renowned astrologers in order to foresee his son’s future. The first stated that the boy would be stoned to death; the second, burnt; the third, that he would die from a fall; the fourth, that he would be hanged; and the fifth, that he would drown. The king was furious at such contradictory verdicts and punished the astrologers. Nevertheless, one day, while the young prince was out riding, a violent storm broke out and, immediately, his courtiers, recalling the prognostication, sought shelter. Nevertheless, a sudden hail of pieces of ices as big as stones fell from the sky, a flash of lighting destroyed the bridge, the boy fell over a tree and remained hanging there and the swelling waters of the river drowned him. In this way, his death corresponded simultaneously to all five predictions, proving all of the astrologers principally correct (Blecua 1992). In short, both stories seem to induce skepticism, creating the impression that the astrologers were wrong or even charlatans, but both ultimately confirm the accuracy of their predictions. As noted above, if we attempt a geo-cultural survey of each Romance area, as far as medieval France is concerned, certain techniques have been extensively studied, like dream-interpretation: see, for example, Charlemagne’s and Alda’s dreams in the Chanson de Roland (Breat 1975, Segre 1981–1983, Semple 1995), Iseut’s dream in the Morois forest (Jonin 1958, Breat 1977), and Lancelot and other knights’ dreams in the Queste du Saint Graal (Jonin 1969, Moignet 1978, Demaules 2004). Less widely studied is astrology and much less other “minor” techniques. Generally speaking, references to divination techniques are rare in French epic: [In epic poems] ni l’astrologie ni les autres techniques de prédiction ne semblent bénéficier de la moindre faveur. On ne les ignore pas totalement, mais il est très rare de voir les personnages des chansons de geste se livrer aux subtiles opérations d’une quelconque pratique divinatoire. (Vallecalxe 1983, 402)

Nevertheless, many episodes of divination can be recognized in epic poems, such as in the Moniage Guillaume, where a “jet of the sorts” is extensively described, or in Jehan de Lanson, where the Saracen enchanter Malaquin, antagonist of the main hero, Basin, knows and practices “l’art d’astronomie” and uses it in a plot to open up a secret tower in which the French are locked up. There is no intellectual involvement of astrology as a technique, however: it is a mere narrative tool for enabling the action to progress. Other poems, such as L’Entrée d’Espagne, Folque de Candie, Aye d’Avignon, Le Moniage Guillaume II, and La Chanson d’Aspremont, Mainet, contain single references to predictions of future events, as in Gormont et Isembart: e! jal me dist un Sarrazin, / ultre la mer, qui en sorti, / si jeo veneie en cest pais, / que jeo serraie u mort

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u pris. / Or sai jeo bien que il veir dist (Vallecalxe 1983, 405) – “A Saracen told me once that if I had gone beyond the sea I would have been taken prisoner or died.” In short, divination in French epic seems to be more common among Pagans than Christians, especially when it serves as a simple plot device and fails to reveal any “truth”; on the contrary, Pagans normally lack access to “inspired” divination, e.  g. visions or dreams, which is a prerogative of Christians. As far as the Medieval French chivalry romances are concerned, an astrological episode is mentioned by Colliot 1983: in the Roman de Laurin, fils de Marques de Sénéchal, a romance of the thirteenth century, the Marques le sénéchal, a wise, serious man, scrutinizes the stars in order to foresee the future of his son, Laurin (Colliot 1983, 40). Here, a knowledge of astrology normally constitutes an essential aspect of higher education, but references to divination appear infrequently in Medieval French chivalry romances, although a systematic survey of this would be helpful. Astrology in Spanish literature has been studied by Vicente Garcia (2006), especially in the works of the so-called mester de clerecia, such as the Libro del Buen Amor, Corbacho, and Laberinto de Fortuna by Juan de Mena, together with the astrological images in Los doce triunfos de los doce apóstoles (1521) by Juan de Padilla. As far as the Spanish Medieval epic is concerned, even its masterpiece, El cantar do meo Cid (1140 c.), opens with a reference to avimancy: “a l’exida de Bivar ovieron la corneia diestra / e entrando a Burgos oviéronla siniestra” (vv.  11–12), which means a good omen in Bivar and bad omen in Burgos. As a matter of fact, in Burgos, our hero is not welcomed cordially; in the lexicon of El cantar do meo Cid, to indicate that all was running smoothly, the author includes the phrase mucho ove buenas aves (v. 859) – “he had favorable birds”. Remarkably, the epic formula which accompanies the hero is, in all cases, one of the following: En buen ora cinxiestes espada! (v. 41); en buen ora nasquiestes de madre (v. 379); el que en buona ora nasco (8; v. 935, etc.); the phrase “at a good hour” evidently refers to a favorable astral configuration. Although divination does not appear to play a prominent role in the plot of this seminal cantar, divination techniques and linguistic formulas deriving from divination are meaningful phenomena in the mind of the author of the poem. Very different from the French case is that of Occitan literature, with the South of France appearing one of the crossroads for medieval divination. We find remarkable quotations regarding divination techniques in Flamenca (second half of the thirteenth century) and Song of the Albigensian Crusade (1213–1216), two of the most famous works of Medieval Occitan literature, where bibliomancy and geomancy play a role in several crucial plot developments. In the former, Guillaume de Nevers, the main male character, interrogates a Psalter in order to foresee Flamanca’s future; in the latter, the main character undertakes a geomantic interrogation in order to decide whether or not to flee his hometown as the anti-heretical troops are marching upon it. What is more surprising is that, in this canso, we even find a Pope-deviner: at the Lateran Council, Innocent III has been negotiating and struggling with the powers involved in the Crusade, especially Simon de Montfort and Raymond VI of Toulouse. Forced to



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make a difficult decision, in a crucial passage, in search of inspiration, the Head of Christianity recurs to bibliomancy. Provence is the setting for another singular passage from a collection of Italian short stories, the so-called Novellino (anonymous author or collector, twelfth century). This short story relates a humorous episode about Messer Imberal del Balzo, a devotee of avimancy, which was intensively practiced in Medieval Occitania. Even in vernacular poetry, numerous occurrences exist. An overall review is presented in Rapisarda (2017). In Medieval Italian literature, we find widespread quotations and allusions to divination, starting from the twelfth-century poet Uguccione da Lodi and his gnomic verses: ben devì savere senç’altro sagramento / c’unca encontra la morte non è defendimento: / no ie val strolomia ni art d’encantamento; / palasïo ni torre né nigun bastimento (Contini 1960, 606, vv. 170–173) – “Against death, the knowledge of astronomy is useless”, writes the Lombard poet. Despite the ambiguous reputation accompanying science at the court of Frederick II, astrological allusions are rarely employed by the Sicilian poets, unlike their Occitan colleagues (again, Rapisarda 2017). Certain tenzoni, poetical contests in rhymes, that refer to divinatory culture survive in Tuscan literature, however, as in Lapo Gianni, who opens with a metaphor of Christian astrology (Contini 1960, 602); a poetic contest among two minor Tuscan poets, Guglielmo dei Romitani and Guido Orlandi; the former wrote Saturno e Marti, stelle infortunate, and the latter replied with La luna e ’l sole son pianeti boni (Orlando 1976, 55–60). The very minor Tuscan poet Ricco da Varlungo, in a tenzone with Dante da Maiano, declares having undertaken an interrogation through geomancy (Bettarini 1969, 185– 186). One of the peaks of astrological poetry was the poem L’Acerba by Cecco d’Ascoli (ca. 1269–1327), who was burned as an heretic in Florence in 1327. The inquisitor also burned his works: a Latin textbook on astronomy and the poem Acerba, a 4,867 verse quasi-“scientific epic”, written in the Italian vernacular. In the first two books, Cecco sets forth his astrological system in order to explain all phenomena existing within the cosmos. Cecco’s main intellectual goal was to unite a theory of causative astral influence and independent human intellect. The crux of the problem is: if we believe that astral influences alter earthly life, how can we claim that we, as humans, are independent agents (Crespi 1927)? Although Dante’s Divine Comedy cannot be strictly considered “astrological poetry,” nevertheless astronomy/astrology are infrastructural throughout the poem, accompanied by the most complex use of metaphors: almost 1,500 astrological/astronomical allusions feature in Dante’s poetry (Kay 1996). An elaborate astronomical metaphor opens the Vita nova, Dante’s juvenile poem, singing of his first encounter with Beatrice, and his philosophical Convivio is no less replete with astrological images and descriptions. Dante’s condemnation of divination and diviners is absolute, such as Michael Scot (d. 1232) and Guido Bonatti (d. ca. 1300), the latter mentioned as among the diviners at Inf. XX, 118, and the former depicted in a monstrous torsion, twisting his head toward his shoulder, to represent the misalignment in the minds of those who consult diviners (Inf., XX, 115–117); nevertheless, the Florentin poet displays a sound, even technical, knowledge of divination, consider-

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ing, for example, the reference to a geomantic figure like Fortuna maior for a chronological determination in the Divine Comedy: “quando i geomanti lor Maggior Fortuna / veggiono in orïente, innanzi a l’alba, / surger per via che poco le sta bruna”, Purg. XIX 4–6; dreams and dream interpretation play a prominent role in both Dante’s Vita nova and Divine Comedy (Armour 2001). The same can be said of Boccaccio, the other great Medieval Italian author, who well understood and employed dream-interpretation (see Cappozzo 2015); Boccaccio is familiar with astrology also: in his epic Teseida, the narrative of events is scattered with references to the rising constellations and positions of the planets (see Levarie Smarr 1979). Boccaccio’s attitude is anyway questionable, considering also a famous letter on the ages of man that Petrarch addressed to him, in which the poet ridicules astrology and astrologers (see Wood 1970, esp. 40–41). Nevertheless, Petrarch proved himself very well informed about ancient astrological literature, considering his attentive reading of Censorinus and Julius Firmicus Maternus (Seniles, VIII, 1, 15–19 in Rizzo 2009). His attitude toward the science of stars remains ambiguous as well (Grimaldi 2015).

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Alexander of Paris. Le Roman d’Alexandre. Ed. Laurence Harf-Lancner. Paris, 1978. Arcipreste de Hita. Libro de buen amor. Ed. Alberto Blecua. Madrid, 1992. Cecco D’Ascoli. L’Acerba. Ed. Achille Crespi. Ascoli Piceno, 1927. Dante da Maiano. Dante da Maiano: Rime. Ed. Rosanna Bettarini. Florence, 1969. 185–186. Il Novellino. Ed. Alberto Conte. Roma, 2001. [Engl. Translation: Il Novellino: The Hundred Old Tales. Trans. Edward Storer. New York, 1925.] La Chanson de la Croisade albigeoise, éditée et traduite du provençal. 3 vols. Ed. Eugène Martin-Chabot. Paris, 1957–1961 (First edition. Paris, 1931). Plato. Theaetetus, Sophist. Trans. Harold North Fowler. Cambridge, MA, 1921. Petrarca, Francesco. Res seniles, Libri V–VIII. A cura di Silvia Rizzo, con la collaborazione di Monica Berté. Florence, 2009 (Parte del tomo II delle Opere di Francesco Petrarca a cura della Commissione per l’Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Francesco Petrarca).

Secondary Literature Armour, Peter. “Viaggio, sogno, visione nella Commedia.” Per correr miglior acque… Vol. 1. Rome, 2001. 143–165. Battesti-Pelegrin, Jeanne. “Astre/Désastre dans le ‘romancero viejo’.” La Soleil, la Lune et les étoiles au Moyen Age. Aix-en-Provence, 1983. 23–37. Bernard, Katy. “Les motifs de la ‘science’ divinatoire dans le déroulement narratif de «Flamenca».” La voix Occitane, Actes du 8e congrès de l’Association Internationale d’Etudes Occitanes (Bordeaux, du 12 au 17 octobre 2005). Vol. 1. Bordeaux, 2009. 457–490.



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Braet, Herman. “Le rêve d’amour dans le roman courtois.” Voices of Conscience: Essays on Medieval and Modern French Literature (in Memory of James D. Powell and Rosemary Hodgins). Ed. Raymond J. Cormier. Philadelphia, 1977. 107–118. Braet, Herman. Le songe dans la chanson de geste au XII° siècle. Gand, 1975. Cappozzo, Valerio. “«Delle verità dimostrate da’ sogni»: Boccaccio e l’oniromanzia medievale.” Boccaccio 1313–2013. A cura di Francesco Ciabattoni et al. Ravenna, 2015. 203–211. Classens, Albrecht. Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time. The Occult in Pre-Modern Sciences, Medicine, Literature, Religion, and Astrology. Berlin, 2017. Colliot, Régine. Soleil, lune, étoiles à l’horizon littéraire médiéval, ou les signes de la lumière (Textes du XIIIe siècle). La Soleil, la Lune et les étoiles au Moyen Age. Aix-en-Provence, 1983. 39–52. Contini, Gianfranco (ed.). “Poeti del Duecento.” II, t. 1. A cura di G. C. Ricciardi. Milan and Naples, 1960. 597–624. Corbellari, Alain, and Jean-Yves Tilliette (eds.). Le rêve médiéval. Geneva, 2007. Demaules, Mireille. “Forme et signification du songe dans la Queste del saint Graal.” Literatures 50 (2004): 161–189. Ferster, Judith. Fictions of Advice. The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England. Philadelphia, 1996. Garrosa Resina, Antonio. Magia y superstición en la literatura castellana medieval. Valladolid, 1987. Grimaldi, Marco. “Petrarca e l’astrologia medica.” Petrarchesca 3 (2015): 43–56. Jonin, Pierre. “Le songe d’Iseut dans la forêt du Morois.” Le Moyen Âge 64 (1958): 103–113. Jonin, Pierre. “Un songe de Lancelot dans la Queste du Graal.” Mélanges Rita Lejeune. Vol. 2. Gembloux, 1969. 1053–1061. Kay, Richard. Dante’s Christian Astrology. Philadelphia, 1994.  Lawrence-Mathers, Anne. The True History of Merlin the Magician. Cambridge, MA, 2012. Levarie Smarr, Janet. “Boccaccio and the Stars: Astrology in the ‘Teseida’.” Traditio 35 (1979): 303–332. Manetti, Roberta (ed.). Flamenca. Romanzo occitano del XIII secolo. Parma, 2008. Moignet, Gérard “La grammaire des songes dans la Queste del Saint Graal .” Langue française 40 (1978): 113–119. Orlando, Sandro. “Una tenzone di Guido Orlandi (Appunti di lettura).” Studi di filologia italiana 34 (1976): 55–60. Poirion, Daniel. Le merveilleux dans la littérature française du moyen âge. Paris, 1982. Rapisarda, Stefano. “Literary Texts and Divination Techniques in Medieval Occitania. A Short Survey. Medioevo 42 (2017).” Moral Agency and Its Constraints: Fate, Determinism and Free Will in the Middle Ages. Eds. Alessandra Beccarisi and Fiorella Retucci (Padova, 2017, 99–123). Rapisarda, Stefano. “Pratiche divinatorie alla curia fridericiana. Note e meno note testimonianze latine e volgari.” Astrologie, divination et magie dans les cours (XII–XVII siècles). Eds. Agostino Paravicini Bagliani et al. Florence, 2014. 3–36. Segre, Cesare. “Il sogno di Alda tra ‘chanson de geste’, ‘chanson de femme’ e ‘romance’.” Medioevo romanzo 8 (1981–1983): 3–9. Semple, Benjamin M. “Recognizing Roland: the Responses of the Medieval Audience to the Dreams of Charlemagne in the Song of Roland.” Dreams in French Literature: the Persistent Voice. Ed. Tom Conner. Amsterdam, 1995. 27–45. Soldati, Benedetto. Poesia astrologica del Quattrocento. Florence, 1906 [repr. with an introduction by Cesare Vasoli. Florence, 1986]. Vallecalxe, Jean-Claude. Remarques sur l’astrologie et la divination dans les chansons de geste. Le Soleil, la Lune et les étoiles au Moyen Age. Aix-en Provence, 1983. 401–418. Vicente García, Luis Miguel. Estrellas y astrólogos en la literatura medieval española. Madrid, 2006.

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Wedel Theodore, Otto. “Astrology in Medieval Romances.” The Medieval Attitude toward Astrology Particularly in England. New Haven, 1921 [repr. 2005]. 100–112. Wedel Theodore, Otto. “Astrology in Middle English Literature.” The Medieval Attitude toward Astrology Particularly in England. New Haven, 1921 [repr. 2005]. 113–131. Wedel Theodore, Otto. Astrology in Gower and Chaucer. The Medieval Attitude toward Astrology Particularly in England. New Haven, 1921 [repr. 2005]. 132–156. Wood, Chauncy. Chaucer and the Country of the Stars: Poetic Uses of Astrological Imagery. Princeton, NJ, 1970.

Avishai Bar-Asher

Ornithomancy in Medieval Jewish Literature Ornithomancy (namely, divination by reading avian behavior or using birds for magical purposes or telling the future) is widely discussed in medieval Jewish literature. The details of the ornithomantic techniques and attempts to explain their workings are especially prominent in the medieval Jewish mystical literature, including the kabbalah. Such techniques include deciphering bird chirps and bird calls for divinatory purposes, interpreting flight patterns or other avian behavior to predict the future, sometimes using living birds in magical rites, and so on. Looming over the fascination of these mystics with these branches of divination and magic, however, was the rabbinic polemic against certain fields of occult magic, traditionally identified with the prohibited divinatory and magical rites enumerated in biblical law. For example, the yide‘oni practice recorded in the Bible (e.  g. Lev. 20:27) was widely identified with prognostication, that involved raising incense and placing the bone of a bird called a yiddoa‘ inside one’s mouth. This interpretation of the yide‘oni sorcery gained currency from the late eleventh century onward, particularly due to its inclusion in Rashi’s popular commentary on the Pentateuch ad loc. and in R. Moses Maimonides’ halakhic code, Mishneh Torah (“Laws of Idol Worship” 6.2, interpreting the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 65b). The medieval discussion of ornithomancy was also driven by polemics against the opinions of Jewish rationalists, who declared the efficacy of magic and mantic arts null, and consequently argued that the Bible outlawed them for societal or pedagogical reasons. Some of the strongest opposition to this rationalistic position came from the earliest kabbalists, who were active in Gerona during the first half of the thirteenth century and saw value in ornithomancy. R. Moses Nahmanides (d. ca. 1270) discussed the “science of tayyar” (Ar. ṭairah, ‫( )طيرة‬Nahmanides, Commentary on the Torah, Deut. 18:9), a general term covering different forms of avian augury that was prevalent in Islamic Spain, including ‘iyāfah (‫ )عيافة‬and qiyāfah (‫)قيافة‬. He emphasized the effectiveness of various kinds of divination in his famous concession: “we cannot contradict what has been clearly observed by eyewitnesses” (Nahmanides, Commentary on the Torah, Deut. 18:9). When it came to using birds to predict the future, he went a step further and explained its scientific basis in astrology, which primarily revolves around the augur correctly discerning signs imprinted on the birds by “the princes of Draco”. An even more outspoken recognition of ornithomancy’s value was expressed by Nahmanides’ contemporary and fellow townsman, R. Jacob ben Sheshet (Meshiv Devarim Nekhoḥim, 80–81). One of Nahmanides’ disciples, R. Aaron ha-Levi of Barcelona (d. 1303), reportedly “would walk through the markets and streets observing them in order to understand and instruct, but not to act or desist” (R. Isaac of Acre, Me’irat ‘Einayim, 232). Nevertheless, in the very next generation, Nahmanides’ grand-pupil, R. Joshua ibn Shuaib, distinguished between divination based on avian behavior, which he considered prohibited, and “recognizing their twittering, [which is] great https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-072

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wisdom for which the Sages of Israel are praised” (Ibn Shu‘eib, Derashot ‘al ha-Torah, 51b). Other kabbalists of the period voiced similar opinions. The kabbalists of Castile, who flourished in the final third of the thirteenth century, accepted Nahmanides’ words posthumously but took them to another level of reality. R. Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla, for example, understood this realm of knowledge to be linked to angelic (and sometimes even demonic) beings, “who snatch the words out of people’s mouths […] and place them in the beaks of all kinds of birds” (Gikatilla, Perush ha-Merkavah, 58). He envisions these winged beings as having a dual purpose: carrying human speech heavenward and announcing them in a “supernal decree”, and, in the other direction, bearing information earthward about “what is going to happen to all denizens of the world below” (ibidem). One finds a similar account in the writings of his contemporary, R. Moses ben Shemtob de León, whose name is famously entwined with the Zohar. In the hekhalot corpora of the Zohar, this occult scheme becomes far more elaborate, with rich descriptions of all manner of birds acting as the principal agents of cosmic communication between the hosts on high and the earthbound humans below. In the Zoharic homilies on the Pentateuch, interest in ornithomantic practices reaches its medieval pinnacle. Their efficacy is recognized, but it is accompanied by an acknowledgment of their being (partially) prohibited as forbidden magic. The Zohar links the biblical figures of the Moabite king Balak and the Midianite prophet Balaam (Num. 22–24) to this field of knowledge and practice. The Bible introduces Balak as ben tzippor, usually translated as “the son of Zippor” but, given the semantic elasticity of the word tzippor (=bird), the Zohar interprets the phrase homiletically to mean that he is a master ornithomancer, who uses the yiddoa‘ bird to induce visions, augurs based on bird twittering, and performs incantatory magic, with the aid of astral magic (Zohar, III:196–197a). The prophecy of “Balaam the sorcerer”, on the other hand, is attributed to his knowledge of bird-based witchcraft (e.  g., Zohar, I:125b–127a). Later commentaries on the Zohar even sought to identify the Zohar’s divination through birds with a combination of diverse occult elements: incantations that “draw down (lit. clothe) a potency” onto a bird in order to uncover clandestine knowledge, and magical practices in which a talismanic bird is made out of various metals and manually activated using the tongue of the yiddoa‘ bird (R. Moses Cordovero, Or Yaqar, sec. 14, 131). Many Zoharic stories also include divination or magic involving birds, and one finds similar trends in the texts of Tiqqunei ha-Zohar. These narratives exemplify the transition from the scientific view of ornithomancy to a more mythological one, which occurred during its transfer from Catalonian to Castilian kabbalistic circles. In the Zohar, we encounter paradisiacal descriptions of mythical birds, the most prominent of which is the identification of the souls of deceased righteous people with birds who rest in a “bird nest”, a space nestled within the shade of the paradisiacal trees (Zohar II:7b–9a, III:196b, etc.). Similar depictions are found in the pseudepigraphic Hebrew writings of Moses of León (Sefer Ḥanokh, Seder Gan ‘Eden), in which the serene scene of birds



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singing a song of praise and thanks in the Garden of Eden is connected with a certain conception of attaining knowledge of the future. These kabbalistic texts echo the ancient apocryphal traditions about songbirds surrounding the repose of the righteous in heaven, and about mythical birds that issue forth their song to meet the sunrise (as in the Apocalypse of Baruch, 2 Enoch, and so on). It is possible that these kabbalistic writings were also informed by Arabic works that were widespread in the Middle Ages even in translation, such as Avicenna’s Epistle of the Bird, and other popular works.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources The Slavonic Texts of 2 Enoch. Ed. Grant Macaskill. Leiden, 2013. Jacob ben Sheshet. Meshiv Devarim Nekhoḥim. Ed. Georges Vajda. Jerusalem, 1969 [Hebrew]. Joseph b. Abraham Gikatilla. Perush ha-Merkavah le-R. Yosef Giqaṭilya. Ed. Asi Farber-Ginnat. Los Angeles, 1998 [Hebrew]. Joshua ibn Shuaib. Derashot ‘al ha-Torah le-R. Yehoshua‘ Ibn Shu‘eib. Cracow, 1573 [repr. Jerusalem, 1969] [Hebrew]. Moses Cordovero. Sefer ha-Zohar ‘im Perush Or Yaqar, vols. 1–17, 21–23. Jerusalem, 1962–1995 [Hebrew]. Moses Maimonides. Mishneh Torah hu ha-Yad ha-Ḥazaqah. Ed. Shabtai Frankel. Vol. 1. Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, 2016–2017 [Hebrew]. English: Moses Maimonides. The Code of Maimonides, vol. 1: The Book of Knowledge. Trans. Bernard Septimus, Yale Judaica series (forthcoming). Moses Nahmanides. Perushei ha-Torah le-Rabbenu Moshe ben Naḥman, ed. Charles B. Chavel. Rev. ed., 2 vols. Jerusalem, 1962–1963 [Hebrew]. English: Moses Nahmanides. Commentary on the Torah, 5 vols. Trans. Charles B. Chavel, New York, 1971–1976. “Seder Gan ‘Eden (Nusḥa B)”. In: Adolf Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrasch, vol. 3. Leipzig, 1855. 131–140 [Hebrew]. “Sefer Ḥanokh”, in Avishai Bar-Asher, R. Moses de León’s Sefer Mishkan ha-Edut: Critically Edited, Introduced and Annotated. Los Angeles, 2013. 152–158 [Hebrew]. Sefer ha-Zohar, 3 vols. Mantua, 1558–1560 [Hebrew]. English: The Zohar: Pritzker Edition. Eds. and trans. Daniel C. Matt et al. Stanford, CA, 2004–2018.

Secondary Literature Bar-Asher, Avishai. “The Soul Bird: Ornithomancy and Theory of the Soul in the Homilies of Zohar Pericope Balak.” The Zoharic Story. Eds. Jonatan Benarroch, Yehuda Liebes, and Melila Hellner-Eshed. Jerusalem, 2017. 354–392 [Hebrew]. Bos, Gerrit. “Jewish Traditions on Divination with Birds (Ornithomancy)” (2015), https://www. researchgate.net/publication/280976904_Jewish_Traditions_on_Divination_with_Birds_ Ornithomancy (15 March 2020). Cohen-Alloro, Dorit. Magic and Sorcery in the Zohar. PhD diss., Hebrew University. Jerusalem, 1989 [Hebrew].

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Goldreich, Amos (ed.). Sefer Me’irat Einayim le-R. Yitzḥaq de-Min Akko. PhD diss., Hebrew University. Jerusalem, 1981 [Hebrew]. Liebes, Yehuda. The Cult of the Dawn: The Attitude of the Zohar Towards Idolatry. Jerusalem, 2011 [Hebrew].

Alberto Spataro

Papal Prophecies in the Middle Ages As with other aspects of the history of the Papacy, even the production and circulation of prophetic texts that have the Roman Pontiff (or Roman Papacy) as the protagonist, the thirteenth century was, without doubt, a decisive period. It is no coincidence that, in the long, rich evolution of the prophetic literary genre during the Middle Ages, the figure of the Bishop of Rome makes its appearance exactly at the moment at which Petrine Ecclesiology perhaps knew its maximum growth. To understand this phenomenon, it is necessary to consider the evolution of the Eschatological discussion that developed in the theological schools after the reform of the eleventh century and the so-called struggle for the investitures. During these decades, the interpretations of the events of the end times underwent significant hermeneutic changes: the scanning of the facts that precede the victory of the Lamb, despite tracing what is naturally described in the Apocalypse of Saint John and in prophetic texts such as the Revelationes of the pseudo-Methodius and the Sibylla Tiburtina, over time, assumed features coherent with the new theological elaborations of the twelfth century. Fundamental in this sense are particularly the works of Honorius Augustodunensis (d. 1051), Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179) and Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202) (Potestà and Rizzi 2012; Potestà 2015). In the first author, the figure of the emperor of the end times, antagonist of the Antichrist, loses importance in favor of the role of the Bishops (De gemma animae) until he is no longer mentioned (Elucidarium), even in Ildegard, while the Calabrian Abbot identified the final events as occurring no longer in Jerusalem, as according to tradition, but in Rome, and identifies the figures of Enoch and Elijah, prophesied in Rev. 11, with two new Monastic orders (Potestà 2015, 106–108). To simplify matters, it can be affirmed that, in the scenario of the end times, an Ecclesiology is projected that sees the role of the Ecclesiastical hierarchy continuously increase, and thus, at the same time, that of the imperial authority decrease. A very particular role was played by the interpretation of the works of Joachim of Fiore, conveyed many times by texts falsely attributed to him, especially starting from the 1240s and 1250s (Rainini 2002). In particular, themes such as Enoch and Elijah, symbols of two Monastic orders, were adopted by minor friars and preachers, thanks to the mediation of the Roman Curia where, particularly in the times of Innocent III Raniero da Ponza (d. 1207/1209), himself the author of prophetic texts that have unfortunately been lost, was considered one of the first followers of Joachim of Fiore (Rainini 2016). The role of the two main mendicant orders in support of the Roman papacy appears clear in the prophecy of the hermit John of Asturias sent from Lucas of Tuy (d. 1249) in 1234 to Cardinal James of Vitry (d. 1240). The text, given by six manuscripts, is particularly significant because it is the first that explicitly mentions the names of Francis of Assisi and Domini of Caleruega in the apocalyptic scenario (eds. Lerner and Morerod 2006; Alberzoni 2017, 51–55; Potestà and Rizzi 2019, 113–127). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-073

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Nevertheless the occasion that consented such hermeneutic developments to reveal their potential was the struggle between the Roman Curia and the Staufen Emperor Frederick II, which initiated the second excommunication of 1239 (Graefe 1909; Schaller 1993 [1972]). If, at first, the propaganda aimed at delegitimizing the adversary was applied without any particular or coherent logic, matters changed from the summer of 1241, when the allies of the Staufen captured at the Island of Giglio several Cardinals who were heading toward Rome to participate in a Council that would have had as its goal the deposition of the excommunicated Emperor. During the long vacancy of the Apostolic See that occurred following the death of Gregory IX in August 1241 up until the Pontificate of Innocent IV (1243–1254), several prophecies were produced at the Roman Curia, that had as its principle objective the delegitimization of the Staufen dynasty (Potestà 2013). The most illustrious case is that of the Sibilla Erithrea Babilonica, drafted in two versions: one that is ancient and brief, traceable to around summer 1241, and a later long one, composed at the end of the 1240s (Jostmann 2006). The author should probably be identified with a member of the Roman Curia, linked to the most intransigent Cardinals, such as James of Pecorara (d. 1244) and Rainer of Viterbo (d. 1250), who was for the rest the author of numerous anti-Frederick circular letters sent by the Papal Chancellery (Thumser 2013). The text, characterized by strong Vergilian, allusive language through the use of the names of animals to conceal the real names, is divided into three parts, that would be excerpta taken from three books from which an ancient Imperial writing (Basilographus) would have been composed. In it, the Greeks would have asked to know their future before the Trojan war: in the first part, the events following the above-named conflict are retraced, namely the foundation of Rome, the ascension and decline of the Empire of Alexander the Great, the civil wars of Rome, the conversion of Constantine, and the ascension of Christian Rome, after which would have followed the moral decadence of Byzantium, culminating in with the dynastic struggles of the Comenenians and the devastation of Constantinople in 1204. The central role of Rome, the seat of the Papacy, is emphasized even more in the second part of the text, where the history of the Church becomes the theme, particular mention is made of Charlemagne who, despite being an exemplary Catholic sovereign, was unable to defeat the atavic enemy of Christianity, namely Islam, which would reign for 663 years, namely until the end of times if one considers that the reign of the Antichrist must last three years and a half (663+3=666), according to the Apocalypse. The third section instead takes as its theme the negative role of the Staufen dynasty of Frederick II in particular: always through a symbolic and allusive language, its progeny is sketched and its recent misdeeds are described to offer a glimpse of the near future, forecasting great dangers arising from the alliance between the Staufen and John III Vatatze, the Emperor of Nicea. The general tone is nevertheless sceptical in regards to the prosperity of the Staufen dynasty, destined to succumb, as the text affirms. Paradoxically, the phrase (vivit non vivit) that indicates this premonition was interpreted, starting from Ernst Kantorowicz, in the opposite sense, to indicate the



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immortality of the imperial family. More ambiguous, however, is the identification of the Leo orientalis that would appear immediately before the end times. He was interpreted as a Khan of the Mongols, as Baldwin II of Constantinople (Jostmann 2006, 316–317) or as a descendent of the Prester John (Potestà 2014, 145–147). The diverse interpretative possibilities are for the rest exact characteristics of the prophetical type, whose works could be re-interpreted and updated according to need. It is no coincidence that it was exactly the Sibilla Erithrea that was the object in 1249 of a longer edit, with greater emphasis on the relationships with Byzantium, in the moment when the Roman Curia had as its objective the de-legitimization of the Constantinopolitan Legation of the minorite general John of Parma (d. 1289). At the same time, the Sibilla Erithrea must be understood inside a larger editorial context, having the Roman Curia as a pin. In fact, exactly at the time of the first version of the Sibylline text, another prophecy rose again: the Verba Merlini (ed. Holder-Egger, 174–177; Kaup 1999). That text, although briefer and not directly including the Roman Pontiff among its protagonists, is of a certain interest in understanding the authorship and causa scribendi of the Sibilla Erithrea. Merlin, in fact, would have prophesied the misdeeds of the Staufen dynasty and of Frederick II in particular; a theme already present in the sibylline oracle. The principal points of contact, however, regard the manuscript tradition and the reception: the two texts, in fact, are placed together in almost all manuscript testimonies and, from the very beginning, must have been circulated together, as the psuedo-Joachimite work produced in minorite circles Expositio super sibillis et merlino testifies (Jostmann 2006, 57–124). In the first half of the thirteenth century, in the Pontifical ambit, the prophetical genre thus served to frame in a meta-historical scenario both the Ecclesiology of the Pontiffs and the Staufen antagonism. It is no coincidence that the most representative and articulate text of this genre is ascribed to the voice of Sibyl, as in the West, since in the tenth century, that prophetical canal was directed to frame the role of the Emperor eschatologically, as the origin and fortune of the Sibilla Tiburtina demonstrates. The Curial prophetic production continued for the rest also under the Pontificate of Gregory X (1271–1276, when the Cistercian Cardinal John of Toledo (d. 1275), an expert in alchemy and author of numerous works, at the precise time when the French monarchy was being increasingly re-interpreted as the legitimate heir of Charlemagne, put in writing a prophecy in verse which had as its object the dreaded descent of Charles of Anjou (d. 1285) in the Italian peninsula, with the consequent disorder for the Church and Empire (ed. Holder-Egger 1905, 380–384; Paravicini Bagliani 1976, 228–255). If, up to that epoch, the prophecies had for their protagonists the Popes and thus were in favour of the Institution, the situation changed from the second half of the twelfth century onward. Shortly after the death of Pope Nicholas III (1227–1290), a text known as the Oracle of the Cardinals was produced (Rehberg 1991). It was a Latin reworking of the so-called Oracles of Leo, comprising 15 sections, composed in Byzantium between the late ninth and tenth centuries before being updated in the thirteenth century and attributed to the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI (886–912) (↗ Grünbart, Prognostication Eastern ­Christian

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World, 161). It is about figures accompanied by a caption and a brief motto, and, in its last five units, produced as its object a dead emperor who, however, would briefly be resurrected to continue to govern for a short time. The Leonine oracles started to circulate in Latin Europe during the Second Council of Lyon (1274) or possibly during the following decades, during the reign of Andronikos II Palaeologus (d. 1332). From then on, very few years were thus used to de-legitimize the strong Curial faction of the Orsini family, for this motive it is thought that behind the preparation there was the influence of the rival family, namely the Colonnas, allies of Charles II of Naples (d. 1309), who was interested in his turn in opposing the pro-Aragonese policies initiated by Nicholas III Orsini, pope from 1277 to 1280. Effectively, during the Conclave of 1288, for the first time, a Franciscan Friar was elected, Girolamo Masci (Nicholas IV, 1288–1292), who was welcomed by both the Colonnas and Charles II. The cue for new prophetic elaborations was the events related to the abdication from the Papal throne of Celestine V (1294) and the consequent election of Boniface VIII (d. 1303). The targets of his policies were the spiritual Franciscan friars and the Roman family of the Colonnas, in open opposition to Pope Caetani. From this struggle were born texts of various natures that, in one way or another, intended to discredit the figure of Boniface VIII. This is the case of the Epistola Merlini de summis pontificibus and the Oracle of Cirill (Mesler 2010). In the filigree of these texts lie glimpses of the political-ecclesiastical occurrences that immediately followed the events of the first years of the Boniface Pontificate, everything filtered by the prophetical authority respectively of the famous Breton personality and of a presumed Carmelite friar, priest Cirill, who would have seen in a vision an Angel who gave him a Revelation, then explained by a certain Abbot Joachim (of Fiore?). If these predictions seem to point to a precise historical personality who would have opposed Boniface VIII with force, in the letters of the “Apostle” Dolcino of Novara (d. 1307), betrayed inside the Inquisitorial manual De secta illorum qui se dicunt esse de ordine Apostolorum of the preaching Friar Bernard Gui (d. 1331) (ed. Guillaume) which saw Frederick III of Aragon (d. 1337) as the mortal adversary of Boniface VIII, who would have been succeeded by a “Saintly Pope” who, together with the above-mentioned Emperor, would have reigned until the rise of the Antichrist (Mollat 1927, 66–109). It is interesting to note how political circumstances motivate prophetical interpretation: this is evident in the psuedo-Joachimite Liber de Flore (Grundmann 1977 [1929]) where, after a series of popes, one arrives at the time of Boniface III, indicated as “iniquitous” and who would be opposed by an anointed personality, possibly identified with Albert of Habsburg (d. 1308). After the death of Boniface, the arrival of four “angelic pastors” is announced and, during the Pontificate of the first of these four, a king descended from Pepin, whose name would start with the letter P, who would come in aid of the Pontiff, and who, vice versa, would raise the sovereign to the Imperial dignity. In all probability, the personality foreshadowed by the letter P is Phillip IV (d. 1314) (Philippus) who, as noted, in the first years of the fourteenth century, was a terrible adversary of Boniface VIII. The polemics against Pope Caetani were, at the same time, conveyed



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by a Horoscupus, a unique text of its kind, closely linked in the manuscript tradition to the Liber de Flore (Kaup 2003). It is a brief astrological text that would have been translated from Hebrew, in which the series of bad popes that began with Nicholas III would have coincided with the negative astral cycle of Saturn, after which would follow a positive period marked by the beneficial influence of the sun and Jupiter. Then the Church would have returned, wholly abandoning her heavy Constantinian heritage. This theme, for the rest already present in the Epistola Merlini and the Liber de Flore, together with elements of a philological and textual nature, allows us to ascribe the origin of these prophecies to the ambits of the spiritual friars of Italian origin who opposed Boniface VIII. In the following decades, following the example of the Oracles of Leo mentioned previously, another prophetical text entitled Genus nequam was compiled, exclusively dedicated to papal figures which, together with another reworking completed in the mid-fourteenth century, gave life at the start of the 1400s to the famous Vaticinia pontificum (Grundmann 1977 [1929b]; Millet 2004). The nine manuscripts that transmit the Genus nequam permit us to gather the diverse interpretative evolutions of the images that were changed by the Leonine Oracles (Fleming 1999). If the group of texts of spiritual Franciscan origin owe a certain debt to the first versions of the Genus nequam, that text played a larger role in the context of the succession of Pope Benedict XI (d. 1304), when the work was used to promote the election of a holy pope on the model of Celestine V. The famous alchemist and collector of Apocalyptical and sibylline texts Arnaldus of Villanova (d. 1311) undoubtedly played a fundamental role in the reception and interpretation of these prophetical texts (Potestà 1995, 2007): he was contiguous to ambits linked to the spirituals, as his admiration in regard to Peter John Olivi (d. 1298) testifies. To Arnaldus, or someone close to him, are attributed the comments on the Liber de Flore and the Horoscopus, aimed at clarifying the already numerous papal prophecies. These interpretations are understood in the context of the renewed persecution that started during the Pontificate of John XXII (d. 1334) against the spirituals and their supporters, which had direct consequences for Villanova, who was arrested in 1319. It is thus unsurprising to find in Arnaldine thought strong polemics against the so-called “carnal” popes whose culmination is represented by the interpretation, on the basis of the Olivi and in particular of Ubertino of Casale (d. 1329), that saw in the two beasts of Rev. 13 the two Antichrist Popes, respectively Boniface VIII and Benedict XI (Lo Bello 2014; Potestà and Rizzi 2019, 355–391). The same polemic is expressed, always in the same ambits, also by another reworking of the Genus nequam, namely the prophecy whose incipt is Ascende calve. If, in the former, the succession of papal figures was useful to identify a positive pastor angelicus, the second instead culminates with the identification of the last pope with the infernal dragon himself (Millet and Rigaux 1992; Schwartz and Lerner 1994). The sunset of the hopes cultivated in the ambits around the spirituals, however, did not mark the end of the fortune of the papal prophecies inspired by the Oracula Leonis. They found a new potential role in the ambit of the events regarding the

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Avignon Papacy and the Western Schism. A first project to update these was undertaken by the supporters of the Avignon Pope Benedict XIII and, although it does not appear to have been realized, it must have foreseen an addition to the 15 sections of the Ascende calve and another six that concluded with the positive identification of the Avignon Pope who would have preceded the arrival of an angelic Pope before the coming of the Antichrist and the last apocalyptical events. Following the Council of Pisa (1409), there was the fusion of the 15 units of the Ascende calve with those of the Genus nequam, giving life to the united text known as the Vaticinia pontificum where everything was directed toward consolidating the Roman line, as for the rest the diffusion of the work starting from the Pontificates of Martin V (1281–1285) and Eugene IV (1431–1447) confirms (Millet 2004). Among all of the variations in regards to the series of preceding successions, worthy of notice is the image of the Pope who deposes the Tiara (see Fig. 50), a role that de facto substitutes that of the sovereign of the end times that for centuries referred to a temporal monarch. This was the result of a long hermeneutical path that, as seen, laid its roots in the theological mutations that occurred during the twelfth century, finding its textual concretization with the Sibilla Erithrea. In the course of events, it was bent and adapted to support the positions of the enemies of Pontiffs like Boniface VIII and Benedict XI to later rediscover, at the end of the Middle Ages, a role as support for the Pontifical institution. Beyond immediate polemical needs, it is possible to argue that the elaboration in the middle and late Middle Ages of prophecies which took the Pontiffs as their antagonists, through the gradual adumbration of the Endkaiser, has doubtlessly contributed to the reshaping of the eschatological role that was traditionally attributed to the Imperial power by both the Greek and Latin prophetical literature.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Bernard Gui. Manuel de l’Inquisiteur. II. (Les classiques de l’histoire de France au Moyen Âge 44). Ed. Guillaume Mollat. Paris, 1927. “Italienische Prophetien des 13. Jahrhunderts. I, II, III.” Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 15/30/33 (1890/1905/1908): 141–178/321–386, 714–715/95–187. Ed. Oswald Holder-Egger. L’Anticristo. II. Il figlio della perdizione. Testi dal IV al XII secolo (Scrittori Greci e Latini). Eds. Gian Luca Potestà and Marco Rizzi. Milan, 2012. L’Anticristo. III. La scienza della fine. Testi dal XIII al XV secolo (Scrittori Greci e Latini). Eds. Gian Luca Potestà and Marco Rizzi. Milan, 2019.



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Fig. 50: Pope (Innocent VIII) deposing the Tiara according to the Vaticinia pontificum. The name of the pope was added later (Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Hs 86851, fol. 14r.; date: ca. 1470). Photo credits: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg.

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Secondary Literature Alberzoni, Maria Pia. “I frati Minori nello scontro tra Federico II e il papato.” Francescani e politica nelle autonomie cittadine dell’Italia basso-medievale. Atti del convegno di studio svoltosi in occasione della XXVI edizione del Premio internazionale Ascoli Piceno. Ascoli Piceno, Palazzo dei Capitani, 27–29 novembre 2014. Eds. Isa Lori Sanfilippo and Roberto Lambertini. Rome, 2017. 35–58. Fleming, Martha H. The Late Medieval Pope Prophecies. The ‘Genus nequam’ Group. Arizona, 1999. Graefe, Friedrich. Die Publizistik in der letzten Epoche Kaiser Friedrichs II. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Jahre 1239–1250. Heidelberg, 1909. Grundmann, Herbert. “Die Papstprophetien des Mittelalters” [1929]. Ausgewählte Aufsätze II. (MGH Schriften 25.2). Stuttgart, 1978. 1–57. Grundmann, Herbert. “  ‘Liber de Flore’. Eine Schrift der Franziskaner-Spiritualen aus dem Anfang des 14. Jahrhunderts” [1929]. Ausgewählte Aufsätze II. (MGH Schriften 25.2). Stuttgart, 1978. 101–165. Jostmann, Christian. Sibilla Erithrea Babilonica. Papsttum und Prophetie im 13. Jahrhundert (MGH Schriften 54). Hanover, 2006. Kaup, Matthias. “Merlin, ein politischer Prophet: Genese, Funktion und Auslegung merlinischer Prophetie im Spiegel zweier unedierter Kommentare des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts.” Cristianesimo nella storia 20 (1999): 545–578. Kaup Matthias. “  ‘Der Liber Horoscopus’: Ein bildloser Übergang von Diagrammatik zur Emblematik in der Tradition Joachims von Fiore.” Die Bildwelt der Diagramme Joachims von Fiore. Zur Medialität religiös-politischer Programme im Mittelalter. Ed. Alexander Patschovsky. Ostfildern, 2003. 147–184. Lerner, Robert E., and Christine Morerod. “The Vision of ‘John, Hermit of the Asturias’: Lucas of Tuy, Apostolic Religion, and Eschatological Expectation.” Traditio 61 (2006): 195–225. Lo Bello, Rosario Andrea. Resistenza profetica. Arnaldo da Villanova e i frati minori. Milan, 2014. Mesler, Katelyn. “The Epistle of Merlin on the Popes: A New Source on the Late Medieval Notion of the Angel Pope.” Traditio 65 (2010): 107–176. Millet, Hélène, and Dominique Rigaux. “  ‘Ascende calve’. Quand l’historien joue au prophète.” Studi medievali 33 (1992): 695–719. Millet, Hélène. Les successeurs du pape aux ours. Histoire d’un livre prophétique médiéval illustré (Vaticinia de summis pontificibus). Turnhout, 2004. Paravicini Bagliani, Agostino. Cardinali di curia e ‘familiae’ cardinalizie dal 1227 al 1254. I (Italia sacra. Studi e documenti di storia ecclesiastica 18). Padua, 1972. Paravicini Bagliani, Agostino. Il papato nel secolo XIII. Cent’anni di bibliografia (1875–2009). Florence, 2009. Piur, Paul. “Oraculum angelicum Cyrilli.” Anhang. Urkundliche Quellen zur Geschichte Rienzos, Oraculum angelicum Cyrilli und Kommentar des Pseudojoachim. Ed. Konrad Burdach. Berlin, 1912. 221–327. Potestà, Gian Luca. “Dall’annuncio dell’Anticristo all’attesa del Pastore Angelico. Gli scritti di Arnaldo di Villanova nel codice dell’Archivio generale dei Carmelitani.” Actes de la I Trobada Internacional d’estudios sobre Arnau de Vilanova. I. Ed. Josep Perarnau. Barcelona, 1995. 287–344. Potestà, Gian Luca. “L’anno dell’Anticristo. Il calcolo di Arnaldo di Villanova nella letteratura teologica e profetica del XIV secolo.” Rivista di Storia del cristianesimo 4 (2007): 431–463. Potestà, Gian Luca. “Il drago, la bestia, l’Anticristo. Il conflitto apocalittico tra Federico II e il papato.” Il diavolo nel Medioevo. Atti del XLIX Convegno storico internazionale di Todi (Atti dei



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convegni del Centro italiano di studi sul basso medioevo. Accademia Tudertina – Centro di studi sulla spiritualità medievale. Nuova Serie 26). Spoleto, 2013. 395–420. Potestà, Gian Luca. L’ultimo messia. Profezia e sovranità nel Medioevo (Saggi 803). Bologna, 2014. Potestà, Gian Luca. “I tempi finali e la venuta dell’Anticristo secondo Ildegarda.” Unversehrt und Unverletzt. Hildegards von Bingen Menschenbild und Kirchenverständis heute. Eds. Rainer Berndt and Maura Zátonyi. Münster, 2015. 517–531. Rainini, Marco. “I Predicatori dei tempi ultimi. La rielaborazione di un tema escatologico nel costituirsi dell’identità profetica dell’Ordine domenicano.” Cristianesimo nella storia 23 (2002): 307–343. Rainini, Marco. Il profeta del papa. Vita e memoria di Raniero da Ponza eremita di curia. Milan, 2016. Rehberg, Andreas. “  ‘Der Kardinalsorakel’-Kommentar in der ‘Colonna’-Handschrift Vat. Lat. 3819 und die Entstehungsumstände der Papstvatizinien.” Florensia 5 (1991): 45–112. Schaller, Hans Martin. “Endzeit-Erwartung und Antichrist-Vorstellungen in der Politik des 13. Jahrhunderts [1972].” Ausgewählte Aufsätze (MGH Schriften 38). Hanover, 1993. 25–52. Schwartz, Orit, and Robert E. Lerner. “Illuminated Propaganda: The Origins of the ‘Ascende calve’ Pope Prophecies.” Journal of Medieval History 20 (1994): 157–191. Thumser, Matthias. “Kardinal Rainer von Viterbo († 1250) und seine Propaganda gegen Friedrich II.” Die Kardinäle des Mittelalters und der frühen Renaissance. Eds. Jürgen Dendorfer and Ralf Lützelschwab. Florence, 2013. 187–199.

Irmi Dubrau

Physiognomy among Medieval Jews Physiognomy (from the Greek phusis – nature, and gnōmōn – interpreter, or gnōmé – indicator) is the art of deciphering the congenital character traits of the personality according to visual signs of the bodily organs, especially the facial features. Chiromancy is a mantic art which determines the character of a man, his fate and his future from the marks and lines present on his palms, fingers and fingernails. Metoposcopy is a divinatory art which predicts character and destiny on the basis of the lines of the forehead. Ancient physiognomic divinatory practices are known from Mesopotamian literature. Bodily signs are used as a method for divining the future. Unlike the Mesopotamian culture of the Hellenistic world, physiognomy was used, not as a divinatory practice, but as a prognostic art, for the purpose of diagnosing character traits. It formed part of the philosophic-scientific knowledge within the medical and anatomical Hellenistic discourse. Since physiognomy was a trans-cultural branch of knowledge and practice, many Hebrew physiognomic texts rely on translations from Hellenistic treatises, and ascribe to the visual signs of the body diagnostic indications of mental, moral, and intellectual characteristics as well as potential behavioral patterns. Nonetheless, physiognomic practices were also shared by Jewish mystic groups, who used the esoteric wisdom of divinatory practices as a prognostic tool for selecting new members from among the candidates who wished to join the esoteric circles. The most ancient physiognomic fragments known to us belonged to the Second-Temple community at Qumran (4Q186). Their divinatory principles were closer to those of the Babylonian physiognomic model. They employed physiognomic criteria as a diagnostic tool for selecting members as part of the procedure for admission to the group. The righteous and wicked were examined in accordance with the terminology of the ‘House of Light’ and ‘Pit of Darkness’ based on the proportional principles of the bodily organs, and the term the ‘Foot of the Bull’ may contain astrological information. Furthermore, another Qumran Aramaic fragment (4Q534), which describes the physical characteristics of the “the chosen of God”, may be understood as referring to the Messiah (Popović, 2007; Ben-Dov 2014, 109–152). The apocryphal Book of Ben-Sira (Ecclesiasticus), preserved in Greek, contains general physiognomic principles of life-wisdom without any mystical element. Maimonides maintained that Ben-Sira “was a man who composed books of fantasy on matters relating to al-firāsa [Arabic for physiognomy]. [These books] contain no wisdom and have no usefulness; they merely waste one’s time with vain things” (Maimonides, Commentary on the Mishnah, ed. Rosner, 150). The most ancient Hebrew chiromantic and metoposcopic fragments known to us belong to Hekhalot and Merkavah literature. Fragments of chiromantic and metoposcopic practices appear in Hakkarat Panim le-Rabbi Yishmael, which dates from https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-074



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Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages, and was published by Gershom Scholem (Scholem 2004, 246–301; Scholem 1969, 175–193). This source is based on the shapes of 12 Hebrew letters, line marks (sirṭuṭin), a mysterious system of signs and a number of obscure terms, such as “crown” (keter) and “rivers” (neharot). These signs indicate an individual’s moral character and can serve to distinguish between the righteous and wicked, as well as divine reward in the world to come. They also predict a person’s fate with regard to his social, economic, and health status. The literary connection between the Hekhalot literature and rabbinical literature on physiognomic characteristics appears in Seder Eliyahu Rabbah in the Aramaic language, and appears after the article on the four faces of the Merkavah, identified with the moral virtues: “Our Sages have taught on the Merkavah: ‘if you see a man with large eyelashes and his eyes are crossed, know that he is a bad person who had a previous sin’  ” (Seder Eliyahu Rabbah ve-Seder Eliyahu Zuta 1903, 163; Epstein 1948, 2:766–767; Scholem 2004, 251–253). In Sefer Haḵhmoni by Rabbi Shabbetai Donnolo (913–982), there is a possible confirmation of the ancient and forgotten art of various prognostic signs – ‘if he has an itch without a sore, a louse, or flea, those who are experts in this science can foretell future events by it, as well as by the contours of man’s hand and by the countenance of his face.’ The paragraph may be a later (fourteenth-century) interpolation and was not included in the critical edition (Mancuso 2010, 266–267). A second chiromantic source appears in a responsum of Rav Hai Gaon, which identifies who may enter the esoteric circles according to “recognition of the face” (hakkarat panim) and states that moral character is revealed in the appearance of the face, and the “layouts of line marks” (sidrei sirṭuṭin), i.  e. chiromancy and/or metoposcopy (Emanuel 1995, 216–218, § 154). These sources have no connection with astrological methods. Other chiromantic and metoposcopic fragments found in the Genizah and published by Ithamar Gruenwald, make mention of the determination of the fate and future of a person from lines and other marks, and use astrological terms as well (Gruenwald 1971, 301–319; Schäfer 1984, 135–139; Schäfer 1988, 84–95). Genizah fragments of Hekhalot literature also exhibit links with astrological methods that determine the moral character of a person (↗ Saar, Divination in the Cairo Genizah). Another fragment from the Geonic period contains these chiromantic and metoposcopic traditions (Leicht and Yahalom 2008). R. Yishma’el and his treatise Hakkarat Panim are mentioned in Judah Halevi’s Kitab al Khazari (trans. Hartwig Hirschfeld, iii.65, 167). R. Judah Halevi (c. 1140) maintained there that R. Yishmael “knew all these secrets (referring also to Hekhalot and Merkavah literature) and he almost reached the degree of prophecy”. Nahmanides (1194–1270) also mentions the responsum of Rav Hai Gaon and Rav Sherira Gaon and describes physiognomy as an ancient esoteric tradition that had disappeared from Jewish culture and which was known, in his time, only to a minority through a faulty version (Davidson 2017, 287–311).

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R. Moses ibn Ezra (c. 1060–1139), in his treatise entitled Kitāb al-muḥāḍarah wa al-mudhākarah, discusses the origins of physiognomy and explains the physiognomic knowledge derived from the Assyrians (Scholem 2004, 247). During the second half of the twelfth century, in Iberian Jewish culture, a rhyming prose satire called Sefer Sha’ashu’im (the “Book of Delights”) was written by the physician Joseph ben Meir Ibn Zabara of Barcelona (ca. 1140–ca. 1200), which contains non-divinatory physiognomic knowledge. Ibn Zabara attributes his knowledge to Plato, but in fact adopted the physiognomic-scientific knowledge from Book II of Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyā al-Rāzī’s (Rhazes’) (Ziegler, forthcoming). R. Hananel ben Abraham of Esquira, author of Sefer Yesod ‘Olam, links physiognomy with the legend of Rabbi Ishmael’s death. According to the Aggadah, when the skin of his face was peeled off by the Romans, the contours of his face were preserved. R. Hananel ascribes the science of physiognomy to Alexander of Macedon (Scholem 2004, 257–258). In the esoteric treatises of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz (circles of pietists active in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries in the Rhineland area), bodily signs are used as a method for divining the future. Ḥasidei Ashkenaz emphasized the place of their physiognomic doctrine within the ritual dimension of the commandments, particularly the commandment of laying tefillin. There are also physiognomic signs that contain messages of a moral nature, and attest to an individual’s sins. The lines on the palm of the hand contain information about the moral qualities of a person with regard to his being righteous or wicked. In the esoteric treatises of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz, a few methods are documented for distinguishing signs that foretell the future according to the appearance of the bodily limbs: the lines on the forehead (i.  e. metoposcopy, ḥoḵmat sirṭuṭei ha-meṣaḥ) and lines on the palm of the hand (i.  e. chiromancy, ḥoḵmat ha-yad), and signs on the shoulder (simanei ha-katef) and internal organs as well as the coordination between physiognomic signs and astrological and onomantic traditions (numerical calculations of gematria using the numerical values of the letters of a subject’s given name according to a fixed formula). The practice of divining a person’s destiny by calculating the numerical values of the letters of his given name and dividing them by 12 is also documented in the book entitled Sefer Eshkol ha-Kofer by Judah Hadassi, the Karaite of twelfth-century Byzantium (Eshkol ha-Kofer, ed. 1836, f. 31a). This form of divination appears in Latin in a mid-twelfth century English psalter and in the Arabic traditions of onomancy in Pseudo-Aristotle’s Secret of Secrets (↗ Forster, Pseudo-Aristotelian Sirr al-asrār/Secretum secretorum; Burnett 1988, 143–167; Dubrau 2017, 54–58). Another physiognomic divinatory practice of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz was the interpretation of the involuntary movements of the body, such as quivering and friction of the limbs (simanei raʻad ve-ḥikuḵ). Such interpretations were common in folk beliefs and in Christian society during the Middle Ages as well (Dubrau 2017, 36–46; Diels, 1908–1909, vol. 2, 95–102). Another divinatory practice of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz predicts signs of life and death in the shadows cast by the body on the eve of Hoshana Rabbah, a religious Jewish festival, which take place on the seventh and last day of the



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Jewish holiday of Sukkot (Idel 1997, 265–300; Idel 2000, 21–56; Shyovitz 2017, 57–60, 94–95; Liebes 2005, 21–40; Liebes 2008, 177–207; Dan 1963, 359–369; Daiches 1913). There exists an affinity between this practice of the Ḥasidei Ashkenaz and a Christian divination ritual which is performed on Christmas Eve (Dubrau 2017, 64–69). Another Ashkenazic physiognomic paragraph concerning the four natures found in Sefer Kushiot is attributed to the circles of Meir of Rothenburg’s (ca. 1215–1293) disciples (Sefer Kushiot, ed. Stahl, question 242, 186–187). The Zoharic corpus (dated to the thirteenth century) contains an extensive elaboration of the physiognomy based on the Hekhalot and Merkavah literature as well as chiromantic and metoposcopic methods. Within the interpretations of the Torah in the Zohar, several models of bodily signs are presented that reflect personality types together with recommendations regarding whether one should keep oneself away from them. In the esoteric wisdom of the Zohar, the organs of the human body are understood to be the attire of the soul. The human body is compared to the structure of the universe, the sky and stars. The spiritual element of a human being is internal, but it leaves its marks upon the body. The nails and marks on the palms contain an esoteric divine meaning. By identifying celestial shapes in a metaphorical sense on the palm, one is able to foretell the future significant events related to a person. In addition, Hebrew letters engraved on the palm and forehead can signify different types of personalities. Zoharic physiognomy claims that one has the ability to change oneself, and offers effective ways to repair negative features and heal the soul. Physiognomic wisdom is not just technical knowledge but more intuitive and inspired by the Holy Spirit. The physiognomy in Tiqqunei Zohar links human faces to the divine face based on Ezekiel’s vision of the heavenly chariot with the faces of the lion, ox, and eagle, and discusses the relation between the microcosm and the divine in the Zoharic terminology of the ten Sefirot. Human faces represent divine qualities and are able to affect the divine dimension in the magical process of repairing (Tiqqun) the divine face through the observance of Torah and commandments such as laying tefillin (Margolin 2007, 199–245; Liebes 2005, 21–40; Meerson 2013, 1:563–585). According to the biblical exegetes of Spain, Rabbeinu Behaye ben Asher (1255– 1340) and R. Joshua ibn Shuaib (ca. 1280–ca. 1340), Moses was an expert in physiognomy exactly as described in Zoharic physiognomy (Scholem 2004, 258–259). R. Judah ben Solomon Canpanton (fourteenth century), a pupil of the Ritva (Yom Tov ben Avraham Asevilli ca. 1260–1320), transmits in the name of his Rabbi that the first knowledge acquired by the first man, Adam, was physiognomic in nature (Scholem 2004, 259). In Appendix 3 of his article, Gershom Scholem published a thirteenth-century text identified as the earliest in Hebrew: Sefer Re’iyat ha-Yadayim me-Eḥad me-Ḥakhmei Hodu (“A Book of Chiromancy by one of the Indian Sages”) which is a chiromantic text that predicts the fate of a man and his future based on the marks and lines on his palms. This text was known by Eliyahu Mosheh Galino (fifteenth century), the author

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of Ḥokhmat Ha-yad (“The Wisdom of the Palm”: chiromancy) (Scholem 2004, 269–271, 290–297). In Appendix 4 of his article, Gershom Scholem transcribed an early fourteenth-century Kabbalistic text, possibly associated with Moses de Leon, entitled “The Secret of Physiognomy” (Sod Hakkarat Ha-panim). The text combines Zoharic Kabbalistic knowledge and also refers to the Sirr al-asrār, a physiognomy book supposedly composed by Aristotle for his student Alexander (↗ Forster, Pseudo-Aristotelian Sirr al-asrār/Secretum secretorum). The author states that Aristotle’s physiognomic knowledge is true, because he copied it from the books of the early prophets who knew the secrets of physiognomy (Scholem 2004, 258, 298–300). The Hebrew translation of the treatise Sirr al-asrār, which includes a chapter on physiognomy from the shorter Arabic version, has been wrongly ascribed to the early thirteenth-century poet, Judah al-Ḥarizi (Gaster 1925–1928, vol. II, 742–813, 799–803). Today it is dated to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth centuries (Williams 2003, 60; Spitzer 1982, 34–54; Busi 1990, 165–170). The Encyclopaedia of Gershom ben Solomon of Arles, Sha’ar Ha-shamayim, composed possibly in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, and the exhaustive practical encyclopaedia of c. 1360 entitled Sefer Shevile Emunah (“Paths of Faith”), compiled by Meir ben Isaac Aldabi of Toledo (1310–1360), contain physiognomic-scientific knowledge and are based on translations of Hellenistic essays and Arabic texts (Ziegler, forthcoming). Sefer Zioni of R. Menahem Zioni (late fourteenth century from Cologne) preserves physiognomic traditions from Hekhalot and Merkavah literature and from the esoteric wisdom of Hasidei Ashkenaz in his kabbalistic commentary on the Pentateuch (Scholem 2004, 255 and 257).

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Eshkol ha-Kofer. Gozlow, 1836 (Hebrew). Judah Halevi’s Kitab al Khazari. Trans. Hartwig Hirschfeld. Revised Edition. London, 1931. Moses Maimonides. Commentary on the Mishnah, tractate ‘Sanhedrin, Mishna im Perush Rabenu Mosheh ben Maimon’. Trans. Yosef Kapah. Jerusalem, 1965. 140–141 [full English translation: Maimonides’ Commentary on the Mishnah, Tractate Sanhedrin, translated with introduction and notes by Fred Rosner, New York, 1981]. Seder Eliyahu Rabbah ve-Seder Eliyahu Zuta (Tanna Devei Eliyahu). Ed. Meir Fiedmann. Vienna, 1903 (Hebrew). Shabbatai Donnolo’s Sefer Ḥakhmoni: Introduction, Critical Text, and Annotated English Translation. Ed. Piergabriele Mancuso. Leiden, 2010. Sefer Kushiot. Ed. Y. Yakov Stahl. Jerusalem, 2007 [Hebrew].



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Secondary Literature Epstein, Yaakov Nahum. Introduction to the Mishnaic Text. Jerusalem, 1948 [Hebrew]. Ben-Dov, Jonathan. “Ideals of Science: The Infrastructure of Scientific Activity in Apocalyptic Literature and in the Yahad.” Ancient Jewish Sciences and the History of Knowledge in Second Temple Literature. Eds. Jonathan Ben-Dov and Seth L. Sanders. New York, 2014. 109–152. Burnett, Charles S. F. “The Eadwine Psalter and the Western Tradition of the Onomancy in PseudoAristotle’s Secret of Secrets.” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 55 (1988): 143–167. Busi, Giulio. “La tradizione ebraica del Secretum Secretorum.” Autori classici in lingue del vicino e medio oriente. Atti del III, IV e V Seminario sul tema: ‘Recupero di testi classici attraverso recenzioni in lingue del Vicino e Medio Oriente.’ Ed. Gianfranco Fiaccadori. Rome, 1990. 165–170. Daiches, Samuel. Babylonian Oil Magic in the Talmud and in the Later Jewish Literature. London, 1913. Dan, Joseph. “The Princes of Thumb and Cup.” Tarbiz 32 (1963): 359–369 [Hebrew]. Davidson, Hannah. “The Mind-Body Connections: Physiognomy and the Evil Eye in the Writings of Nachmanides and Nissim Gerondi.” Sefunot: Studies and Sources on the History of Jewish Communities in the East. Vol. 10, 25. Jerusalem, 2017. 287–311 [Hebrew]. Diels, Hermann (ed.). Beiträge zur Zuckungsliteratur des Okzidents und Orients (2 vols). Vol. 2. Berlin, 1908–1909. 95–102. Dubrau, Irmi. Physiognomy in the Esoteric Treatises of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz. Haifa, 2017 (Hebrew). Emanuel, Simcha (ed.). Newly Discovered Geonic Responsa and Writings of Early Provencal Sages. Jerusalem, 1995 [Hebrew]. Forster, Regula. Pseudoaristotelisch Sirr al-asrār/Secretum secretorum. Burnett, 1988. 143–167. Gaster, Moses. “The Hebrew Version of the ‘Secretum Secretorum’.” Studies and Texts in Folklore, Magic, Medieval Romance, Hebrew Apocrypha and Samaritan Archaeology (3 vols.). London, 1925–1928. Gruenwald, Ithamar. “Further Jewish Physiognomic and Chiromantic Fragments.” Tarbiz 40 (1971): 301–319 [Hebrew]. Idel, Moshe. “Gazing at the ‘Head’ in Ashkenazi Hasidism.” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 6 (1997): 265–300. Idel, Moshe. “Panim – On Facial Re-Presentations in Jewish Thought: Some Correlational Instances.” On Interpretation in the Arts: Interdisciplinary Studies in Honor of Moshe Lazar. Ed. Nurit Yaari. Tel Aviv, 2000. 21–56. Leicht, Reimund, and Joseph Yahalom. “Sefer zeh Sefer Toledot Adam: An Unknown Esoteric Midrash on Genesis 5:1 from the Geonic Period.” Ginzei Qedem 4 (2008): 9–82. Liebes, Yehuda. “Hakkarat Panim ba-Qabbalah’ [Physiognomy in Kabbalah].” Pe’amim 104 (2005): 21–40 [Hebrew]. Liebes, Yehuda. God’s Story: Collected Essays on the Jewish Myth. Jerusalem, 2008. 177–207 [Hebrew]. Margolin, Ron. “Physiognomy and Chiromancy: From Prediction and Diagnosis to Healing and Human Correction (Zohar 2 70a–78a; Tiqqunei Zohar, Tiqqun 70).” New Developments in Zohar Studies (= Te’uda: The Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies Research Series 21–22). Ed. Ronit Meroz. Tel Aviv, 2007. 199–245 [Hebrew]. Meerson, Michael. “Physiognomy and Somatomancy.” Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, vol. 1. Eds. Raanan S. Boustan, Klaus Herrmann, and Reimund Leicht. Tübingen, 2013. 563–585.

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Popović, Mladen. Reading the Human Body: Physiognomics and Astrology in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic-Early Roman Period Judaism. Leiden and Boston, 2007. Schäfer, Peter. Geniza Fragmente zur Hekhalot-Literatur. Tübingen, 1984. 135–139. Schäfer, Peter. “Ein neues Fragment zur Metoposkopie und Chiromantik.” Hekhalot-Studien. Ed. Peter Schäfer. Tübingen, 1988. 84–95. Scholem, Gershom. “Ein Fragment zur Physiognomik und Chiromantik aus der Tradition der spätantiken jüdischen Esoterik.” Liber Amicorum. Studies in Honour of Professor Dr. C. J. Bleeker. Leiden, 1969. 175–193. Scholem, Gershom. “Physiognomy and Chiromancy: Hakkarat Panim ve-Sidrei Sirtutin.” Devils, Demons and Souls: Essays on Demonology by Gershom Scholem. Ed. Esther Liebes. Jerusalem, 2004. 246–301 [Hebrew]; published earlier in: Sefer Assaf, eds. Moshe David Cassuto, Joseph Klausner, and Joshua Guttman. Jerusalem, 1953. 459–495 [Hebrew]. Shyovitz, David I. A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz. Philadelphia, 2017. Spitzer, Amitai. “The Hebrew Translations of Sod ha-sodot and Its Place in the Transmission of Sirr al asrār.” Pseudo-Aristotle ‘The Secret of Secrets’: Sources and Influences. Eds. William F. Ryan and Charles B. Schmitt. London, 1982. 34–54. Williams, Steven James. The Secret of Secrets: The Scholarly Career of a Pseudo-Aristotelian Text in the Latin Middle Ages. Ann Arbor, MI, 2003. Ziegler, Joseph. “Jewish Physiognomic Treatises.” A Handbook of Ancient and Medieval Jewish Magic. Eds. Siam Bhayro and Ortal-Paz Saar. Leiden (forthcoming). Ziegler, Joseph. “On the Various Faces of Hebrew Physiognomy as a Prognostic Art in the Middle Ages.” Unveiling the Hidden – Anticipating the Future: Divinatory Practices among Jews between Qumran and the Modern Period. Eds. Josefina Rodriguez-Arribas and Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum. Leiden (forthcoming).

Ron Margolin

Physiognomy and Chiromancy: From Prediction and Diagnosis to Healing and Human Correction (Zohar 2, 70a–78a; Tiqqunei Zohar, Tiqqun 70) The Zohar (Book of Splendor) is often referred to as “the jewel in the crown of Jewish mystical literature” (Hellner-Eshed 2009, 1). Its rich mythopoetic language and imagery have been the subjects of numerous studies (Wolfson 2004; Hellner-Eshed 2009; Fishbane 2018). For our purposes, its exact dating, authorship, and composition are not important (Scholem 1946, 156–204; Liebes 1993, 85–138; Wolfson 2007, xiii–xvii), but rather we will only be concerned with its discussion of physiognomy (ḥokhmat ha-parṣuf) and chiromancy. It is noteworthy that both, like other mantic practices such as ornithomancy (see Bar-Asher 2017), are not among the main subjects within the zoharic literature. In the Zohar there are five detailed, some even lengthy, sections dedicated to physiognomy (ḥokhmat ha-parṣuf), metoposcopy, and chiromancy. In Zohar, Parashat Yitro, we find R. Yiṣḥaq and R. Yose discussing the biblical verse, “This is the book of the generations of Adam: On the day of God’s creating man (adam) in the image of God he created him” (Gen. 5:1) which is understood as referring to physiognomic and chiromantic elements. The Zohar states: Further, “this is the book of the generations of Adam” – for features, in the mysteries of human features, to recognize those “generations” of a human being. The mysterious features of a human: in hair, in forehead, in eyes, in face, in lips, in ears, in lines of the hands. By these seven, humans are recognized. (Zohar 2:70b, 392; page number according to the traditional pagination of the Zohar. Cf. for other manifestations in the Zohar, eds. Matt et al., 2:71 n. 547)

In order to reflect on this zoharic passage it is necessary to review the history of these mantic wisdoms within Jewish literature. The earliest source of physiognomic practice may be found within the Dead Sea Scrolls in two fragments, 4Q186 and 4Q561 (Bohak 2016, 213–214; Gruenwald 2014, 249– 254). Within 4Q186 we witness physiognomy utilized as a means by which an applicant may become a new member of the sect (Alexander 1986, 364–365; Alexander 1996; cf. Popović 2007; Popović 2011). Members of this sect would check the calves, toes, fingers, teeth, eyes, beard, voice, and the shapes of the person’s soles. This inspection, in addition to astrological signs, were used as criteria for the admittance of a new member. Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Gene Matanky for the translation from Hebrew. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-075

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In the Geonic period we witness further development and utilization of these different mantic arts (Scholem 1953; Alexander 1986, 367–368). An especially important source for our discussion of this zoharic passage is that of the responsa of Sherira and Hai Gaon. Before we examine their responsa, we must first look at the Talmudic passages that inspired their comments. In b. Ḥagigah 13a and 14a, we find the following statements: Rabbi Ami said: The secrets of the Torah may be transmitted only to one who possesses five characteristics: “The captain of fifty, and the man of favor, and the counselor, and the cunning charmer, and the skillful enchanter (ve-navon laḥash)” (Isa. 3:3). […] Rabbi Abbahu said, “[…] ‘the skillful one’ (navon); this is one who understands (ha-mavin) something from something else. ‘Enchanter’ (laḥash); this is one who is worthy of having words of the Torah that were given in whispers [laḥash], transmitted to him.”

Concerning the “skillful enchanter” of Isaiah 3, Sherira and Hai Gaon write: The Sages transmitted to each other physiognomy (hakarat panim) and chiromancy (seder sereṭuṭin), which are partly expounded in the Sefer Zeh [Sefer] Toledot Adam and partly in the order of the following verse Zakhar u-Neqevah Bera’am only because they transmit the secrets and mysteries only to those in whom they discern (physical) signs that he is worthy. (Otzar ha-Geonim 4:2:12; trans. Leicht and Yahalom, 13n17).

According to Gershom Scholem, the practice of physiognomy and chiromancy  – reading a person’s characteristics and future through the lines on their face and palm – as found in Jewish manuscripts, is identical to the parallel practice found in early medieval Europe, and that which preceded it in similar Hellenistic-Roman traditions. Scholem observed that the comments of Sherira and Hai Gaon are apposite of the well-known medieval claim, whose origins is to be found within Greco-Roman culture, that these “wisdoms” arrived from the Babylonian, Assyrians, and Chaldeans (Scholem 1953). Other important sources concerning these practices may be found in such works as Hakarat panim le-Rebbi Yishma’el (“Physiognomy of Rabbi Ishmael”), which Scholem utilized as showing clear links between the Merkavah mystics and physiognomy (hakarat panim) (Scholem 1953). This work is found in complete and fragmentary versions in a number of manuscripts, of which the earliest date to the twelfth and thirteenth century. This text includes terminology for different parts of the hand, signs and letters that appear within it, and clear rules, which are quite similar to elements of physiognomy known from Greek and Latin writings, but in distinctly Jewish formulations. Alongside these depictions of physiognomy and chiromancy, we find within Latin literature, as well as German Pietistic literature, lengthy discussions concerning metoposcopy, which interpreted the “letters” that appeared within the lines of one’s palm or forehead. The Jewish practice of metoposcopy in the medieval period may be rooted in a particular reading of Ezek. 9:4–6, in which an angel goes through the city



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of Jerusalem and places a mark on the foreheads of the inhabitants in order to distinguish between the righteous and the wicked – a topic explored in midrashic literature (cf. also Midrash Temurah 1:3 in Eisenstein 1915, 580, which relates this verse explicitly with Gen. 5:1). Pre-kabbalistic medieval Jewish traditions, which referenced physiognomy and chiromancy, as discussed in the Geonic responsa literature, include such works as Sefer Ḥakhmoni by R. Shabbetai Donnolo and Sefer ha-Kuzari of R. Judah Halevi. Within these traditions we may depict three characteristics of these wisdoms, besides their esoteric nature: 1) They allow for the discernment of human behavior and traits – much like the Geonic responsa, as well as the passage from Zohar, Parashat Yitro, which rely on the biblical phrase, “This is the book of the generations (toldot) of Adam.” Scholem professed that in very ancient traditions, even earlier than Merkabah mystical traditions, physiognomy was linked to this verse. Already in these circles they understood the word toldot, not according to its biblical meaning, which conceives toldot as meaning history or genealogy, but rather as “nature”: “This is the book, the nature of man (toldot adam).” 2) They allow for prognostication – the prognostic element of these wisdoms is attested to in Hai Gaon’s responsum (§ 49), which correlates prophetic ability to chiromancy. A veiled connection of this characteristic to astrology may be found in the anonymously authored Kol-Bo (c. fourteenth century), which states, “And they had a custom (ve-nahagu) to look at the light that is on the hands, for the wise ones recognize within them the fate (mazal) of the man and the good (ṭovot) that should come to him.” (Kol Bo § 41; concerning this passage see Trachtenberg 1939, 217, 307n17). Not less relevant is a passage from Sefer Zeh Toledot Adam (MS Cambridge, Torah Scroll K 21.95L and T S K 21.88), which clearly connects astrology with chiromancy (Leicht and Yahalom 2008, 35–37, and 50). 3) They are implemented through the assistance of “religious intuition” that has a certain closeness to prophecy – there are two aspects to physiognomy and chiromancy. A technical aspect, which is expressed through the rules which are taught in secret by a master to their disciple, and an “understanding” aspect, which is found in the personal intuitive ability to employ these rules as each situation demands. This intuitive ability was conceived by the Geonim as a divine teaching that was revealed to a person within their “inner being” (be-penimiyut); within their thought. Important testimony concerning the prophetic feature of chiromancy in the medieval period may be found in Nachmanides’s sermon, Torat ha-Shem Temimah (“The Torah of the Lord is Perfect”), which was ostensibly composed in juxtaposition to the famous disputation of Barcelona of 1263. Nachmanides relates physiognomy and chiromancy to foretelling the future. For Nachmanides these mantic wisdom practices are clearly not only for discerning a person’s traits and characteristics, but for prognostication purposes. Although Nachmanides admits to not being an expert in these

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arts personally, however, he believes that contemporary experts do exist. Its primary purpose is foretelling the future through reading the features of one’s face, however, it is not only technical. The capability of employing it successfully is dependent upon a third component – the mental ability to connect to the divine intellect, which may be described as religious intuition, as we discussed above. The following passages in this work make it clear that Nachmanides differentiated between physiognomy and chiromancy, which allow for prognostication, and the ability to identify sinful acts through internal knowledge. The latter one is of a higher gradation and only exceptional wise people, such as King Solomon, may attain it.

The Zohar With this background in mind, we may return our attention to these mantic arts as expressed in zoharic literature. The bulk of this topic is to be found in Zohar 2:70a–78a. The first section of this unit ends on Zohar 2:72b and is adjacent to a partial parallel text termed Raza de-Razin, which depicts physiognomy (ḥohkmat ha-parṣuf). This literary unit is comprised of the following five sections: 1. A beginning that has three different discussions concerning the verse, “This is the book of the generations of Adam” (Gen. 5:1); with the final discussion leading to an exploration of physiognomy and chiromancy. 2. An extensive discussion concerning physiognomy (from the end of 2:70b until 2:75b). In this section we find a depiction of different signs and features of a person’s face and what they mean concerning their character and manner. The discussions concern a person’s hair, forehead, eyes, eyebrows, the overall shape of one’s face and the letters found within them, lips, and ears. Following are three prototypical examples: “By hair. One whose hair is curly – rising above his head – is of an angry disposition, his heart constricted in frames. His actions are improper; in partnership, stay away from him” (2:70b; 393). “Yellowish-green eyes – madness lies in him, and due to madness he is a mouth speaking boastfully, acting like one who is arrogant. Whoever attacks him, defeats him. He is unworthy of mysteries of Torah, since concerning those mysteries his heart is not calm, for he aggrandizes himself with them” (2:73a; 398–399). “Large lips – this is a person who speaks gossip shamelessly and fearlessly. A master of dissension, transmitting slander between one and another, unleashing strife among brothers” (Prov. 6:19). He is no master of secrets, though when engaging in Torah he conceals secrets; but he is a master of the evil tongue, with no reverence in his heart” (2:75b; 406). 3. An introduction to chiromancy (2:75b–76a). 4. A detailed discussion of chiromancy; both the hand in general and palm lines. In contrast to the discussion of physiognomy, prognostication is evident in this dis-



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cussion, alongside predictions concerning a person’s disposition. This discussion of chiromancy clearly parallels medieval Latin texts concerning this practice. 5. A conclusion that primarily expounds upon the verse, “As for you, you shall behold” (Ex. 18:21). In the following pages, we will explore a few exemplary passages that are situated from the third to fifth section. Due to their length, I will not bring the texts in their entirety. Let us begin with a foundational text concerning the composition of the human being and their correlation with the cosmos: When the human was created, what is written? “You clothed me in skin and flesh” (Job 10:11). What then is the human if not skin and flesh, and bones and sinews? But surely, the human being is nothing but soul! […] Skin, covering all, corresponds to those heavens covering all. All of them, garments clothing the innermost within, mystery of human. All a mystery, below corresponding above […] In the heaven covering all, impressions were made, thereby showing and revealing […] concealed matters and secrets […] Similarly, skin – external covering of a person – is a heaven covering all, containing impressions and traces. Those are stars and constellations of this skin, a covering heaven, through which concealed matters and secrets are shown and revealed […] Lines of hands and lines of fingers, inside, all inhere in other mysteries, revealing concealed matters. These are stars shining, to gaze into constellations in supernal aspects […] Gazing at the face, in the mysteries we have mentioned, when it shines, free of anger. This is the mystery of “the astrologers, the stargazers”. (Isa. 47:13) (Zohar 2:75b–76a, eds. Matt et al., 409–410)

A central presumption of the Zohar, as well as other kabbalistic literature, is that the essence of the human being is their internal spiritual aspect. The outermost epidermal layer of a person is inscribed by the spiritual essence. This inscription may be read by those who are of understanding, just as the stars may be read by those possessing astrological wisdom. Furthermore, we witness here a correlation between these two mantic arts – chiromancy and astrology. The outer layer of the human body is conceived as analogous to the heavens; the outer layer covering the cosmos and the divine. Just as the essence of the human being is the spiritual, so too the essence of the universe is the divine. However, it is important to note that this very same correlation calls for a drastically different understanding of cosmic effects on the individual; rather than the individual being affected by the zodiac forces, the constellations and their paths are understood as reflecting the divine plan. Moreover, the lines found on a person’s hands and fingers are understood as reflecting their internal spiritual character. This section continues with a detailed discussion of handprints and fingerprints. The Zohar states: Lines of hands and lines of fingers, inside, all inhere in other mysteries, revealing concealed matters. These are stars shining, to gaze into constellations in supernal aspects […]. Fingers stand in supernal mysteries […]. In fingernails sometimes fine white stars shine […]. Those not sunken are insubstantial, but these that are sunken and white, like lentil seeds, are substantial –

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a good omen for a person and he will succeed at that time, or a decree has been issued against him, from which he will be saved. (Zohar 2:76b; eds. Matt et al., 411)

Conjurers see upon fingernails signs of external forces that control human beings. This activity is seen as impure and as originating from an unholy place. The alternative contemplation that the Zohar suggests is seemingly based on a similar process – the identification of cosmic forms upon a person’s fingernails. However, a subtle difference may be found between these practices. The Zohar states that there is a difference between those that are not sunken and those that are sunken; the former are insubstantial, whereas the latter are substantial. While the conjurer searches for external signs that control a person’s destiny, the kabbalist searches for a real sign that is sunken within the body, for only this type of embodied sign is able to convey the internal forces within a person. In other words, the conjurer finds external and alien forces; the kabbalists finds signs that point toward the internal divine forces that are active within a person. While the conjurer is a stargazer; the kabbalist is a “geologist of the soul”: Then a young man who was president of my Hillel group raised his hand and sharply asked, “What is a rebbe good for?” I drew in my breath for a moment, but instead of being insulted, Rabbi Schneerson gently replied, ‘This is a very good question. Let me tell you. It is written in the Torah, ‘You shall be unto me a land of desire.’ Within the earth are all kinds of treasures, but you have to know where to dig to find them. If you don’t, you’ll hit either rock or mud. But if you ask the geologist of the soul where to dig, you might find silver – which is the love of God; gold – which is the fear of God; or diamonds – which is faith. All a rebbe can do is to show you where to dig. You must do the digging yourself. (Schachter-Shalomi 2012, 105)

While for the modern “disenchanted” onlooker it is difficult to view physiognomy or chiromancy as valid tools and, therefore this person is inclined to place them within the realm of magic. Yet, the Zohar does not validate this designation. As it appears within the Zohar, these techniques do not discuss external forces that influence a person by supernatural means or means by which a person may influence their surroundings. The basic presupposition of the Zohar concerning these mantic wisdoms is that they allow for a person to change themselves, if they so choose, however, these techniques are not able to change a person through supernatural methods. Another aspect of the zoharic conception of chiromancy is clearly demonstrated in the following passage: If there are three lines lengthwise and one widthwise, this is in the mystery of the letter he by itself, and sometimes joined with the letter zayin. This one is a person craving worldly gains – and if not, chasing after women, his lust for adultery. Although he lusts after worldly gains, this does not leave him and he feels no shame. His eyes are sunken, and he speaks with them. If he returns to his Lord, lines change: three widthwise and one lengthwise – those two, thin, abiding enduringly. Then his desire is greater for his wife and he clings to her. One very thin line enters between those two thin ones. Then the letter he joins with the letter zayin. (Zohar 77b–78a; eds. Matt et al., 418)



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The personality described here is of a man who is almost solely focused on sexual feats. His sexual desire is so strong that he is never satiated and repeatedly chases after women. Yet, if he takes upon himself the yoke of the commandments and “returns to his Lord,” then a rectification may occur. Through his return, he will cleave to his wife and his desire for her will be greater than his desire for other women. This change is so essential that it alters the very lines on his palm. According to the zoharic conception of chiromancy, it is the person who undergoes a critical change, and thereafter this internal change is reflected within the epidermal layer of the hand. Chiromancy in this case is practiced in order to rectify the path on which a person is found; diverging from a path of sin and lust onto a new “thin line” of monogamous faithfulness and religious piety. Due to the Zohar’s compositive nature, we must ask why the compilers placed this analysis in Parashat Yitro. This question may be answered by the verse, “As for you, you shall behold (teḥezeh), from all the people men of caliber, revering God, men of truth, hating bribery” (Ex. 18:21). The Zohar explains, “This verse has been established; but it is not written, “you shall choose (tivḥar), rather you shall behold (teḥezeh) – by vision (ḥizu) of the eyes. How? By human features” (Zohar 2:78a; 419). In Parashat Yitro, Moses is commanded to appoint judges for the people of Israel, however as the Zohar emphasizes the turn of phrase found in the Bible is somewhat peculiar. Yet in an about-face the Zohar does not conclude that Moses used these techniques, but rather it states that, “Moses chose men of caliber from all Israel (Ex. 18:25) – because Holy Spirit came to him, through whom he saw all. How do we know? As is written: ‘When they have some matter, he comes to me’ (Ex. 18:16). It is not written they come to me, but rather he comes – Holy Spirit who came to him, through whom he knew, so he did not need all this examining and inspecting; rather, Moses knew instantly” (Zohar 2:78a; 420). Furthermore, the Zohar identifies this inspired activity with King Solomon and the future King Messiah. While physiognomy and chiromancy are powerful and legitimate techniques, knowledge through the holy spirit is still higher. It should also be noted that this distinction concerning King Solomon was incorporated from the previously discussed Nachmanidean tract. In conclusion, the Zohar, in contrast to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Merkavah mystics, is not interested in discerning one’s worthiness, but rather in healing one’s soul, through the identification of the blemish.

Tiqqunei Zohar In Tiqqunei Zohar we find another exposition of these mantic techniques. In tiqqun 70 we find a consolidation of human physiognomy and the divine stature (shi’ur qomah). It states:

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He began to expound and said, “This (zeh) is the book of the generations of Adam” (Gen. 5:1), verily zeh, comprising the twelve signs of the supernal Adam concerning which it is said, “The tribes of Yah, a testimony to Israel” (Ps. 122:4). Verily zeh, this refers to the four lion-faces, four ox-faces, and four eagle-faces, through which human countenances [parṣufin di-venei nasha] are known, and all of these faces are inscribed with four letters, which are YHVH. What is adam? Yod he vav he, and concerning him it is said, “as the splendor of Adam, to dwell in the house” [ke-tif’eret adam lashevet bayit] (Isa. 44:13). To what does his “house” refer? Shekhinah who is called “image of Adam” [demut adam], for all the images and countenances of human beings [dimyonin u-parṣufin di-venei nasha], and all the forms of the upper and lower beings, are known through her. In relation to her, it is said, “And imaged through the prophets” [u-ve-yad hanevi’im adammeh] (Hos. 12:11) (trans. Wolfson 2005, 384). He began to expound and said, “As for you, you shall behold (teḥezeh), you shall behold, from all the people men of caliber, fearing God, men of truth, hating bribery” (Ex. 18:21). Men of caliber – from the side of ḥesed, for there is yod, and because of it is stated, “One who wishes to become wise should face south” (b. Bava batra 25b). Fearing God – from the side of gevurah, for there is he, and there it is stated, “And one [who wishes to become] wealthy should face north” (b. Bava batra 25b). Men of truth – from the central pillar, for there is vav, and there is truth. Hating bribery – from the side of malkhut, for there is he. Here are four rectifications, for they are human countenances [parṣufin di-venei nasha], these are mirror[s]. (Tiqqun 70; 121a–b)

This passage has a plurality of elements that may be unpacked, however, for our purposes it is important to note the consolidation of a variety of factors. We find in this passage an exposition of the verse, “This is the book of the generations of Adam” (Gen. 5:1), the chariot from the Ezekiel vision, the tetragrammaton, the sefirot, and the verse, “As for you, you shall behold (teḥezeh), from all the people men of caliber, fearing God, men of truth, hating bribery,” which we discussed above. This sophisticated compilation of a number of aspects forms a more complex understanding of the relation between “the upper and lower beings,” along the lines of physiognomy. The doctrine of countenances (torat ha-parṣufim), popularized primarily by Isaac Luria, which conceived of the Godhead as an emanation of countenances, rather than sefirot, is understood as simultaneously being concerned with the Shekhinah and the countenance of human beings. Although the Zohar engages with physiognomy and chiromancy in a similar fashion as other circles, both Jewish and non-Jewish, both ancient and contemporaneous, there is a striking difference – the Zohar conceives of these practices in a therapeutic manner, such as is found in modern medicine. The Zohar is interested in the rectification of the human being and the healing of their soul through ancient knowledge in its possession. This knowledge is not meant solely for the purpose of admitting or rejecting people into esoteric circles; rather it is designed for the healing and rectification of the human subject. This mantic practice reached its apex with the figure of Isaac Luria in the sixteenth century. R. Ḥayyim Vital, Luria’s foremost disciple, in the first two sermons of Sha’ar Ru’aḥ ha-Qodesh (“Gate of the Holy Spirit”), which discusses metoposcopy (ḥokhmat



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hakarat ha-parṣuf), focuses specifically on Luria’s metaposcopic capabilities, through which he saw letters upon the foreheads of his visitors and “patients.” Furthermore, we find in Sefer Toldot ha-AR”I (“The Life of R. Isaac Luria”) many stories concerning Luria’s practice of metoposcopy (Fine 1986; Fine 2003, 150–186). Interest in physiognomy and chiromancy as means for prognostication should be viewed as part of a trend of medieval Jewish thinkers who wished to clarify the rational and scientific mechanism of biblical prophecy. This important trend could be found within the writings of Judah Halevi, Maimonides, and Nachmanides, and it comes to light within the zoharic discussion of physiognomy and chiromancy. The Zohar’s central claim concerning the connection between the physical structure of the human being and the structure of their soul, helps to deal with the question of what the essence of prophecy is. Just as the purpose of prophecy in the Bible is rectification, so too the purpose of physiognomy and chiromancy is the rectification and healing of the human being. To this extent, it may be argued that the Zohar demystifies prophecy, rather than creating a more mythical and mystical conception of it.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Zohar. Zohar: Pritzker Edition. 12 vols. Eds. Daniel C. Matt, Joel Hecker, and Nathan Wolski. Stanford, CA, 2003–2017.

Secondary Literature Alexander, Philip S. “Incantations and Books of Magic.” The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, vol. 3.1. Ed. Emil Schürer. Edinburgh, 1986. 342–379. Alexander, Philip S. “Physiognomy, Initiation, and Rank in the Qumran Community.” Geschichte– Tradition–Reflexion: Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag, vol. 1. Eds. Hubert Cancik, Martin Hengel, and Hermann Lichtenberger. Tübingen, 1996. 385–394. Bar-Asher, Avishai. “The Soul Bird: Ornithomancy and Theory of the Soul in the Homilies of Zohar Pericope Balak.” The Zoharic Story. Eds. Yehuda Liebes, Jonathan M. Benarroch, and Melila Hellner-Eshed. Jerusalem, 2017. 354–392 [Hebrew]. Bohak, Gideon. “Manuals of Mantic Wisdom: From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Cairo Genizah.” Tracing Sapiential Traditions in Ancient Judaism. Eds. Hindy Najman, Jean-Sébastien Rey, and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar. Leiden and Boston, 2016. 191–216. Eisenstein, Judah D. (ed.). Ozar Midrashim: A Library of Two Hundred Minor Midrashim. New York, 1915 [Hebrew]. Gruenwald, Ithamar. Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism. Second Edition. Leiden, 2014. Hellner-Eshed, Melila. A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar. Stanford, CA, 2009.

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Idel, Moshe. “Panim: On Facial Re-Presentation in Jewish Thought: Some Correlations Instances.” On Interpretation in the Arts: Interdisciplinary Studies in Honor of Moshe Lazar. Ed. Nurit Yaari. Tel-Aviv, 2000. 21–56. Leicht, Reimund, and Joseph Yahalom. “Sefer Zeh Sefer Toledot Adam: An Unknown Esoteric Midrash on Genesis 5:1 from the Geonic Period.” Ginzei Qedem 4 (2008): 9–82. Lewin, Benjamin M. (ed.). Otzar ha-Geonim: Thesaurus of the Gaonic Responsa and Commentaries, Following the Order of the Talmudic Tractates, vol. 4. Jerusalem, 1931 [Hebrew]. Liebes, Yehuda. “How the Zohar was Written.” Studies in the Zohar. Trans. Arnold Schwartz. New York, 1993. Liebes, Yehuda. “Facial Recognition in the Kabbalah.” Pe’amim 104 (2005): 21–40 [Hebrew]. Margolin, Ron. “Physiognomy and Chiromancy: From Prediction and Diagnosis to Healing and Human Correction (Zohar 2, 70a–78a; Tiqqunei Zohar, Tiqqun 70).” Te’udah 21/22 (2007): 199–249 [Hebrew]. Popović, Mladen. Reading the Human Body: Physiognomics and Astrology in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic-Early Roman Period Judaism. Leiden and Boston, 2007. Popović, Mladen. “4Q186. 4QZodiacal Physiognomy: A Full Edition.” The Mermaid and the Partridge: Essays from the Copenhagen Conference on Revising Texts from Cave Four. Eds. George J. Brooke and Jesper Høgenhaven. Leiden, 2011. 221–258. Schachter-Shalomi, Zalman. My Life in Jewish Renewal: A Memoir. Lanham, MD, 2012. Scholem, Gershom. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York, 1946.  Scholem, Gershom. “Hakarat Panim ve-Sidrei Sirṭuṭin.” Sefer Assaf: Festschrift in Honor of Simcha Assaf. Eds. Moshe David Cassuto, Joseph Clausner, and Joshua Guttman. Jerusalem, 1953. 459–495 [Hebrew]. Scholem, Gershom. “Ein Fragment zur Physiognomik und Chiromantik aus der Tradition der spätantiken jüdischen Esoterik.” Liber Amicorum Studies in Honour of Professor Dr. C.J. Bleeker. Leiden, 1969. 175–193. Trachtenberg, Joshua. Jewish Magic and Superstition. New York, 1939. Wolfson, Elliot R. “Remembering the Covenant: Memory, Forgetfulness, and the Construction of History in the Zohar.” Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi. Eds. Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron, and David N. Myers. Waltham, 1998. 214–249. Wolfson, Elliot R. Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination. New York, 2005. Wolfson, Elliot R. Luminal Darkness: Imaginal Gleanings from Zoharic Literature. Oxford, 2007.

Carolina Cupane

Prognostics in Medieval Byzantine Fictional Literature Late Antiquity, the period of transition between the pagan Hellenistic period and the Christian Middle Ages, (third to fourth century) was correctly – though not without pathos – termed “an age of anxiety” (Dodds 1995). Not by accident, this epoch was characterized by contradictory intellectual currents and social insecurity, which led to an immense diffusion of all of the artes (“arts”), which since almost time immemorial have promised to illuminate the unknown future for people of all classes, when faced with uncertainty. The fact that both the victorious Christianity as well as the imperial power that claimed the sovereignty of interpretation over the present and future for themselves and, albeit for contrary reasons and through different means, wished to drive out every way of fortune-telling, could not harm the popularity of such practices. An eloquent witness to this is the juridical, philosophical, historical and apologetic literature of that period (Fögen 1993), but also the fictional literature, which had always been legitimized to create its own realities, was not unaffected by the general zeitgeist. Quite the contrary. Nothing embodies the uncertainty of that time better than the hero of the love and adventure novel, a literary creation of late Hellenism/early imperial times that, after moderate, in a sense sub-literary beginnings, developed during that period considerable refinement in style and narrative technique (Hägg 1971 and Fusillo 2016, 26–32). Exposed to the arbitrariness of a moody Tyche (Fortuna) and of the relentless fate (Moira) and wrested from the feeling of security in their homeland, the heroes of the novel wander throughout the Mediterranean world toward an uncertain future. However, they are not completely left alone, for their straying is guided by the gods who, by expressing prophecies and above all by showing dreams, provide insights into both the near and distant future and offer solace to them repeatedly. To use ­Kleitophon’s words, the protagonist in the novel of Achilleus Tatios (second century): “Often the Daimonion tends to tell people the future at nighttime, not with the aim of preventing them from suffering – for they do not have the ability to rule over fate – but so that they might bear their sufferings more easily” (Achilleus Tatios, Leucippe and Clitophon, ed. Vilborg, I 3.2). Accordingly, the author often allows his heroes of the night to dream. However, the non-expert heroes do not know how to interpret the – always encoded – message of the gods contained in the dream (Achilleus Tatios, Leucippe and Clitophon, ed. Vilborg, I 3.4: Kleitophon’s dream; II 11.1: the dream of Leukippe’s mother; II 23.5: the dream of Kleitophon’s father). Unknowingly, the protagonists, Leukippe and Kleitophon, wander through a world filled with signs, mostly pieces of art with mythological content (Achilleus Tatios, Leucippe and Clitophon, ed. Vilborg, III 7.2–5: Perseus and Andromeda, V 3.6: Philomela and Prokne), that all cryphttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-076

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tically point to the immediate future, but do not perceive them as a warning (Bartsch 1989). The divine message is inaccessible to common people and needs an expert interpreter. The difference between professional competence and inexperience is staged strikingly in the novel Aithiopika by the Syrian Heliodoros (third/fourth century). While, for instance, the heroine, Chariklea, misinterprets a dream (Heliodoros, Aithiopika II 16, 1–6: the loss of the right eye is misunderstood as an announcement of the death of her beloved Theagenes), the Isis priest and protector of the lovers, Kalasiris, is a competent dream reader. Unlike normal mortals, he only experiences theorematic dreams of i.  e. epiphanies of gods that announce the future unencrypted (e.  g. Heliodoros, Aithiopika  III 11. 4–5: Artemis and Apollo’s appearance or V 22,1–4: Odysseus’ appearance; cf. Bartsch 1989, 80–104). Not only does Calasiris know how to interpret others’ dreams correctly, he is even authorized to manipulate them (e.  g. Heliodoros, Aithiopika IV 14.2: he intentionally misinterprets the dream of Charikles, Charikleia’s adoptive father, to help her to escape and thus fulfill the task entrusted to him by the gods). Besides manticism/divination, Kalasiris is also skilled in the art of astronomy and is therefore able to predict his fate based on the position of the stars (Heliodoros, Aithiopika II 24.39–43). It is therefore consecutive and logical that the Delphic Pythia twice gives him her obscure prophecies in public, which he alone is able to decipher with the help of Apollo (respectively II 26,5 and II 35.5) (Lentakis 1993, 190–196). Finally, it suits the image of a priest and prophet that Kalasiris knows how to distinguish between permitted and forbidden forms of prophecy. Necromancy, for example, which is performed and described in detail by an ancient Egyptian woman (Heliodoros, Aithiopika VI 14.12–XV 35), is firmly rejected by Kalasiris. He does not deny neither the effectiveness of the questioning of the deads, nor the veracity of their prophecies, but he refuses to make use of them because “it is not proper for a priest either to take part or even to be present at such rites; for the prophetic powers of a priest proceed from legitimate sacrifice and pure prayers, whereas those of the profane are obtained literally by crawling up the ground and skulking among corpses” (Heliodoros, Aithiopika VI 14. 52–58; cf. Baumbach 2008). Not only does Heliodor differentiate here between permitted and condemnable methods for investigating the future, he also wishes their correct handling to be limited to a small number of experts. He does not put the legitimacy of divination itself into question. His attitude, in the fictional world of the novel, reproduces the contemporary demand for a continuation of divination, yet along (state-)regulated rails (Fögen 1993, 133–135, 139 and 254–256). Such a concept failed, as is well known, because of the relentless condemnation of all divinatory practices on the part of victorious Christianity, but could not expel curiositas about the future, despite the imperial and ecclesiastical prohibitions (Fögen 1993, 385–521), neither from reality nor from fictional literature.



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The previous detour via late antiquity was essential because the novels by Achilleus Tatios and Heliodor enjoyed long-lasting success in the Byzantine epoch. Both, from the ninth century at the latest, rose to become celebrated templates of compositional style before becoming, in the twelfth century, the model for the love and adventure novel (Agapitos 1998), revitalized in the course of the Classicist Renaissance of that time, which made mythology and fictional narration socially acceptable and suitable for high-quality literature. Four works are preserved, albeit of one only fragments are extant. They were all written by well-known writers who worked at or around the Imperial Court of the Komnenoi Dynasty and enjoyed the (financial) support of the nobility (Jeffreys 2012). The learned authors changed, except for one, formally from prose to bound form but, apart from that, continued to follow the ancient models with regard to content. The plot and setting stayed the same: heroes continue to move in a dimly-drawn ancient world; the Olympic gods, together with their temples and rites, still determine the wandering of lovers; oracles and dreams elucidate the future and contribute essentially to the obligatory happy ending. However, the re-use of well-known motifs, goes hand in hand with an overwhelming delight in variation and ironic relativization, as a careful reading allows to detect. Along with the skillful inversion of motifs, the shift in accent from the narrative element to the rhetorical is particularly striking. The action was subjected to a drastic reduction process, with rhetorical parade-pieces  – monologues, lamentation speeches, songs, letters and descriptions now dominate the field. In the course of such narrative shrinkage, the role of the future and the questioning of it are also greatly reduced and/or relativized. Hysminias, the hero of the novel of Eumathios Makrembolites, which imitates Achilleus Tatios, is, at first glance, particularly eager to dream, but his dreams, as is aptly noted (Eumathios Makrembolites, De Hysmines, ed. Marcovich, V 5.4), are highly concrete dreams, triggered by what has happened to him in the daytime, and reflecting his sexual awakening. Although Eros appears to him in a dream (Eumathios Makrembolites, De Hysmines, ed. Marcovich, III 1, 1–6; VI 18, 1–4) and causes him subsequently to change from a soul ignorant of love into a passionate lover, he does not reveal anything about either the upcoming adventures nor the future wedding (Mac Allister 1996, 135–140). Following his template Heliodor, Theodore Prodromos allows the parents of the lost lovers to question the Delphic Pythia, who gives them cryptic instructions in written form (Theodore Prodromos, Rhodanthe et Dosicles, ed. Marcovich, IX 193–224). But now there is nobody capable of explaining the encoded message of the deity, what is turned into a grammatical problem. Professional competence and/or special wisdom are no longer required, as a knowledge of grammar and punctuation are sufficient to grasp the meaning of the oracle’s sentence. A full stop, set in the right place, removes any doubt about the well-being of the beloved offspring. The ironic distance sought by Prodromos extinguishes with elegant ease every trace of the numinous that had soaked the template. Whether one should see in this a defensive strategy of a writer working with a dangerous qua pagan subject matter (according to MacAlister

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1996, 156–164) remains to be seen. It is fairly certain, however, that neither Prodromos nor the other novel writers believed in the existence of the Olympic gods, although they did not question their literary right to exist. The orthodox scholar-conscience had long since learned to cohabit with myth and its traditional tools, since it was an essential component of the highly-esteemed classical education. All in all, however, the contribution of the Komninian novel to our topic remains relatively marginal. The outlined picture remains weak and is limited to elegant, ironically-colored variations of the ancient templates. Certainly, he cannot capture the extremely multi-coloured diversity of divinatory practices documented in the contemporary historical sources (Magdalino 2006a, 2006b; Greenfield 1993 and ↗ Grünbart, Mantic Arts Eastern Christian World). In order to discover new aspects of the topic, we should turn to the later fictional literature written in the vernacular. By using the vernacular and through the inevitable, historically conditioned contact with foreign cultures, especially the Western ones, the fictional literature of late Byzantium managed to flourish and to develop to its full potential. Since the relevant texts have always been passed on anonymously, it is usually impossible to locate and classify them chronologically. Several of them do not belong to Byzantine literature in a narrow sense but, rather, are creative adaptations of French or Italian models, which probably originated in regions long ago dominated by Frankish or Venetian rulers, such as Crete or Cyprus (Yiavis 2016). Therefore only those works shall be considered which were probably composed in Constantinople during the early Palaiologic period (end of the thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth century), since they alone are to be understood as key witnesses to Byzantine thinking and acting related to questioning the future. The two novels, Libistros and Rodamne and Belthandros and Chrysantza, were most likely written in the courtly milieu of Constantinople between the end of the thirteenth and the mid-fourteenth century. They can rightly be regarded as “border crossers” between East and West, present in both twelfth century scholar fiction as well as folklore (Cupane 2016). In both, the issue of fate and its prediction, with varying intensity, is an important semantic knot. The author of Belthandros and Chrysantza breaks with tradition by entirely omitting the motif of the prophetic dream. In King Eros’ palace, the future is displayed in front of the hero via/through of statues and reliefs. In contrast to Achilleus Tatios, however, where the artworks were mute, here the enclosed inscriptions clearly announce the future love story, and the wedding of the protagonists, welcomed by both the god of love and Tyche (Belthandros and Chrysantza, ed. Cupane, 355–363; 384–388 and 421–425). Although initially reluctant, the hero sets out to fulfill his destiny (moirografēma), he knows well that “it is completely impossible for man to escape his destiny weaved by Tyche” (Belthandros and Chrysantza, ed. Cupane, 738–739). In the choice of motifs, the anonymous author followed the older Libistros and Rodamne, whose complicated and refined plot, however, he simplified considera-



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bly. In Libistros, the process of discovering the future represents a primary structural element of the narration, which is thus subdivided into two parts. In the first part, the revelation of future events takes place within the general context of a vision, but this has no prophetic dimension, instead being triggered by the experiences of the day. In a dream, the hero, who up to that point had been ignorant in love matters, enters the realm of Eros, which had been modelled on the basis of the Byzantine Court, submits to his power and learns of his fate as a lover. This instruction is transmitted within an official framework and forms, so to speak, the final act of the submission ritual. It is given by a “specialist” acting on behalf of the ruler. Following the oath of allegiance before the image of Eros, a fortune-teller and connoisseur of the future (o mantis o prognostēs: Libistros and Rodamne, ed. Agapitos, α 625. 921) proclaims, in almost a priestly function, the vicissitudes that the future holds in store for the hero (Libistros and Rodamne, ed. Agapitos, α 557–626). As a negative “pendant” to the fortune-teller acting in the imaginary realm of Eros, in the second part of the novel, we find an old witch who plays an even more important role in the narration, since she causes the heroine’s abduction and recovery. She also belongs to the court staff. At the court of the Egyptian king and unhappy suitor of Rodamne, she is entrusted as an astrologer with the important task of identifying the favorable and unfavorable days (Libistros and Rodamne, ed. Agapitos, α 2937–2939), an activity frequently practiced – also realiter – at the Byzantine court (Magdalino 2006b, 136–139 and 147). In other respects, too, the “professional profile”, personality and education of the witch correspond to the Byzantine reality. Of oriental origin, she belongs to the middle class and had acquired a solid knowledge of astronomy, divination, as well as demonology, when young. Moreover, she is even proficient in the language of demons as well as in the art of evoking and forcing them to submit to her will (Libistros and Rodamne, ed. Agapitos, α 2920–2930; Cupane 2014, 493–495). It is precisely this last skill that enables her to kidnap the princess and give her to the Egyptian king, just as the summoned demons will reveal reliable information about the “whereabouts” of the kidnapped princess (Libistros and Rodamne, ed. Agapitos, α 3073–3086). Although these extensively described magical actions (Libistros and Rodamne, ed. Agapitos, α 2988–3020) may belong to the category of fairy tales, where horses fly and magical rings bring death or life according to what is needed, the practice of demon summoning is also documented in older and contemporary historical sources (Magdalino 2006b, 148–154, cf. Greenfield 1993). The author of Libistros condemns the incantation of ghosts in the same way in which Heliodor condemns Necromancy – in the strongest terms. Those practicing it – remarkably, in both cases, ancient women from Egypt – therefore encounter a just death. Divination, however, is not condemned by either of them, especially when it is practiced by consecrated/initiated persons in the service of a just power.

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Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Achilles Tatius. Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon, 2 vols. Ed. Ebbe Vilborg. Gothenburg, 1956/1962. Belth. “Belthandros und Chrysantza.” Romanzi cavallereschi bizantini. Ed. Carolina Cupane. Turin, 1994. 228–305. Eumathios Makrembolites. Eustathius Macrembolites De Hysmines et Hysminiae amoribus libri XI. Ed. Miroslav Marcovich. Munich and Leipzig, 2001. Heliodor. Héliodore, Les Étiopiques, 3 vols. Eds. Robert M. Rattenbury and Thomas W. Lumb. Paris, 1960 [1936]. Afēgēsis Libistrou kai Rodamnēs. Diaskeuē α. Ed. Panagiotis A. Agapitos (Byzantinē kai Neoellēnikē Bibliothēkē 9). Athens, 2006. Theodorus Prodromus. Theodorus Prodromus Rhodanthe et Dosicles. Ed. Miroslav Marcovich. Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1991.

Secondary Literature Agapitos, Panagiotis. “Narrative, Rhetoric and ʻDramaʾ Rediscovered: Scholars and Poets in Byzantium Interpret Heliodorus.” Studies in Heliodorus. Ed. Richard Hunter. Cambridge, 1998. 125–156. Bartsch, Shadi. Decoding the Ancient Novel. The Reader and the Role of Description in Heliodorus and Achilleus Tatius. Princeton, 1989. Baumbach, Manuel. An Egyptian Priest at Delphi: Calasisis as theios aner in Heliodorus' Aethiopica. Eds. Beate Dignas and Kai Trampedach. Cambridge, MA, 2008. 167–183. Cupane, Carolina. “Akouse ti me efanē. Sogni e visioni nella narrativa greca medievale.” Medioevo Romanzo e Orientale. Temi e motivi epico-cavallereschi fra Oriente e Occidente. Eds. Gaetano Lalomia and Antonio Pioletti. Soveria Mannelli, 2010. 91–114. Cupane, Carolina. “Désirs interdits. Témoignages de magie malveillante dans la littérature byzantine.” Les savoirs magiques et leur transmission de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance (Micrologus Library 60). Eds. Véronique Dasen and Jean Michel Spieser. Florence, 2014. 477–496. Cupane, Carolina. “In the Realm of Eros: The Late Byzantine Vernacular Romance: Original Texts.” Fictional Storytelling in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond. Eds. Carolina Cupane and Bettina Krönung. Leiden and Boston, 2016. 95–126. Dodds, Eric Robertson. Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety. Cambridge, 1965. Fögen, Marie Theres. Die Enteignung der Wahrsager. Studien zum kaiserlichen Wissensmonopol in der Spätantike. Frankfurt am Main, 1993. Fusillo, Massimo. “Mapping the Roots: The Novel in Antiquity.” Fictional Storytelling in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond. Eds. Carolina Cupane and Bettina Krönung. Leiden and Boston, 2016. 21–38. Greenfield, Richard. “A Contribution to the Study of Palaeologan Magic.” Byzantine Magic. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Ed. Henry Maguire. Washington, D.C., 1991. 117–153.



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Greenfield, Richard. “Sorcery and Politics at the Byzantine Court in the Twelfth Century: Interpretations of History.” The Making of Byzantine History. Studies Dedicated to D. M. Nicol. Eds. Roderick Beaton and Charlotte Roueché. London, 1993. 73–85. Hägg, Tomas. Narrative Technique in Ancient Greek Romances: Studies of Chariton, Xenophon Ephesius, and Achilles Tatius. Stockholm, 1971. Jeffreys, Elizabeth. Four Byzantine Novels. Theodore Prodromos, Rhodanthe and Dosikles – Eumathios Makrembolites, Hysmine and Hysminias – Constantine Manasses, Aristandros and Kallithea – Niketas Eugenianos, Drosilla and Charikles. Translated with Introductions and Notes (Translated Texts for Byzantinists Volume 1). Liverpool, 2012. Lentakis, Vasilis. “Oi aggeloforoi tōn theōn.” Opsis enypniou. Ē chrēsē tōn oneirōn stēn ellēnikēn kai rōmaikēn archaiotēta. Ed. Dimitris I. Kyrtatas. Herakleion, 1993. 179–207. MacAlister, Suzanne. Dreams and Suicides: The Greek Novel from Antiquity to the Byzantine Empire. London, 1996. Magdalino 2006a: Magdalino, Paul. L’orthodoxie des astrologues. La science entre le dogme et la divination à Byzance (VIIe –XIVe siècles). Paris, 2006. Magdalino 2006b: Magdalino, Paul. “Occult Science and Imperial Power in Byzantine History and Historiography (Ninth–Twelfth Centuries).” The Occult Sciences in Byzantium. Eds. Paul Magdalino and Maria Mavroudi. Geneva, 2006. 119–162. Yiavis, Kostas. “The Adaptations of Western Sources by Byzantine Vernacular Romances.” Fictional Storytelling in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond. Eds. Carolina Cupane and Bettina Krönung. Leiden and Boston, 2016. 127–155.

Hans-Christian Lehner

Prognostication in Latin Commentaries on the Book of Revelation The Book of Revelation was approved by the Western church long before the Eastern churches made up their minds to accept it as canonical. The Vulgate Apocalypse is a literary masterpiece and must have convinced contemporaries of its divine origin. From an early stage, Christians struggled to decipher this obscure text, and the chiliastic hope for an earthly kingdom described in Rev. 20:1–6 drew particular attraction but, at times when Christians needed the benevolence of the Roman Empire, this anti-imperial position was dangerous. Therefore, literal understandings of the Book of Revelation were rejected from an early point onward. (The delay in the expected return of Christ did the rest.) Still, the final book of the Bible and its imaginative symbolism have continuously been interpreted, mostly in the form of commentaries. The earliest complete commentary on the Apocalypse, which has come down to us, was written in Latin by Victorinus, bishop of Poetovio in Upper Pannonia (d. 303). Victorinus often allegorizes, but refers to pictorial descriptions on historical events and persons (such as Nero). He establishes the idea that the Book of Revelation is structured in a recapitulative manner. This view was adopted by subsequent commentaries in Late Antiquity, amongst which that written by Tyconius (d. before 400) became particularly influential. He discarded a historical interpretation, instead understanding the words of John as an encrypted revelation on the Church and its inner and outer opponents. According to the idea of recapitulation, the same events are portrayed in each part (vision) of the Book of Revelation. This understanding of the Apocalypse was promoted by the most authoritative Church Fathers Jerome (d. 420) and Augustine (d. 430) and remained dominant among medieval interpretations for centuries. Thereby, prognostications were generally avoided but, since the last days could start at any time, constant vigilance was demanded and an exegesis on the Book of Revelation remained necessary. The rejection of literalism ensured that the unfolding of history was seen in terms of ahistorical themes. In his Explanatio Apocalypseos, Bede the Venerable (d.  735) quotes Tyconius explicitly. Bede’s most important innovation was the division of the text in seven separate parts, a novelty which was used by the majority of subsequent commentators. In line with Tyconius and Augustine, Bede strictly avoids any literal interpretation. No individual invasion, persecution or a pseudo-prophet was enough, per se, to fulfil what had been written. People could only see clearly at the ultimate end, with the worst of all terrors and the reign of the Antichrist. This may have served as a strategy for postponing the End indefinitely because it was possible for history to proceed without a sense of moral closure, but this also served to maintain anxiety through uncertainty. Bede is a good example here: elsewhere he admits that “I am asked so https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-077



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often by peasants how many years remain in the final millennium of the world” (Beda Venerabilis, Epistola ad Pleguinam, ed. Jones, 624). The Expositio in Apocalypsin by Ambrosius Autpertus (d. 784) was also profoundly affected by Tyconius. Like the commentary of Bede, it exerted a great influence on later commentators. According to Klaus Berger (Berger 2018, 32–33), the most characteristic trait of Autpertus’ commentary is its emphasis on the present. For Autpertus, the Book of Revelation describes the history of the Church and can be interpreted as a representation of the love between bridegroom and bride, Christ and his Church (Berger 2018, 301). The commentary of Béatus of Liébana (d. after 798) also follows the Tyconian tradition. It is most famous for the colorful, dramatic illustrations that adorn many manuscripts. The influence of Béatus’ commentary remained more or less limited to the Iberian Peninsula. Another important commentary that was edited under the name of Haimo of Halberstadt (d. 853) was probably written by Haimo of Auxerre (d. 865). Though Haimo knows and cites Bede the Venerable, his main reference is Autpertus. After a relatively silent period concerning the Book of Revelation in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the twelfth century bears witness to a fresh blooming of writing commentaries on the only prophetic book of the New Testament. Rupert of Deutz’s (d. 1129) Commentaria in Apocalypsim follows the Tyconian tradition again, but he was one of the first commentators to include non-biblical sources, like the Jewish chronicler Flavius Josephus and the historians Rufinus or Orosius (Rauh 1979, 200–201). His interest in history decreases when it comes to the immediate past and present. Traditionally, the Roman Empire (and its successors) was understood to repress the advent of the Antichrist. Rupert does not reject this interpretation but puts it within the context of the idea that God alone determines the time of the coming of the Antichrist. Horst Dieter Rauh notes that, for Rupert, the holy empire is the church (Rauh 1979, 217). Of great importance for Rupert’s understanding was his firm conviction of “Scripture as tracking the course of history, as moving through the events of salvation history in order, even re-tracking them, Tyconius’s notion of recapitulatio. To that end he “pointed Scripture toward the present and the future more than anyone had before him” (Van Engen 2009, 187). Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202) should be considered one of the most innovative biblical exegetes. Joachim’s work is a complex, deeply-considerably construction of a true genius and continues to inspire scholarship. His writings gained him a reputation as a seer or prophet at a very early stage – even during his lifetime, when he was consulted by kings and emperors. He claimed that the meaning of the Bible had been revealed to him by divine power (Joachim of Fiore, Expositio in Apocalypsim, ed. 1527, 39v). For him, the Book of Revelation was “the key of things past, the knowledge of things to come” (Joachim of Fiore, Expositio in Apocalypsim, ed. 1527, 3v). In his Expositio in Apocalypsim, he initially follows the seven-partite structure of Bede, but Joachim modified this order: while the first four parts are identical to those of Bede, Joachim’s fifth

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to seventh parts are shorter than Bede’s and Joachim also adds an eighth part, dealing with Rev. 20:11–22:21. While Joachim follows the model of recapitulation, he interprets the Book of Revelation as a continuous prophecy of the history of the church. Thus, apocalyptic personnel and events are historicized. Joachim divides history into three periods: those of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This third period started with the founding of the religious orders in the west, and it will finally begin for all to see in the last days, which will occur in the near future, when new spiritual men will arise and lead God’s people through the final tribulations, the times of the Antichrist and the last persecutions to the glorious end. This idea of the spiritual men inspired many collectives and individuals to identify with them – from the early Franciscans and Dominicans until the present (Wannenmacher 2011, 467–469). Joachim’s impact in the field of exegesis was indeed remarkable and lead to a multitude of new commentaries on the Book of Revelation. Especially his examination of the number 1260 – in the Expositio, he claims to have written a whole book (Concordia) on that matter – gained much attention, but also sparked disappointment when the year 1260 passed (Rainini 2019). It is unsurprising that many of these commentaries were written by members of the Franciscan Order, whose founder was filled with a deep sense of eschatological existence (Benz 1934, repr. 1964, 162–168). One of the earliest commentaries of this provenance is that by Alexander Minorita or Alexander of Bremen (d. 1271). Sabine Schmolinsky has shown that the first version of his Expositio in Apocalypsim, written around 1235, exhibits no familiarity with Joachim’s thought or writing but, in the revised version, written in or after 1242 (when Alexander had become a member of the Franciscan Order), he had adopted the Joachite perspective (Schmolinsky 1991, 121–122). In Alexander’s text, the apocalypse is interpreted word by word in reference to historical persons or events. This is executed as a historical narration in the form of a chronicle. The manuscript C (Cambridge) is especially interesting. The historiographical passages are longer than in the other surviving manuscripts and all additions derive from the Annales Stadenses. According to Alexander’s interpretation, the 1000 years from Rev. 20:1–2 started with the papacy of Pope Silvester (314–335). This means that there were some 70 years remaining until the advent of the Antichrist and the Judgement but Alexander, too, found a way to avoid final precision: “[…] until this day, more than seventy years, which are not accomplished, do remain. If God wants to add to this number, so that the people may have the chance to convert from their misdeeds, then it consists in His omnipotence” (Alexander Minorita, Expositio in Apocalypsim, ed. Wachtel, 443). The commentary of the Franciscan theologian Peter John Olivi (d.  1298) was widely read and translated into the vernacular. Peter argued that the time of the great persecution was near, as he observed decay and the need for reform within the Church. This seemed dangerous for the institutional Church and so Olivi’s teachings were condemned in 1326. The Postillae of the Franciscan scholar Nicholas of Lyra (d. 1349) survived in more than 200 manuscripts and were the first biblical comment to be printed (Krey 1995,



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186). His linear interpretation of historical events alongside the text of the Book of Revelation is what has been regarded as a popularization of its linear prophetic reading (McGinn 1987, 533–534) but, although Nicholas interprets the Book of Revelation historically (until the twelfth century), he remains cautious. He insists that nothing from Rev. 17–20:7 has yet been fulfilled and refuses to speculate about this. He puts this into the words of Amos 7:14 when he declares “‘And since I am not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet’, I don’t want to say anything about the future except what can be detected from the Holy Scripture and the words of the Saints and the true teachers” (Nicholas of Lyra, Postilla, ed. 1588, 270v). As Bernhard McGinn has pointed out, there were three models for interpreting the Book of Revelation on the “the eve of Reformation”: the recapitulative model established by Tyconius and Augustine, the recapitulative but “progressively historical” model by Joachim of Fiore, and the linear-historical model by Nicholas of Lyra (McGinn 1987, 534). All of these were to prove influential in the heated debates of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the exegesis of the Book of Revelation became increasingly and more than ever before an instrument of political propaganda.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Alexander Minorita. Expositio in Apocalypsim, ed. Alois Wachtel. MGH. Die deutschen Geschichtsquellen des Mittelalters. Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte 1. Weimar, 1955. Beda Venerabilis. Epistola ad Pleguinam, ed. Charles W. Jones. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 123C. Turnhout, 1980. 617–626. Joachim of Fiore. Expositio super Apocalypsim. Venice, 1527 [repr. Frankfurt am Main, 1964]. Nicholas of Lyra. Postilla. Biblia Sacrorum cum Glossa Interlineari Ordinaria. Tomus Sextus. Venice, 1588.

Secondary Literature Benz, Ernst. Ecclesia Spiritualis. Kirchenidee und Geschichtstheologie der Franziskanischen Reform. Stuttgart, 1934 [repr. Darmstadt, 1964]. McGinn, Bernhard. “Revelation.” The Literary Guide to the Bible. Eds. Robert Alter and Frank Kermode. London, 1987. 523–541. Rainini, Marco. “Das Jahr des Endes. Ausprägung, Quellen und Rezeption der Endzeitberechnung Joachims von Fiore.” Geschichte vom Ende her denken. Endzeitentwürfe und ihre Historisierung im Mittelalter. Eds. Susanne Ehrich and Andrea Worm. Regensburg, 2019. 77–106. Rauh, Horst Dieter. Das Bild des Antichrist im Mittelalter: Von Tyconius bis zum Deutschen Symbolismus (= Beiträge zur Geschichte und Theologie des Mittelalters. Neue Folge 9). Second edition. Münster, 1979.

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Schmolinsky, Sabine. Der Apokalypsenkommentar des Alexander Minorita: Zur frühen Rezeptionsgeschichte Joachims von Fiore in Deutschland (= MGH. Studien und Texte 3). Hanover, 1991. Van Engen, John. “Wrestling with the Word: Rupert’s Quest for Exegetical Understanding.” Rupert von Deutz. Ein Denker zwischen den Zeiten. Internationales Symposion der Erzbischöflichen Diözesan- und Dombibliothek Cologne und des Instituts für Christliche Philosophie der Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck, 20. bis 22. September 2007. Eds. Heinz Finger, Harald Horst, and Rainer Klotz. Cologne, 2009. 185–199. Wannenmacher, Julia Eva. “Dragon, Antichrist, Millennium: Joachim of Fiore and the Opening of the Seals.” L’Apocalisse nel Medioevo. Atti del Convegno Internazionale dell’Università degli Studi di Milan e della Società Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino (S.I.S.M.E.L.), Gargnano sul Garda, 18–20 maggio 2009, a cura di Rossana E. Guglielmetti. Florence, 2011. 445–469. Wannenmacher, Julia Eva. Joachim of Fiore and the Influence of Inspiration: Essays in Memory of Marjorie E. Reeves. Farnham, 2013.

Hans-Christian Lehner

Prognostication in Latin Historiography (ca. 400–1300 CE) Historiographic texts provide information about future predictions and future expectations in a variety of ways. Already in the case of historiographers of Late Antiquity, a historical categorization of the authors’ present time is often connected with a view of the end of time. Sulpicius Severus, for example, links the collapse of the Roman-Christian world, which was at that time exposed to a multitude of armed conflicts, with the biblical end of time in his World Chronicle, compiled around the year 400 CE (Sulpicius Severus, Cronica, ed. Parroni, I, 1, 5; cf. Wieser 2013, 677). Many historiographical texts, especially those that adopt a universal perspective, make such a localisation. The climax occurred in the twelfth century, when Otto of Freising, in his Chronica, adds to the seven books on earthly events an eighth book on the events of the end of times. Nevertheless, it was pointed out that, in this example, as elsewhere, the fear of the end of time was more discernible than a certain expectation of it (Goetz 2008, 240). In several other texts, the end of time recurs. An accurate dating for it is avoided. The words of the Holy Scriptures (Matt. 24:36, Acts 1:7), which were taken up by the Church Fathers, issue a clear warning: “Therefore we vainly attempt to calculate and determine the years that may remain to this world, since we may hear from the mouth of the Truth that it is not for us to know this”, says Augustine (De civitate dei 18:53), who was extremely negative, as far as the interpretation of the future was concerned (Markus 1967); Isidore of Seville explains: “The time remaining for wordliness is uncertain for human inquiry” (Isidore of Seville, Chronica maiora, ed. Mommsen, 481). This is ultimately also true with reference to the historiographical repercussion of the atmosphere around the year 1000  – despite the long-debated, controversial historical work of the Burgundian monk, Rodulfus Glaber (Landes 2000), who, in his work Historiarum libri quinque II, discusses in detail the fears and hopes related to the apocalypse at that time. Even writers, who considered the end to be quite close, however, still admitted the possibility of a postponement or expressed uncertainty (Weiler 2018, 28). Thus, the end of the world could also be associated with an appeal: reforms could be pushed through (Palmer 2019) or comfort could be conveyed (Fitzgerald 2017, 141–142). At the same time, anecdotes about the supposed prophets of the end of the world occur repeatedly (with some derision) throughout the chronicles. For the year 847, for example, the Annales Fuldenses mention a pseudo-prophetess named Thiota, who claimed to know when the world would end and was hence condemned at the Council of Mainz under the presidency of Hrabanus Maurus (Annales Fuldenses, eds. Kurze and Pertz, 36–37). The Annales Marbacenses transmit, for the year 1185, an episode of the Tholetan astronomicus John, who had sparked great public excitement by his prophecies regarding the end of the world (Annales Marbacenses, ed. Bloch, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-078

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56). The Last Days, however, remained a point of reference and the course of history could be explained with the help of eschatological categories. That is why, repeatedly, the personnel of the Last Days finds its way into historiography. Sulpicius Severus, for instance, narrates how Nero, who had lead the first persecution of the Christians, would appear at another time ante Antichristum – according to the opinion of many (Sulpicius Severus, Cronica, ed. Parroni, II, 28, 1, 87; cf. Wieser 2013, 677). False prophets, known from Matt. 24:11 and 2 Peter 2:1 – Gregory of Tours, for example, describes them in three episodes (Gregory of Tours, Libri historiarum X, eds. Kusch and Levison, IX:6, 20 and X:25, 519; cf. Palmer 2019, 36) – were also repeatedly identified by historiographical writers. With outstanding accuracy, these writers also recorded those calamities that are described especially in the Book of Revelation, as the heralds of great disaster. To communicate such portenta is named one of the main tasks of historiographers by Gervase of Canterbury (Gervase of Canterbury, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, 11, 1, 87). These portents include eclipses of the sun and (more rarely) the moon, comets and other unusual celestial phenomena, earthquakes, famine or great mortality. A fixed catalogue of interpretations does not exist, but at least some concrete discussion of comets was undertaken by Gregory of Tours, Isidore of Seville, Bede the Venerable and Honorius of Autun. Gutolf of Heiligenkreuz, author of the Historia Annorum 1265–1279, begins his chronicle by describing a comet and explains, referring to two of these stated authorities: What this star means as a portent is stated very clearly in the book of Honorius and in [the works of] Isidore: If a star of this kind appears, there is either a change on the royal throne or epidemics or bellicose times […] We have found striking evidences, that all this was fulfilled after the appearance of this star. (Gutolf of Heiligenkreuz, Historia, ed. Wattenbach, 649)

Particularly in times that were perceived as crises, such signs were recorded attentively. The explicit reference to the Last Days is rarely as clear in the presentation of such natural phenomena as in Book VII of the Chronica of Otto of Freising. Nevertheless, it can be assumed that, in many reports about such phenomena, at least the announcement of a great catastrophe covibrated – even if not necessarily of an apocalyptic one. In many passages, such occurrences are interpreted ex eventu by the chroniclers as an announcement of specific, almost exclusively negative events. By presenting events as prognostic in nature, it was possible to make – from a retrospective point of view – unprecedented incidents at least slightly more comprehensible. In this sense, Einhard lists a whole series of signs that occurred prior to Charlemagne’s death (Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, ed. Holder-Egger, 36–37; cf. Becher 2005, 167). On the death of a ruler, in general, foreshadowing portents are regularly sought, whereas holy men frequently foresee their own death. In numerous chronicles, the failure of the Second Crusade is explained in this way, too (Lehner 2015, 217–220), and the comet of the year 1066 is present in almost every description of the conquest of Britain as a portent. The chroniclers themselves, however, were very cautious regarding their own and uncertain prophecies based on observations. Simultaneously, since Late Antiquity, there



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have been consistent efforts to explain natural phenomena in a natural way, yet divine activities and the divine creatorship go unquestioned. The frequency and constancy regarding which such events are reported in historiography as a whole indicate the relevance of such observations in everyday medieval life. Occasionally, there are even reports of contemporaries attempting to interpret them but not only were weather and celestial phenomena registered: we can find further miraculous signs (signa mirabilia), such as malformations in newborn humans or animals. Guibert of Nogent, for example, sees the birth of a boy with two heads as a portent of the Laon uprising of 1116 (Guibert of Nogent, Autobiography, ed. Swinton, III, 11). Bleeding hosts, known from the so-called Gregorian Mass, could be interpreted as indicating future events: Helmold of Bosau, for example, passes an anecdote for the year 1168, in which such a sign was misunderstood by many. Only the bishop, who possessed a “higher mind” (altior sensus), correctly recognized that the bleeding host implicated severe suffering for the Ecclesia (Helmold of Bosau, Cronica Slavorum, ed. Schmeidler, II, 97). In many cases, the chroniclers themselves established the relations or interpreted events as the fulfilment of prophecies derived from the Holy Scripture. Thus, to name just one example, the Asturian Chronica Prophetica delivers an explanation of the Muslim’s occupation of parts of the Iberian Peninsula as the fulfilment of an Ezekiel prophecy, and adds that the same prophecy also raises justified hope for a Christian victory (Chroniques Asturiennes, ed. Bonnaz, 2–3). But the signa had to be interpreted with great accuracy. After all, it was known that pseudo-prophets led people astray by false signs (Matt. 24:24) – as Gregory of Tours warned (Gregory of Tours, Libri historiarum X, eds. Kusch and Levison, 25). Often, persons are described who correctly recognized the prognostic substance of an event or who made prognoses themselves. Such predictions required a gift, usually described as a prophetic spirit (spiritus propheticus), which was particularly possessed by (holy) men. In rarer cases, holy women or secular persons were also able to make forecasts or interpret signs pertaining to the future. This also applies to the visions directed toward the knowledge of the future (in rare cases, also of the past). These visions, especially in the form of visions of the afterlife, constituted a proper literary genre (↗ Bihrer, Journeys to the Other World Western Christian Traditions), but were also repeatedly incorporated into historiographical texts. On the other hand, little is said about mantic practices for predicting the future. Wherever their application is communicated, this almost always serves to label the applicant/s negatively. This is a common means of characterization, especially when depicting strangeness. Adversely-described rulers, like Roman Emperor Henry IV in the Annales Palidenses (Annales Palidenses, ed. Pertz, 170), Byzantine ruler Andronikos I in the Chronica Regia Coloniensis (Chronica Regia Coloniensis, ed. Waitz, 131) or Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Chronica of Saba Malaspina (Saba Malaspina, Chronicon, eds. Koller and Nitschke, I, 2, 95) are presented in a negative light due to having requested doubtful oracles or trusted questionable personnel – astrologers, necromancers, haruspices – as their consultants. Something similar applies to the

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Archbishop of Bremen, Adalbert, portrayed by Adam of Bremen in the Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesie Pontificum: Adalbert listened to the prophecies of dubious persons, which proved to his great disadvantage (Adam of Bremen, Gesta, ed. Schmeidler, III, 63, 208). For the Christian sphere, mantic practices are rarely cited. In the Chronica Slavorum of Arnold of Lübeck, a prognosis regarding the regency of a newly-elected bishop is sought by means of Bibliomancy (Arnold of Lübeck, Chronica Slavorum, eds. Lappenberg and Pertz, I, 13, 33) and in the Chronica maiora of Matthew Paris, the death of Simon de Montfort in 1218 was predicted by clerici geomantici (Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. Luard, III, 57). Overall, a depiction of mantic practices may be found more frequently in the descriptions of non-Christian societies. Historiographers such as Einhard, Adam of Bremen, Ekkehard of Aura, and Helmold of Bosau employed Tacitus as their model, who had already used this prominently as a device to depict strangeness. In this context, it is remarkable how constantly the mantic practices for forecasting the future are described as the most important feature of foreign peoples in contrast to Christians. By far the most frequently-mentioned practice is the consultation of lots (sortes). The Saracens, as witnessed by the Chronica maiora of Matthew Paris, desired to know the future regarding the Christian army by invocating demons according to the doctrine of necromancy and by casting lots (Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. Luard, IV, 62). In addition, prophecies could also be created via other media. Thus, following negative, barely explicable events, there sometimes occur references to inscriptions predicting such phenomena. Burchard of Ursberg reports, in his Chronicon, that he had heard that the destruction of Milan in 1162 by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had been predicted by an inscription from the earliest time (ex antiquissimo tempore) (Burchard of Ursberg, Chronicon, eds. Holder-Egger and Simson, 16, 44) while in the Cronica of Salimbene of Adam, the shocking death of Frederick Barbarossa is retrospectively described as the completion of a Chaldean inscription, located on a tower near the River Saleph (Salimbene di Adam, Cronica, ed. Holder-Egger, 12). Chroniclers also expressed some interest in Sibyllinic texts (↗ Holdenried, Prophecy Western Christian World; ↗ Spataro, Papal Prophecies). The Annales Palidenses or the Pantheon of Godfrey of Viterbo deliver copies of the so-called Sibylla Tiburtina. The rulers’ names encoded therein are resolved in some of the Pantheon’s manuscripts, thereby establishing a link between this prophecy and the contemporary political reality. In other works, such as the Chronica composed by Otto of Freising (Sibylla Ericthea) and the Chronica maiora of Matthew Paris (Sibylla Tiburtina), the sibylline texts were of merely historical interest (Holdenried 2006, 147–163). Like that of the Sibyls, the prophecies of Merlin, which were first incorporated into the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, circulated as an independent text. They were widespread and could be interpreted with regard to contemporary daily politics (Crick 2011). In the field of historiography, the prophecies of Merlin were interpreted shortly after their publication, in around 1135, in the Historia Ecclesiastica of Orderic Vitalis (Orderic Vitalis,



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Historia ecclesiastica, ed. Chibnall, VI, 380–389), and also in the thirteenth century, inter alia, in the Flores Historiarum of Roger of Wendover and the Chronica maiora of Matthew Paris (Weiler 2018, 6, 12). Other prophetic texts, such as the Revelationes of Pseudo-Methodius (↗ Möhring, Eschatology Western Christian World, 266–267) and the so-called “Cedar of Lebanon” prophecy, which prophesied the downfall of Islam, were copied into historical works or mentioned therein. In many cases, these prophecies were not interpreted any further by the chroniclers, but the mere recording of such documents is telling per se. All in all, a wide range of prognostic content appearing in historiography can be observed, ranging from eschatological interpretations to matters of political processes and to prognosis concerning individuals. The predictions fulfil different functions in the respective historical works. Insofar as they do not constitute purely historical news, these forecasts often serve to explain history or confirm the appropriateness of certain developments. In addition, prophecies often fulfilled a moral-didactic function. It must be stressed in this context that not all historiographical works were filled to the same degree with prognostication. The spectrum ranges from single brief episodes, as one finds especially in the commented Easter tables, to a structuring of the texts by portents. In this respect, it appears, first and foremost, to be the person of the chronicler who decides for himself the selection of the contents and hence also the relevance of the episodes in which the prediction of future developments is of importance. This is particularly demonstrated and exemplified by those chronicles on which various authors worked or which were extended subsequently: the predictability of future events has usually been emphasized differently in such cases. The social milieu, education and imagination of the author are, in this sense, inevitably important. The author’s certitude in dealing with templates and biblical references is also significant here. Although the thinking in terms of the History of Salvation offered a foundation for all chronicles, it became apparent in many cases that this was made objective – in the concrete predictions – to a different extent. After all, by shaping the future, it of course also became possible to set far more practical goals. The divine judgment, however, has always been cited as the ultimate authority for one’s own interpretation of events. Given this variety of meanings and functional methods, as well as the generally remarkable coherence and consistency of the depictions presented in the respective texts, the described aspects provide a supplementary insight into the ideas and perceptions, ways of thinking and self-conception of the historio­ graphers and their respective times.

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Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Adam of Bremen. Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesie Pontificum (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 7). Ed. Bernhard Schmeidler. Hanover and Leipzig, 1917. Annales Fuldenses sive Annales regni Francorum orientalis. Ab Einhardo, Ruodolfo, Meginhardo Fuldensibus Seligenstadi, Fuldae, Mogontiaci conscripti cum continuationibus Ratisbonensi et Altahensibus (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 7). Eds. Friedrich Kurze and Georg Heinrich Pertz. Hanover, 1891. Annales Marbacenses qui dicuntur (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 9). Ed. Hermann Bloch. Hanover and Leipzig, 1907. Annales Palidenses auctore Theodoro monacho ab O. c. – 1182 et 1390 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores SS 16. Annales aevi Suevici). Ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz. Hanover, 1859. 48–96. Arnold of Lübeck. Arnoldi Chronica Slavorum (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 14). Eds. Johann Martin Lappenberg and Georg Heinrich Pertz. Hanover, 1868. Burchard of Ursberg. Burchardi praepositi Uspergensis Chronicon. Editio secunda (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 16). Eds. Oswald Holder-Egger and Bernhard von Simson. Hanover and Leipzig, 1816. Chroniques Asturiennes (Fin IXe Siècle). Ed. Yves Bonnaz. Paris, 1987. Chronica Regia Coloniensis (Annales maximi Colonienses) (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 18). Recuravit and ed. Georg Waitz. Hanover, 1880. 1–299. Einhard. Vita Karoli Magni (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 25). Ed. Oswald Holder-Egger. Hanover, 1911. Gervase of Canterbury. The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury. Ed. William Stubbs (Rerum britannicarum medii aevi scriptores 73, 1). London, 1879. Gregory of Tours. Gregorii Turonensis Opera. Pars 1: Libri historiarum X (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1,1). Eds. Bruno Kusch and Wilhelm Levison. Hanover, 1951. Guibert of Nogent. The Autobiography of Guibert, Abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy. Ed. and trans. Charles Cooke Swinton Bland. London and New York, 1925. Gutolf of Heiligenkreuz. Historia Annorum 1264–1279 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores SS 9. Chronica et Annales aevi Salici. Annales Austriae). Ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach. Hanover, 1851. 649–654. Helmold of Bosau. Helmoldi Presbyteri Bozoviensis Cronica Slavorum (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 32). Ed. Bernhard Schmeidler. Hanover, 1937. Isidore of Seville. Chronica Maiora. Ed. Theodor Mommsen, MGH AA XI, Berlin 1894. 391–488. Matthew Paris. Matthaei Parisiensis, monachi Sancti Albani. Chronica majora, 7 vols. Ed. Henry Richards Luard. London, 1872–1884. Orderic Vitalis. Historia Ecclesiastica (vol. 1–6). Ed. and trans. Marjorie M. Chibnall. Oxford, 1969–1980.



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Saba Malaspina. Saba Malaspina. Chronicon (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores 5). Eds. Walter Koller and August Nitschke. Hanover, 1999. 89–375. Salimbene di Adam. Cronica fratris Salimbene de Adam Ordinis Minorum (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores SS 32). Ed. Oswald Holder-Egger. Hanover and Leipzig, 1905–1913. Sulpicius Severus. Sulpicii Severi chronica. Cura et studio Piergorgio Parroni (Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 63). Ed. Piergorgio Parroni. Turnhout, 2017.

Secondary Literature Becher, Matthias. “Mantik und Prophetie in der Historiographie des frühen Mittelalters. Überlegungen zur Merowinger- und frühen Karolingerzeit.” Mantik. Profile prognostischen Wissens. Ed. Wolfram Hogrebe. Würzburg, 2005. 167–188. Crick, Julia C. “Geoffrey and the Prophetic Tradition.” The Arthur of Medieval Latin Literature: The Development and Dissemination of the Arthurian Legend in Medieval Latin. Ed. Siân Echard. Cardiff, 2011. 67–82. Fitzgerald, Brian. Inspiration and Authority in the Middle Ages: Prophets and Their Critics from Scholasticism to Humanism. Oxford, 2017. Goetz, Hans-Werner. Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewußtsein im hohen Mittelalter. Berlin, ²2008. Holdenried, Anke. The Sibyl and Her Scribes. Manuscripts and Interpretation of the Sibylla Tiburtina c. 1050–1500. Aldershot, 2006. Landes, Richard. “The Historiographical Fear of an Apocalyptic Year 1000: Augustinian History Medieval and Modern.” Speculum 75 (2000): 97–145. Lehner, Hans-Christian. Prophetie zwischen Eschatologie und Politik: Zur Rolle der Vorhersagbarkeit von Zukünftigem in der hochmittelalterlichen Historiografie. Stuttgart, 2015. Markus, Robert Austin. “Saint Augustine on History, Prophecy and Inspiration.” Augustinus 12 (1967): 271–280. Palmer, James T. “To Be Found Prepared: Eschatology and Reform Rhetoric ca. 570 – ca. 640.” Apocalypse and Reform from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Eds. Matthew Gabriele and James T. Palmer. New York, 2019. Weiler, Björn. “History, Prophecy and the Apocalypse in the Chronicles of Matthew Paris.” The English Historical Review 133/561 (2018): 253–283. Wieser, Veronika. “Die Weltchronik des Sulpicius Severus. Fragmente einer Sprache der Endzeit im ausgehenden 4. Jahrhundert.” Abendländische Apokalyptik. Kompendium zur Genealogie der Endzeit. Eds. Veronika Wieser et al. Berlin, 2013. 661–693.

Ephraim Kanarfogel

Prognostication in Medieval Jewish Law and Legal Thought The three major codes of Jewish law composed during the medieval period, Mishneh Torah by Maimonides (d. 1204, in Egypt), Arba’ah Turim by Jacob ben Asher (d. ca. 1340, in Spain), and Shulḥan ‘Arukh by Joseph Karo (d. 1575, in Israel), all discuss the halakhic status of prognostication as it emerges from biblical verses and talmudic and rabbinic sources. Virtually all forms of prognostication are prohibited according to these highly authoritative authors, although there are differences in the specific texts which they cite to undergird their positions, and in the ways that the prohibitions themselves are formulated. In the eleventh chapter of the laws of idolatry, found in the first part of his Mishneh Torah, Maimonides prohibits soothsaying, a form of sorcery that is defined as an attempt to focus on and remove all extraneous thoughts (through several different kinds of preparatory actions) which can then lead the practitioner to speak about events that will occur in the future. Maimonides also prohibits forms of astrology and horoscopy employed by the practitioner to advise about whether a particular day or period is propitious for a specific event or undertaking. It is similarly prohibited to consult through any medium with the dead (necromancy), in order to decide on a course of action. Maimonides maintains that these practices and methods are essentially false and ineffective; the prohibitions involved are not dependent on efficacy. Moreover, while Maimonides allows the recognition of a good omen, this is only the case when such an omen is identified retrospectively. An omen cannot be relied upon to take action moving forward, although in some of his other writings Maimonides seems to approve of more scientific approaches to these matters (Twersky 1989 and Schwartz 1998). Maimonides’ largely negative approach to prognostication is associated with him by name, and largely followed by Arba’ah Turim (Yoreh De’ah, section 179), as it was even more closely in the contemporary (albeit lesser-known) Provencal/Spanish halakhic compendium Sefer Toledot Adam ve- Ḥavvah (section 17, part 5), composed by Yeroḥam ben Meshullam. Jacob ben Asher in his Arba’ah Turim also cites the important Spanish talmudist, Meir ben Todros HaLevi Abulafia (d. 1244), whose views on prognostication comport for the most part with those of Maimonides (Septimus 1982), as well as the Italian Tosafist, Isaiah di Trani (d. ca. 1240), both of whom maintain that divination involving demons is prohibited. At the same time, however, Jacob notes that his father, Asher ben Yehi’el (Rosh, d. ca. 1325) permitted the conjuring of demons in order to locate stolen objects, if not for other purposes. This was also the view of Rosh’s teacher, Meir (Maharam) of Rothenburg (d. 1293), and of Maharam’s French Tosafist colleague, Perez of Corbeil (d. 1297), as well (Kanarfogel 2000). This https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-079



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allowance reflects the Ashkenazic background of these rabbinic figures, which was more open to the use of practical magic at least under certain conditions, as will be seen shortly. Joseph Karo also espouses the Maimonidean approach in his Shulḥan ‘Arukh (Yoreh De’ah, section 179), as was his wont in many areas of Jewish law, adding (based on a passage which was found in his edition of Sifrei, the halakhic midrash to Deuteronomy) that those who cast lots (goralot) in order to predict the future should also not be consulted. While Karo prohibits any attempt to communicate with the dead in order to seek advice from them, he does allow for the adjuring of a person who is sick to appear after his death to inform the client about whatever is asked. Similarly, although Karo prohibits the invoking of demons, he notes that there is a view which permits this process in order to locate a lost object. In his Beit Yosef, the encyclopedic legal commentary that he composed on the Arba’ah Turim prior to his writing the Shulḥan Arukh, Karo explicitly identifies the sources of these last two leniencies. The adjuration of demons to locate stolen objects was approved by the leading northern French Tosafist, Isaac (Ri) of Dampierre (d. 1189), who also insisted that a client who promised the practitioner even an overly large sum of money must pay that sum in full if the object was indeed located. And Ri’s Tosafist contemporary, Eli’ezer ben Samuel of Metz (and Mainz, d. 1189), asserts in his halakhic digest, Sefer Yere’im (sections 334–335), that adjuring a sick person to return after his death in order to inform his living friend about whatever he asks does not violate the prohibition of communicating with the dead (doresh ‘el ha-metim). This prohibition applies only if one directs such a request to the corpse (or grave) of one who has passed away. If, however, this request was made before the person dies, it is clear that the one who remains alive intends to hear from the spirit or soul of the deceased, and not from his physical remains. The Tosafists of France and Germany were more open to these kinds of magical phenomena than were the rigorously philosophical Maimonides and his Sefardic and Provencal followers. The Tosafists also judged some forms of prognostication to be effective, and beyond the bounds of the prohibitions contained within Torah and rabbinic law concerning sorcery and soothsaying, assuming that proper limitations and controls were also present (Kanarfogel 2000). On the other hand, Moses of Coucy (d. ca. 1250), the Tosafist author of the leading northern European work of Jewish law, Sefer Mizvot Gadol, frequently includes and follows the views of Maimonides within his compendium, and the issue of prognostication is no exception. Like Maimonides, Moses of Coucy in his Sefer Mizvot Gadol (mizvot lo ta‘aseh 51–56) prohibits all uses of and reliance on soothsaying and horoscopy, and does not mention Eli’ezer of Metz’ lenient view (a figure and work whom Moses otherwise cites with some frequency) with regard to adjuring the spirit of a sick person to communicate after his death. On the other hand, Moses of Coucy records the view of his Tosafist teacher, Judah Sirleon of Paris (who was a student of Ri of Dampirre), that demons can be invoked to locate lost objects (mizvat ‘aseh 74). Moreover, while Moses of Coucy strongly condemns the use of natural objects that could lead

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the practitioner to predict the path that his client should take, he notes that a form of this technique is still practiced in his day in central Europe (erez Ashkeloniyyah). Although Moses of Coucy does not state explicitly that such methods can be effective – even as they are prohibited according to Jewish law since they are essentially attempting to thwart the Almighty – it is possible that he believes their efficacy to be possible, against the Maimonidean position. The leading Spanish halakhist and kabbalist, Moses ben Naḥman (Nachmanides, d. 1270) maintains in a responsum (Teshuvot ha-Rashba ha-Meyuḥasot la-Ramban, 283) that predictive astrology is an effective discipline, as are certain forms of soothsaying, but these disciplines are strictly prohibited nonetheless on the basis of Deut. 18:13, “be without guile toward the Lord your God.” (Halbertal 2006 and Stern 1998) Nachmanides’ view is interpreted and expanded upon by two other significant Spanish talmudists and halakhists, Solomon ibn Adret or Rashba (Horwitz 1991), and Nissim ben Reuben (RaN, in his novellae to tractate Sanhedrin 65b), and Naḥamanides’ approach is also noted by Karo in his Beit Yosef, even as Karo does not adopt it. Similarly, although Moses of Coucy and several other Tosafist texts and authors decry almost all forms of neḥush (interpreting omens or signs; cf. Sefer Mordekhai to tractate Yoma, section 723), Nachmanides’ predecessor Rabad of Posquieres (d. 1198) suggests, in his glosses to Mishneh Torah (laws of idolatry, 11:4), that the Maimonidean view in this matter is unnecessarily restrictive, a position expressed also by the Provencal biblical exegete, David Kimḥi of Narbonne (d. 1235) in his commentary to 1 Sam. (14:9). It would seem that those Jewish legal scholars in Spain and Provence who were inclined toward the study and practices of Jewish mysticism were more likely to see efficacy in the magical arts that were involved in prognostication, even as they embraced the halakhic posture that at least the more extreme forms of these actions and techniques were nonetheless prohibited (Chajes 2018 and Idel 1988). In the same way, those leniencies found within the writings of the Tosafists in northern Europe likely reflect the familiarity of these authors with Helakhot literature and other magical texts and practices, even as they were not full-fledged mystics. There are also conceptions and formulations from the less mainstream but even more mystically inclined German Pietists that are relevant (Dan 2011), although contemporary Ashkenazic halakhic literature does not cite these materials. The leading rabbinic figure in fifteenth-century Germany and Austria, Israel Isserlein (d. 1460), concludes that the only prohibition involved in invoking techniques of prognostication is that this reflects an attempt to thwart the Almighty, ostensibly reflecting the influence of Nachmanides (Terumat ha-Deshen, pesaqim, 96; cf. Yuval 1989), and this passage is cited by Karo in his Beit Yosef as well. Indeed, Joseph Karo’s status as a mystic may also help to explain the leniencies that he mentions (against the Maimonidean approach as noted above) with regard to adjuring a sick person to appear after his death, and the permissibility of invoking of demons to locate lost objects (Werblowsky 1977).



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Selected Bibliography Chajes, Jeffrey Howard. “Magic, Mysticism, and Belief in Jewish Culture.” The Cambridge History of Judaism. Vol. 7. Eds. Jonathan Karp and Adam Sutcliffe. Cambridge, 2018. 475–477. Chajes, Jeffrey Howard. “Rabbis and Their (In) Famous Magic: Classical Foundations, Medieval and Early Modern Reverberations.” Jewish History at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History. Eds. Ra’anan S. Boustan, Oren Kosansky and Marina Rustow. Philadelphia, 2011. 69–79. Dan, Joseph. History of Jewish Mysticism and Esotericism. Vol. 5. Jerusalem, 2011. 358–392 [Hebrew]. Halbertal, Moshe. By Way of Truth. Jerusalem, 2006. 249–277 [Hebrew]. Horwitz, David. “Rashba’s Attitude towards Science and its Limits.” Torah u-Madda Journal 3 (1991): 52–81. Idel, Moshe. Kabbalah: New Perspectives. New Haven, 1988. 268–270. Kanarfogel, Ephraim. Peering through the Lattices. Detroit, 2000. 147–148, 194–197, 210, 228, and 245–246. Schwartz, Dov. “Magic, Experimental Science, and Scientific Method in Maimonides’ Teachings.” Memorial Volume for J. B. Sermoneta: Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 14 (1998): 25–45 [Hebrew]. Septimus, Bernard. Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition. Cambridge, 1982. 85–88. Stern, Josef. Problems and Parables of Law: Maimonides and Nachmanides on Reasons for the Commandments. New York, 1998. 144–147. Twersky, Isadore. “Aspects of Maimonides’ Epistemology: Halakhah and Science.” From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism: Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox. Vol. 3. Eds. Ernest S. Frerichs, Jacob Neusner, and Nahum M. Sarna. Atlanta, 1989. 3–23. Twersky, Isadore. Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah). New Haven, 1980. 479–482. Werblowsky, Raphael Judah Zwi. Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic. Philadelphia, 1977. Yuval, Israel Jacob. Scholars in Their Time. Jerusalem, 1989. 87–89 [Hebrew].

Bernd-Christian Otto and Matthias Heiduk

Prognostication in Learned Magic of the Medieval Western Christian World This chapter provides a brief overview of the ritual techniques related to prognostication and divination in medieval texts of learned magic. We here understand learned magic as a distinct category of medieval texts that outline a heterogenous ritual art often referred to as magia or ars magica in Latin (Otto 2019). Texts belonging to that category usually outline the performance of rituals for achieving a vast range of shortterm, inner-worldly goals, including divination. In some cases, the rituals outlined in these texts also focus on the transmission of knowledge through divine intermediaries (such as angels), or on the experience of visionary encounters with God (visio beatifica). Possibly due to being a textual tradition of such ritual knowledge, medieval learned magic strives towards lengthy, complex and sophisticated rituals. Its practitioners thus needed education (literacy, to begin with), time and resources to perform the rituals, and sometimes multi-language competencies. Whereas Richard Kieckhefer, in a classical study from 1989, referred to a shady “clerical underground” as the main social milieu of these texts (Kieckhefer 1989), recent research has demonstrated that learned magic was far more vivid in medieval Christianity than previously thought. We now know that it had a profound impact on a range of medieval intellectuals, whether they belonged to the social stratas of the ecclesia, emerging university life, or urban elites and nobility (Fanger 1998; Page 2013; Klaassen 2013; Fanger 2015; Page and Rider 2019). Medieval learned magic is not to be understood as a genuine invention of wicked monks who had strayed from the path of true Christian faith, but rather as the result of an intercultural process of textual transmission. This process reached its peak in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, predominantly through Latin translations of Arabic and, to a minor degree, Hebrew and Greek texts of learned magic that travelled alongside philosophical, medical and other scientific texts (Pingree 1987; Véronèse 2008; Burnett 2019). Reactions to these – from a Christian perspective – novel ritual techniques, as well as to the sophisticated understandings of ritual efficacy provided in some of these texts, oscillated between outright fascination (as can be seen in some forewords of texts translated on behalf of Alfonso X, such as the Liber Razielis, cf. Rebiger and Schäfer 2009 II, 101) and horrified repudiation (as can be seen in the burning of John of Morigny’s Liber Florum in 1323, cf. Fanger 2019). The ecclesiastic authorities obviously struggled with the question of what to do with this newly-available ritual lore. Several authors (such as William of Auvergne, cf. Marrone 2019) pondered the notion of magia naturalis and thereby attempted to legitimize at least the use of hidden properties in herbs or stones or the fabrication of astrological talismans, if the latter were thought to rely on a purely mechanistic understanding of the cosmos. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-080



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Other medieval scholars composed lists of learned magic texts, that were deemed either legitimate or illegitimate (e.  g., the Speculum Astronomiae, cf. Zambelli 1992), based on the criterion of whether or not intermediary beings were evoked during the practices outlined therein. In general, however, the reactions of the theological authorities were oriented toward the standard arsenal of biblical condemnations of magic, as well as the late ancient conceptualizations of heresy and superstition, and thus fundamentally hostile, by rooting magic in demonological pact theory (first conceptualized by Augustine, and radicalized by Thomas Aquinas, cf. Otto 2011, 309–310 as well as Otto and Stausberg 2013, 48–53). Particularly from the fourteenth century onward, anti-magical fears and polemic became ever more severe (with a first climax in the Paris condemnations of 1398) and prompted, among other things, the development of elaborate Christian demonologies. Infused with gender and further anti-magical stereotypes, these lay the theological foundation for the early modern witch persecutions. Medieval manuals of learned magic not only aim to achieve a broad spectrum of ritual goals, but also comprise different ritual techniques to pursue these goals: learned magic is a heterogenous, and often hybrid, ritual art (Otto 2016). With regard to ritual techniques, the most important medieval ones are the art of conjuring spirits (often ascribed to the Jewish king Solomon, thus sometimes called “Solomonic magic”, cf. Véronèse 2019), the art of fabricating astrological talismans (often dubbed “astral magic” or “image magic”, sometimes “Hermetic magic”, cf. Sannino 2019), and the ritual use or combination of “natural” ingredients such as herbs, stones or animals (sometimes conceptualized as “natural magic”); these techniques may also be mixed within a single learned magic recipe. Some of the conjuring spirits texts specifically focus on demons, wherefore scholars have also applied the label “necromancy”, thus adopting the medieval notion of the term (understood as the conjuration of demons, as opposed to divination by means of the dead, cf. Klassen 2019). With regard to ritual goals, the six most important ones encountered in medieval manuals of learned magic are love (and/or friendship), protection, healing, harm, economic benefits, and divination. In fact, some of the learned magic recipes, or experimenta as they are often called in the primary sources, are dedicated to divinatory or prognostic purposes. Apparently, medieval practitioners failed to classify learned magic and divination as separate arts, but rather considered divinatory techniques as a regular part of their ritual portfolio. In the following, we will therefore briefly portray some of the divinatory techniques that can be found in select manuals of medieval learned magic. The selection focusses strictly on practices aiming to predict the future according to the concept of prognostication of this handbook, whereas mantic practices per se are, of course, not limited to the purposes of prediction. The discovery of hidden treasures or stolen goods is, for example, a much-favored goal of divinatory acts, which also features regularly in books on learned magic. Facing the vast, often uncharted testimonies of medieval learned magic, the following discussion can only consider representative examples of already-edited material.

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Almandal/Ars Almadel The Almandal, Almandel or (Ars) Almadel, a ritual manual ascribed to Solomon, outlines the fabrication of a small portable altar and ritual procedures for the art of conjuring spirits. It survives in various different versions, whereby the earliest manuscript witnesses (Ms. Florence ii.iii.214, 74v–77r and Ms. Florence Bibliotheca Medicea Laurenziana Plut. 89 sup. 38, 383r–393v) seem to attest a transmission from the Arabic realm, as dschinn and devils (algin et assaiatin; Almandel, ed. Véronèse, 88) are mentioned as the addressees of the ritual, translated as “corporal and incorporeal demons” in the Latin version (Almandel, ed. Véronèse, 88). This Arabic influence is suppressed or lost in later versions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (often dubbed Almandel or Almodel), which appear to be more “Christianized”, given that the ritual addressees are now exclusively angels (Almandel, ed. Véronèse, 119–170; see also Veenstra 2002). Whereas the title points to the presumed original Sanskrit meaning of “circle” (al-mandal is probably an Arabisation of Skr. maṇḍala), the altar is usually rectangular in shape and, depending on the version, made of either metal (version F in ed. Véronèse) or wax (F2 in ed. Véronèse). It is fairly small (one foot on each side, i.  e. circa 30 centimeters), inscribed with sigils, penta- and hexagrams, and divine names, and placed on top of four candles and a censer during the conjuration procedure. The fabrication is quite time-consuming in that the practitioner should be abstinent for nine days (Almandel, ed. Véronèse, 101) and the altar should be fumigated and exorcized for a further seven days (Almandel, ed. Véronèse, 103). The practitioner furthermore needs to observe the correct astrological timeframe as well as a specific system of color symbolism and different consecration and conjuration formulae, depending on the ritual goal. If the conjuration proves successful, the spirits will appear over the altar and can be instrumentalized for a range of inner-worldly purposes (version F: love, hate, healing, harm, exorcism), whereby prognostic goals are not explicitly mentioned. However, as the general idea of the text is that the conjured spirit will henceforth remain “friends” with the practitioner, answer “all of his questions” and thus aid his decisions (Veenstra 2002, 195–196), it is likely that the Almandal was also intended for divinatory and prognostic purposes.

Ars notoria Ars notoria is the title of one of the most wide-spread medieval texts of learned magic, with over 50 manuscript witnesses (Véronèse 2012, 38), the earliest dating to ca. 1225 (Ms. Erfurt Bibliotheca Amploniana 4° 380, fol. 49r–64v). The title of the text, which is ascribed to Solomon, literally means “indicative art” (based on lat. nota = “sign”);



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in fact, large parts of this art consist of looking at peculiar images  – the so-called notae  – while reciting orationes with long lists of peculiar angel names (note that these notae are missing from some manuscript versions). The main promise of the text is to acquire all forms of knowledge and wisdom and, thereby, learn the seven liberal arts within a single month through the transmission of angels who pour the knowledge into the mind of the practitioner. There are two versions of the Ars notoria ritual, one shorter one – which is presumably the earlier version (Version A in ed. Véronèse) – and another, more extensive one, which was later (from 1560 onward) appended to reprints of Agrippa of Nettesheim’s De occulta philosophia (Version B in ed. Véronèse). The long version (B), on which we focus here, consists of two parts (referred to as flores aurei and ars nova). The first part first provides, after some general explanations, prayers and lists of angel names that should recited in order to achieve the basic capabilities required to master the seven liberal arts: memory, eloquence, understanding, and perseverance. Thereafter follow the notae, orationes and lengthy lists of angel names for the seven liberal arts in the regular order (grammar, rhetoric, dialectics; arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy), including philosophy and theology. The second part outlines ten extra prayers (with extensive lists of angel names), mostly focused, again, on improving the practitioner’s memory, understanding, and eloquence. The Ars notoria practice also includes fasting, austerity, the cleansing of sins as well as the monitoring of the correct (astrological) timeframe for the ritual performance. Whereas the entire text could hence be labelled divinatory, prognostic techniques play a relatively marginal role. There are only two brief prognostic recipes: one prayer (without angel names) in the first part which, recited three times in the evening, helps one to receive visions of “any present or future danger” (Ars notoria, ed. Véronèse, 42). Shortly afterwards, in the section on the physical art, a prayer (now mainly a list of angel names) is provided which, if recited three times in front of a sick person, provides “knowledge of any disease, whether someone tends to death or life.” Apart from these two prognostic recipes, a list of six mantic arts is provided, alongside some brief explanations: Hydromancy, Pyromancy, Nigromancy, Chiromancy, Geomancy and neonegia (Ars notoria, ed. Véronèse, 185).

Liber florum celestis doctrine The Liber florum celestis doctrine represents for the most part an adaption of the Ars notoria (see above), even though its author, the Benedictine monk John of Morigny (d. after 1315), rearranged the content of the Ars in an independent, original way. For modern scholars, the Liber florum is an exceptional testimony as it illustrates the intense practical use of books of learned magic. John provides lengthy autobiographic statements, in which he outlines his year-long use of and experiences with learned

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magic. Clearly, for John, the rituals of the Liber form a crucial part of a highly personal, radical piety. The Liber florum is divided into three parts: the “book of visions”, the “book of prayers”, and the “book of figures”. John of Morigny writes in the first part how he – and sometimes also his sister Bridget – received several visions which led them to revise the Ars notoria in order to purify it from demonic influences. The “book of prayers” and the “book of figures” contain the instructions for the rituals to gain visionary knowledge through offering prayers to the Virgin and angels, and through the observance of specific symbols. Apparently, John of Morigny recorded and published individual visions since 1301, before he compiled the whole “Liber florum” for the first time in 1311. In 1315, John rewrote the “book of figures” to avoid their resemblance to symbols that he had found in “necromantic” manuals and compiled a new version of the Liber florum (Liber florum NC III.i.c-d, eds. Fanger and Watson, 299–300). The Grandes Chroniques de France reports the burning of the Liber florum through unknown authorities at the University of Paris in 1323 (Fanger 2015, 4). However, the recent critical edition of the Liber florum counts 24 preserved medieval manuscripts mainly from the new compilation (Liber florum, eds. Fanger and Watson, 131–133), and further manuscripts have already been found (Fanger and Watson 2019, 219). Similar to the Ars notoria, the rituals of the Liber florum mainly attempt to achieve knowledge which is divided into four categories consisting of seven arts each. Besides the artes liberales (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, mathematics, geometry, music, astronomy) and the artes mechanicae (textile arts, theatre, metalworking, building, agriculture, navigation, medicine), seven virtutive arts (patience, faith, hope, charity, humility, compassion, temperance) and seven exceptive arts are listed. The latter category covers the mantic arts: necromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, chiromancy, geomancy, hydromancy, and geonegia. Apparently, John believed that the ritualistic prayers and meditations on the figures would promote understanding of the basic principles as well as pivotal books dealing with each art. The prayer for astronomy, for example, reads as follows: Visualize these words for astronomy: May I understand the Treatise on the Material Sphere, and know Alfraganus, Arthabicius, the Toledan Tables, judgements, the astrolabe, the courses and places and natures of the planets, the twelve figures and twelve houses. (Liber florum OC III.3.18.h; trans. Fanger 2015, 123)

The idiosyncratic category of geonegia (called neonegia in the Ars notoria) seems to focus on texts about talismans and magical figures (Fanger 2015, 124). The Liber florum also contains three prognostic recipes with prayers to predict if a woman is pregnant, if a woman is still a virgin or not, and if a sick person will recover or die (Liber florum NC III.ii.4, eds. Fanger and Watson, 318–319).



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Liber Iuratus Honorii The so-called “Sworn Book” of Honorius of Thebes survives in at least three different Latin manuscripts from the Sloane Collection in the British library (Liber iuratus Honorii, ed. Hedegard, 13–14), the earliest dating to the early fourteenth century, whereas the text was presumably composed in the early thirteenth century (see Mathiesen 1998, 146–147). The “Sworn Book” is well-known among the surviving medieval manuals of learned magic due to certain unique features, among them an interesting prologue about an alleged gathering of 89 magicians from Naples, Athens, and Toledo. It contains an impressive list of contents that refers to no less than 92 distinct ritual goals, most of them extraordinary (they include invisibility, causing thunder and lightning, or materialization) – these, however, are nowhere dealt with in the actual text. It describes one of the earliest depictions of a sophisticated sigil, the sigillum dei (“Seal of God”; Liber iuratus Honorii, ed. Hedegard, 70), later famously coined the Sigillum Dei Æmeth by John Dee, and attests to the implementation of Jewish lore, such as the 72-letter name of God, the so-called Shem ha-meforash (in the text spelled “Semenphoras”; Liber iuratus Honorii, ed. Hedegard, 67). The bulk of the text describes an extremely complex, time-consuming ritual that requests at least 72 days of ongoing prayer, partial fasting and chastity, in order to obtain a pre-mortal vision of God and his celestial palace (Liber iuratus Honorii, ed. Hedegard, 114). Finally, it lists a series of elaborate recipes for conjuring three types of spirit (planetary, aerial, earthly) that include the usual ritual paraphernalia of medieval learned magic: ritual circles, wands, whistles, special cloth, swords, sigils, fumigation, wine, animal sacrifice, and tons of voces magicae. Among the 92 goals mentioned in the initial table of contents are a few with a clearly prognostic or divinatory outlook, most importantly No. 16: “To know the hour of death” (Liber iuratus Honorii, ed. Hedegard, 62: “de hora mortis sienda”) and No. 17: “To know all things present, past, and to come” (Liber iuratus Honorii, ed. Hedegard, 62: de omnibus presentibus, preteritis et futuris sciendis). Even though it is not explicitly stated in the text, we may assume that the planetary, aerial, and earthly spirits whose conjuration is outlined in the latter part (opus 2–4) are responsible for transmitting the prognosis to the magician after their successful conjuration: “ask what you wish, and it will happen” (Liber iuratus Honorii, ed. Hedegard, 143).

Liber Razielis The Liber Razielis is a compilation of Arabic and Hebrew treatises on astral magic arranged in seven books. King Alfonso X of Castile (d. 1284) commissioned two versions of this compilation – one in Castilian and the other in Latin – as part of the many translations and compositions that he initiated in diverse fields of knowledge.

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A certain magister Johannes Clericus announced himself as responsible for the Liber Razielis in the prologue, who could probably be identified with Juan d’Aspa, one of the assistants to the famous Jewish physician and translator, Yehuda ben Moshe (Sefer ha-Razim, eds. Rebiger and Schäfer, vol. 2, 102). The Castilian version of the Liber Razielis is lost (apart from a two-folio fragment in a manuscript from the Cathedral Library in Toledo, soon to be published by Bernd-Christian Otto), but five medieval and early modern manuscripts of the Latin version are preserved, which also served as models for several early prints and premodern translations into English, French, German, and Czech. The Latin Liber Razielis became one of the most important testimonies regarding Jewish magic in the Christian world and was also used for retranslations into Hebrew (Sefer ha-Razim, eds. Rebiger and Schäfer, vol. 2, 114–116). The first book of the Liber Razielis, headlined with Clavis, contains basic astrological rules referring to the sayings of ancient sages like Hermes Trismegistus (for the following see also the descriptions in García Avilés 1997; Leicht 2007, 262–275). Hermes is also the mythical authority for the content of the second book called Ala and the seventh book, entitled De virtutibus. The book Ala deals with the hidden virtues of stones, plants, and animals (which is sometimes classified as “natural magic” in the medieval literature), very similar to the Hermetic Kyranides. The book De virtutibus outlines the empowering of talismans with the energy of the planetary spheres, similar again to other treatises of “Hermetic”, or “astral” magic. Further popular topics of astral magic inspired obviously the third book of the Liber Razielis called Thymiama, which contains recipes for fumigations, and also the fifth book De mundacia, with instructions for self-purification rituals. However, the whole compilation of the Liber Razielis was named after Jewish Raziel traditions referring to revelations of the archangel Raziel to Adam or Noah. Two different books called Sefer ha-Razim (“Book of Secrets”), distinguished in the research literature as Sefer ha Razim I and Sefer ha-Razim II, provide the models for the fourth book, entitled De iiii. temporibus anni et diei et noctis (Sefer ha-Razim  II) and the sixth book, named Symayn (Sefer ha-Razim I) of the Latin Liber Razielis. The rituals in these two books focus on the invocation of angels, set out within an elaborate celestial hierarchy. Several rituals of the book Symayn aim to predict the future. An example is the invocation of the angels of the twelfth heaven who can reveal the forthcoming events in a specific month (Sefer ha-Razim, eds. Rebiger and Schäfer, vol. 1, 48, § 219–220). According to another invocation, it is possible to see a whole future year manifested on the surface of an oily liquid (Sefer ha-Razim, eds. Rebiger and Schäfer, vol. 1, 36, § 58–62). Another extensive instruction concerns the prediction of the month of one’s death. Here, the conjuror must prepare himself through engaging in three weeks of purity, austerity, charity, and piety. Thereafter, he engraves the names of the months and the angels onto golden plates which he dips into precious oil while invoking the “angels of knowing and understanding” during the procedure. Every night, he must change the glass containing the oil and the plates and place the new container under the light of the stars. During the seventh night, the plate containing the month when



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he will die will rise to the surface of the oil (Sefer ha-Razim, eds. Rebiger and Schäfer, vol. 1, 48–49, § 223–227). The same recipe can be found in the Old Castilian compilation Astromagia, which was likewise translated from Arabic at the court of Alfonso X (Astromagia, ed. d’Agostino, 262–265). The book Symayn also outlines procedures for conjuring the spirit of a dead person for prognostic purposes (thus attesting to the “classical” meaning of necromancy), as well as rituals for the interpretation of dreams (Sefer ha-Razim, eds. Rebiger and Schäfer, vol. 1, 38, § 98–100 and 39–40, § 107–111). The invocation of angels according to the Hebrew Sefer ha-Razim II serves, above all, for prognostication. The predictions include forthcoming wars, famine, natural disasters, political uprising, disease as well as threats to crops, cattle, the house, and the fate of the descendants. The Latin De iiii. temporibus, the fourth part of the Liber Razielis, contains the core element of the Sefer ha-Razim II, which is a list of the names of angels according to the twelfth months (differing from the similar list of angels in the Sepher ha-Razim I / Liber symayn). However, the introductory passages of the Hebrew original are missing from the Latin text, as are the instructions for the invocation rituals, so the predictive purpose of the list of angels became obscure in the Liber Razielis (Leicht 2007, 266–272).

Picatrix The Picatrix is the Latin version of the Arabic “The Goal of the Sage” (Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm). The author of “The Goal”, the Andalusian scholar al-Qurṭubī (d. 964), amalgamated a multitude of ancient sources from Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, and Indian origin, together with more recent treatises on the Arabic-Persian cultural hemisphere of his time (Pingree 1980). Despite this eclecticism, he bound the heterogeneous influences together to form a relatively coherent theory of “magic” (siḥr in Arabic), in which he combines the Aristotelian model of the celestial spheres with the neo-platonic model of the emanation of cosmic energies, as well as a compendium of a large number of ritual recipes for practical use. Even though the Picatrix includes rituals of devotion to God and self-perfection, the majority of it is focused on inner-worldly goals, such as the acquisition of wealth and knowledge, the manipulation of interpersonal relationships, the control of animals, healthcare, protection against hostile assaults, destruction of objects, and teleportation. On the practical side, most rituals require the elaborate preparation of utensils including the body parts of animals and even humans and, sometimes, the use of psychoactive and toxic substances. The exact meaning of the Latin title Picatrix remains unclear (Picatrix, eds. Attrell and Porreca, 3–4). The prologue of the Latin version marks the text as a translation on behalf of King Alfonso X of Castile around 1256. Only fragments of the Castilian translation of the Arabic “The Goal” (which preceded the Latin version) have survived. The attribution of both translations to Yehuda ben Moshe and Aegidius de Tebaldis

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of Parma remains speculative (Pingree 1981, 27–28). In comparison with the Arabic original, the Latin version attests to a large number of omissions as well as additions, so that the translation was also a revision of its content (Boudet and Coulon 2017). The earliest surviving textual testimonies date to the late fourteenth century, but most manuscripts and fragments are from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which indicates that the text received a far broader reception during the Renaissance (Picatrix, ed. Pingree, xvi–lxix; Perrone Compagni 1977; and now see Ben-Zaken 2019). Divination is mentioned several times in Picatrix, which again attests to the inclusion of mantic practices within the medieval category or genre of learned magic. The most suitable moment for divination, according to the Picatrix, is during dreams, when the soul is detached from sensory impressions and open to the intrusion of spirits. Under the sign of Mercury occur the proper times to use dreams for divinatory purposes, also given that Mercury seems to be the fountain of geomancy, astrology, and auguries (Picatrix, eds. Attrell and Porreca, 134). The Picatrix lacks recipes for interpreting signs in order to predict future events. However, it includes two rituals that seem to be useful for divinatory purposes. The first ritual helps to select the best interpreter of dreams. This purpose is assigned to the spirit of Jupiter, whose invocation helps with knowing, dealing with or manipu­ lating powerful people. According to the recipe, it is necessary to remove all worldly things from the mind, to throw oneself onto the ground, and to speak a lengthy prayer to Jupiter while dragging the forehead on the ground (Picatrix, eds. Attrell and Porreca, 162–165). The second ritual is a prayer to Mercury, who “governs the prophecies of prophets”, and their knowledge in many fields, among them the divinatory arts. This ritual seems to be a general preparation for divinatory acts in the fields of astrology, geomancy, and other mantic arts. The magician wears a ring of solidified mercury on his finger during the prayer and holds a sheet in his hands while pretending to be a scribe who wishes to write upon it. The prayer demands a devout position on the ground as well as the subsequent suffumigation through a special mixture (Picatrix, ed. Attrell and Porreca, 175–177).

The Codex Latinus Monacensis 849 The manuscript catalogued as Clm 849 in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek contains one of the most extensive manuals on demon conjuration, or “necromancy”, that survives from the European Middle Ages. The core text, which unfortunately lacks its two initial pages and thus a proper title and prooemium (which may be one of the reasons for its survival), comprises 105 folios and a total of 47 experimenta, i.  e., brief chapters that outline ritual recipes for a variety of purposes. The manuscript dates to the early fifteenth century and has been critically edited by Richard Kieckhefer in an extensive monograph published in 1998. There is no information on the pre-history



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of the manuscript, its authorship and ownership, even though the compiler was evidently German, whereby Kieckhefer tentatively ascribes its emergence to a “clerical underworld” in or nearby Munich (ed. Kieckhefer, 34). Compared to other medieval texts of learned magic, Clm 849 is unique in its straightforward instrumentalization of demons, including Satan, Lucifer, and Beelzebub, and no other copies of the main part of the text have been discovered to date. Yet, such necromantic manuals are frequently described in the medieval literature so that we may, polemical stereotypes notwithstanding, indeed assume a “flourishing genre” (ed. Kieckhefer, 25) from the late middle ages onward. Frank Klaassen, in a more recent study (Klaassen 2013), uncovered various other necromantic manuscripts that resemble some of the material assembled in Clm 849 (and see also Giralt 2014 and Klaassen 2019). Most of the experiments in the Munich handbook fall into three basic categories, classified by Kieckhefer as “illusionist” (making things appear other than they are, including miraculous deeds such as invisibility), “psychological” (gaining influence over other people’s intellect or will, such as evoking love or hatred), and “divinatory”. The divinatory recipes amount to 19 experiments in total, making them the predominant ritual genre in the text. We will, as might be expected, only focus on these experiments in this chapter. Clm 849 makes use of a fairly large variety of divinatory techniques, most of them based on scrying, whereby the assistant, usually a young boy, stares at a reflective surface until he sees figures, which are interpreted as apparitions of spirits, who may then reveal the desired information. These scrying experiments utilize different devices: divinatory mirrors (partly ascribed to the spirits Floron or Lilith: Nos. 18–20, 23, 33), vessels (No. 22, 29), crystals (No. 24–25), fingernails or thumbnails (Nos. 27, 38–40), a bone (namely, the right shoulder blade of a ram: No. 28), or a boy’s hand (No. 30). Furthermore, there are two recipes for oneiromancy (Nos. 16, 41), and the very first experiment outlines a brief procedure for acquiring knowledge of the liberal arts through the instruction of a demon (somewhat similar to the Ars notoria on which see above). Many recipes focus on the detection of a criminal (usually a thief) or the recovery of stolen goods, and occasionally the location of hidden treasure. All scrying experiments share certain characteristic features such as cooperation with a medium and the use of voces magicae and invocations (usually directed at demons but, in the case of crystallomancy, also at angels) which are sometimes uttered into the ears of the medium and sometimes written onto the reflective device. Some experiments also involve the calculation of the correct astrological timeframe, the drawing of a ritual circle on the ground, the observance of the cardinal directions, or the use of oil, honey, herbs as well as further materia magica.

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Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Alfonso X el Sabio. Astromagia (Ms.Reg.lat. 1283a). Ed. Alfonso d’Agostino. Naples, 1992. Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century. Ed. Richard Kieckhefer. University Park, PA, 1998. John of Morigny. Liber florum celestis doctrine – The Flowers of Heavenly Teaching. Eds. Claire Fanger and Nicholas Watson. Toronto, 2015. Liber Iuratus Honorii: A Critical Edition of the Latin Version of the Sworn Book of Honorius. Ed. Gösta Hedegård. Stockholm, 2002. L’Almandal et l’Almadel latins au Moyen Âge. Ed. Julien Véronèse. Florence, 2012. L’Ars notoria au Moyen Age. Introduction et édition critique. Ed. Julien Véronèse. Florence, 2007. Picatrix. The Latin Version of the “Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm”. Ed. David Pingree. London, 1986. Picatrix. A Medieval Treatise on Astral Magic. Eds. Dan Attrell and David Porreca. University Park, PA, 2019. Sefer ha-Razim I und II. Das Buch der Geheimnisse I und II. 2 vols. Eds. Bill Rebiger and Peter Schäfer. Tübingen, 2009.

Secondary Literature Ben-Zaken, Avner. “Travelling with the Picatrix: Cultural Liminalities of Science and Magic.” Religious Individualisation: Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives. Eds. Martin Fuchs et al. Berlin, 2019. 1033–1063. Boudet, Jean-Patrice, and Jean-Charles Coulon. “La version arabe (Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm) et la version latine du Picatrix: Points communs et divergences.” Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 33.1 (2017): 67–101. Burnett, Charles. “Arabic Magic: The Impetus for Translating Texts and their Reception.” The Routledge History of Medieval Magic. Eds. Sophie Page and Catherine Rider. London, 2019. 71–84. Fanger, Claire. “Medieval Ritual Magic: What It Is and Why We Need to Know More About It.” Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic. Ed. Claire Fanger Stroud, 1998. vii–xviii. Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic. An Exegesis of the Visionary Autobiography of Fourteenth-Century French Monk. University Park, PA, 2015. Fanger, Claire, and Nicholas Watson. “John of Morigny.” The Routledge History of Medieval Magic. Eds. Sophie Page and Catherine Rider. London, 2019. 212–224. García Avilés, Alejandro. “Alfonso X y el Liber Razielis, imágenes de la magia astral judía en el scriptorium alfonsí.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 74 (1997): 21–39. Giralt, Sebastià. “The Manuscript of a Medieval Necromancer: Magic in Occitan and Latin in ms. Vaticano, BAV, Barb. lat. 3589.” Revue d’histoire des textes 9 (2014): 221–272. Kieckhefer, Richard. Magic in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, 1989. Klaassen, Frank. The Transformations of Magic: Illicit Learned Magic in the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance. University Park, PA, 2013. Klaassen, Frank. “Necromancy.” The Routledge History of Medieval Magic. Eds. Sophie Page and Catherine Rider. London, 2019. 201–211. Leicht, Reimund. Astrologumena Judaica. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der astrologischen Literatur der Juden. Tübingen, 2007.



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Marrone, Steven P. “Magic and Natural Philosophy.” The Routledge History of Medieval Magic. Eds. Sophie Page and Catherine Rider. London, 2019. 287–298. Mathiesen, Robert. “A Thirteenth-Century Ritual to Attain the Beatific Vision from the Sworn Book of Honorius of Thebes.” Conjuring Spirits. Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic. Ed. Claire Fanger. University Park, PA, 1998. 143–162. Otto, Bernd-Christian. Magie. Rezeptions- und diskursgeschichtliche Analysen von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit. Berlin, 2011. Otto, Bernd-Christian and Michael Stausberg (ed.). Defining Magic: A Reader. Sheffield, 2013. Otto, Bernd-Christian. “Historicising ‘Western Learned Magic’: Preliminary Remarks.” Aries 16 (2016): 161–240. Otto, Bernd-Christian. “A Discourse Historical Approach Towards Medieval ‘Learned Magic’.” The Routledge History of Medieval Magic. Eds. Sophie Page and Catherine Rider. London, 2019. 37–47, 60–64. Page, Sophie. Magic in the Cloister: Pious Motives, Illicit Interests, and Occult Approaches to the Medieval Universe. University Park, PA, 2013. Perrone Compagni, Vittoria. “La magia ceremoniale del ‘Picatrix’ nel Rinascimento.” Atti ­dell’Accademia di Scienze Morali e Politiche 88 (1977): 279–330. Pingree, David. “Some of the Sources of the Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 43 (1980): 1–15. Pingree, David. “Between the Ghāya and the Picatrix I: The Spanish Version.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 44 (1981): 27–56. Pingree, David. “The Diffusion of Arabic Magical Texts in Western Europe.” La diffusione delle scienze islamiche nel medio evo europeo. Ed. Scarcia Amoretti. Rome, 1987. 58–102. Pingree, David. “Learned Magic in the Time of Frederick II.” Micrologus: natura, scienze e società medievali 2 (1994): 39–56. Sannino, Antonella. “From Hermetic Magic to the Magic of Marvels.” The Routledge History of Medieval Magic. Eds. Sophie Page and Catherine Rider. London, 2019. 153–168. Veenstra, Jan R. “The Holy Almandal. Angels and the Intellectual Aims of Magic.” The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period. Ed. Jan N. Bremmer and Jan R. Veenstra. Leiden, 2002. 189–229. Véronèse, Julien. “La transmission groupée des textes de magie ‘salomonienne’ de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge: bilan historiographique, inconnues et pistes de recherche.” L’Antiquité tardive dans les collections médiévales: Textes et representations, vie–xive siècle. Eds. Stéphane Gioanni and Benoît Grévin. Rome, 2008. 193–223. Véronèse, Julien. “Magic, Theurgy, and Spirituality in the Medieval Ritual of the Ars notoria.” Invoking Angels. Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries. Ed. Claire Fanger. University Park, PA, 2012. 37–78. Véronèse, Julien. “Solomonic Magic.” The Routledge History of Medieval Magic. Eds. Sophie Page and Catherine Rider. London, 2019. 187–200. Zambelli, Paola. The Speculum Astronomiae and its Enigma: Astrology, Theology and Science in Albertus Magnus and his Contemporaries. Dordrecht, 1992.

Daniela Wagner

Prophecy and Prognostication in Visual Art of the Medieval Western Christian World In medieval visual art, we find a variety of representations of prophets, revelations and mantic images. Many of these works illustrate biblical topics, such as the Tree of Jesse, John’s vision of the Apocalypse, or signs in the sun, the moon and the stars, as announced in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 21:25). Alongside these canonical subjects, other traditions and natural (or rather unnatural) phenomena, like falling stars, apparitions in the sky, earthquakes, and monstrosities found their way into visual art, too (e.  g. Constance World Chronicle with Sibylline prophecies, Antichrist and the Fifteen Signs before Doomsday, fifteenth century, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 426). The number of visual representations of unnatural phenomena increased toward the end of the fifteenth century along with the so-called printing revolution and became a popular subject in early modern single-sheet publications, where they were often combined with explanatory texts of a mantic character. The amount of preserved medieval artefacts showing prophets, prognostications or prophecies not only documents how present divination and revelation were in medieval societies but also provide evidence of the impact that prophetic imagery and practices had on the visual arts. Illustrating prophecy and vision gave a crucial impulse to the development of artistic strategies and devices to convey vision and different modes of sight and also to reflect the status of the image and its beholder (Klein 1998; Bogen 2001; Ganz 2008). Furthermore, researchers have demonstrated how pictorial representations of prophetic visions were the result of theological theories of vision and underlined the symptomatic artistic use of iconographic and compositional devices. Moreover, when textual descriptions of prophetic experiences and their interpretation become images again, questions of media, vision, and pictoriality arise that extend beyond iconographic or stylistic issues and provide insights into medieval image theory. These dynamics show that images of visions and prophecies are never simple illustrations of a text but enhance and shape what is conveyed by the words through their very own potential (Ganz 2008; Hamburger 2008). As the biblical Book of Revelation is the most popular subject in the broad field of visualizing visions in art (cf. the census compiled by Emmerson and Lewis 1984– 1986), with an imagery reaching a high level of complexity in both discourse and disposition, the example of the Getty Apocalypse (about 1255–1260, Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, MS Ludwig III; Klein 2010; Morgan 2011) will help to point out the artistic challenges regarding the media, vision, and pictoriality. In this manuscript, the images are placed above a text citing the apocalypse in black ink and the Berengaudus commentary in red ink, and every scene is situated within a rectangular frame, which it sometimes exceeds (Fig. 51). Beginning with the martyrdom of John the Evangelist, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-081



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Fig. 51: The Lamb taking the Sealed Book and an Angel and the Elders Singing Praises (left) and The Opening of the First Seal: The First Horseman (right) (Getty Apocalypse. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig III. fol. 5v–6r; date: 1255–1260). Photo credits: Getty's Open Content Program.

who was thought to be the author of the text at that time, and ending with the Defeat of the Beast, the illuminations provide a detailed view of the events described in the Apocalypse. The most intriguing element, however, is the figure of John. With a compelling dynamic, he appears inside as well as outside the frame, sometimes part of the inner scene and, at other times, watching it from beyond. John’s movement challenges the beholders with every change of location and pushes them to define their own relation the vision, to the visionary, and the pictorial representation (cf. Klein 2000 for the additional dynamic established by the figures in the historiated initials). When situated at the periphery, John peeks (or once even listens, fol. 26v) through a window-like opening in the otherwise not architecturally constructed frame to see the revealed images. Frame and opening are pictorial elements that refer to the exclusivity of the revelation and therefore provide a device which emphasizes visually that only the original vision of John enables the beholder to see the revelation himself. While the beholders are looking at the physical images with their eyes, they are simultaneously seeing what John received through his inner eye in a visio. Stimulating the beholder to meditate about the premises of divine revelation, this contrasting juxtaposition points to the difference between corporeal and spiritual vision.

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Although many images of vision and prophecy derive from religious traditions, there are also examples representing mantic practices from a secular context. A well known depiction features in the English Chronicle of John of Worcester (completed 1140, Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS. 157, pp. 382–383; McGurk 1998). On the double page spread (Fig. 52), four image tiers illustrate how King Henry I was haunted by nightmares due to unjust governance. In three dreams, depicted in the first three tiers, he is threatened successively by angry peasants, knights, and clerics. Terrified, Henry awakes after each vision, takes up his arms to defend himself, but finds no one to fight against. The following morning, the king’s physician, Grimbald, who witnessed the events from a hiding place and later mentions them to Abbot Godfrey and John of Worcester, approaches the king to discuss these nightly occurrences. He interprets the visions and gives Henry advice to redeem his sins. However, it takes the fear of death during the crossing of a stormy sea to bring the king to repentance, as illustrated in the last tier. As before, the disposition of visionary and interpreter, sleeper and dream, figures and text adds a genuine quality to the representation of the dream vision. Each dream tier follows the same composition and refers to the spatial setting of the events. Grimbald is portrayed on the left; next to him, the text about the events separates him from the dream scene on the right, where the bed of the sleeping King Henry I is surrounded by the characters from his nightmares. The text column barrier and Grimbald’s position outside the written area of the page imply visually that the physician is not part of the visionary experience itself but watches the sleeper from a distance. In this disposition, a reference to biblical dream narration becomes visually apparent, as the arrangement of the different elements draws on iconographic and compositional traditions of visualizing prophetic dreams (Bogen 2001). The analogy is already laid out in the text itself. In his account, John of Worcester mentions the story of Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar and, in this way, adds authenticity to the report, highlighting the crucial role of Grimbald, which is also conveyed in the visual representation. The physician is characterized by various attributes: a specific cap, a urine vial, an ointment pot, and a tablet (Ganz 2008). Although Grimbald, first and foremost, acts as an interpreter of dreams, the objects accentuate his medical profession, which is of minor relevance to the narration. Through this comparison, however, an interesting parallel is established between mantic and medical practices, since both the diagnostic process and the dream interpretation begin with the visual witnessing of events followed by an interrogation of the patient regarding the invisible aspects and closes with the diagnosis and treatment. Grimbald is not simply a competent physician, however; he also embodies the qualities of a prophet. This analogy, emphasized by the reference to the Book of Daniel, points to different modes of vision according to Saint Augustine who described the dream of the biblical king as visio spiritualis and Daniel’s explanation as the higher ranked visio intellectualis (De genesi ad litteram libri duodecim, 12, 9, 20). Correspondingly, Grimbald’s interpretation of the dream must be acknowledged by the reader and beholder to be divinely inspired, for only God knows and reveals the hidden truth.



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Fig. 52: The Dreams of Henry I. Worcester Chronicle, completed 1140 (Oxford, Corpus Christi College Ms. 157, pp. 382–383). Photo credits: The Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

Due to this close relation to God, Old Testament prophets like Daniel often act as authorities in visual art and literature, testifying to the truth of events and representing wisdom. In succession, in certain artworks, visual representations of ‘prophets’, old bearded men wearing characteristic hats and holding scrolls or books, or Sibyls, women in antique or fantastical dresses and hats, gained a more symbolic status, e.  g. when appearing in the margins of wall paintings (e.  g. Giotto, Capella Peruzzi, Florence, Santa Croce, ca. 1315) or printed books of hours (e.  g. Book of Hours for the use of Rome, printed by Philippe Pigouchet for Simon Vostre, 1498). Prophets, however, also appear in rather complex systems; for example to visualize the concordance of Old Testament prophecy and its fulfilment in Christ in typological layouts (e.  g. in the Biblia Pauperum manuscripts and prints), but also to establish authenticity for contested prophecies of the end of time (window of the Fifteen Signs before Doomsday in Nuremberg, St. Martha, ca. 1390; Wagner 2016). Regarding illustrations of prophecy, visual art is closely connected to literature, as the disposition of visionary and vision often relates to literary structures by constructing the positions of narrator and narration, authorship and tradition. Visual images of vision and prophecy are therefore artefacts in which mantic practices are tied to the literary traditions and theoretical approaches in the fields of theology and the natural sciences.

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Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Illuminating the End of Time. The Getty Apocalypse Manuscript. Ed. Nigel J. Morgan. Los Angeles, 2011. John of Worcester. The Chronicle of John of Worcester. Volume III. The Annals from 1067 to 1140 with the Gloucester Interpolations and the Continuation to 1141. Ed. Patrick McGurk. Oxford, 1998.

Secondary Literature Bogen, Steffen. Träumen und Erzählen. Selbstreflexion der Bildkunst vor 1300. Munich, 2001. Emmerson, Richard K., and Suzanne Lewis. “Census and Bibliography of Medieval Manuscripts Containing Apocalypse Illustrations, ca. 800–1500.” Traditio 40, 41, and 42 (1984, 1985, and 1986): 337–379, 367–409, and 443–472. Ganz, David. Medien der Offenbarung. Visionsdarstellungen im Mittelalter. Berlin, 2008. Hamburger, Jeffrey. “Rezension von: David Ganz: Medien der Offenbarung. Visionsdarstellungen im Mittelalter” Kunstform 9 (2008). http://www.arthistoricum.net/kunstform/rezension/ ausgabe/2008/10/ (19 March 2020). Klein, Peter K. “From the Heavenly to the Trivial. Vision and Visual Perception in Early and High Medieval Apocalypse Illustration.” The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation. Papers from a Colloquium Held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome and the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1996. Eds. Herbert Kessler and Gerhard Wolf. Bologna, 1998. 247–278. Klein, Peter K. “Initialen als ‘Marginal Images’. Die Figureninitialen der Getty-Apokalypse.” Cahiers Archéologiques 48 (2000): 105–123. Klein, Peter K. “Visionary Experience and Corporeal Seeing in Thirteenth-Century English Apocalypses. John as External Witness and the Rise of Gothic Marginal Images.” Looking Beyond. Visions, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art & History. Eds. Column Hourihane. Princeton, 2010. 177–202. Wagner, Daniela. Die Fünfzehn Zeichen vor dem Jüngsten Gericht. Spätmittelalterliche Bildkonzepte für das Seelenheil. Berlin, 2016.

Digitized Artworks: Book of Hours for the use of Rome. Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, OEXV 281 RES. https://archive.org/details/OEXV281 (15 March 2020). Constance World Chronicle. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 426. http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/bsb00009566/images/ (15 March 2020). Getty Apocalypse. Los Angeles, Getty Museum, MS Ludwig III. http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/1360/unknown-commentary-byberengaudus-getty-apocalypse-english-about-1255-1260/ (15 March 2020). Chronicles of John of Worcester. Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS. 157. http://image.ox.ac.uk/show?collection=corpus&manuscript=ms157 (15 March 2020). Window of the Fifteen Signs (Rieter-Fenster). Nuremberg, St. Martha. http://www.corpusvitrearum.de/cvma-digital/bildarchiv.html (15 March 2020).

Regula Forster

The Pseudo-Aristotelian Sirr al-asrār/ Secretum secretorum The pseudo-Aristotelian Sirr al-asrār, more commonly known under its Latin title Secretum secretorum, is a tenth-century Arabic compilation of materials of diverse origins, including Classical Greek, Byzantine, Sassanid, and Arabic sources. In a series of prefaces, the text is presented as an epistle written by Aristotle to his pupil, Alexander the Great (Forster 2006, 11, 54–55). The work contains sections that may be considered as typical for a mirror for princes (i.  e. the chapter on the behavior of kings, warfare, the choosing of clerks and ministers) and others that might be seen as belonging rather to an encyclopedia (e.  g. the chapters on medicine, physiognomy, and alchemy). Sirr al-asrār was one of the most widely-read texts in the Middle Ages, in both East and West. In Arabic, two versions of slightly different lengths are extant (see Forster 2006, 20–30). From the Arabic, the text was translated into Persian, Turkish, Hebrew, Castilian, and (twice) Latin. The older Latin version (twelfth century) by John of Seville is partial in nature and focuses on medicine. John’s text was incorporated into the complete thirteenth-century Latin translation by Philip of Tripoli, a cleric who worked in the Holy Land. This translation is extant in several versions, at least 350 manuscripts, and several early prints (for the text, I refer to the edition of Möller 1963). From Latin, the text was subsequently translated into the majority of the European vernaculars (Williams 2003a; Williams 2003b; Forster 2006, 43–48, 113–240).

Prophets Prophets and prophecy are almost completely missing from Sirr al-asrār. Although Alexander himself is considered a prophet in the Islamic tradition (Renard 2001), no allusions are made to this tradition in Sirr al-asrār. Prophets are mentioned only three times. The first instance is in praise of Aristotle: “many sages have counted him (i.  e. Aristotle) among the prophets” (Badawī 1954, 67; cf. Möller 1963, 14). The second reference occurs in the introduction to the chapter on medicine (Badawī 1954, 86; cf. Möller 1963, 58). Here, Aristotle mentions the prophets as authorities on the knowledge presented, although Aristotle does not appear to count himself among their number. The prophets are considered as a kind of forerunner of the sages, and therewith of Aristotle himself, but in no way their superiors. The last instance occurs during the discussion of the importance of justice. The text stresses that to send a prophet is a sign of divine justice toward the world (Badawī 1954, 125; Möller 1963, 120). Here, the religious discourse, otherwise lacking from Sirr al-asrār (Forster 2006, 109), is for once present. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-082

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While prophets play an insignificant role, prognostics are topics in several of the more encyclopedic sections of the text.

Astrology Astrology is treated in several chapters throughout the text. Firstly, it has its own chapter in the section on the behavior of a king, in both Arabic and Latin (Forster 2006, 67). This is an interesting position for astrology, as it suggests that it is not considered an occult science, but rather important knowledge for succeeding in a courtly context. The chapter opens with general remarks on astrology, including an apologetic that presents the classic arguments regarding why astrology must be valid. Firstly, God has not created anything that is not useful; therefore, the constellations need to make sense; secondly, Plato himself studied the stars and achieved new insights by doing so; and, finally: Do not listen to the speech of the ignorant, who believe that the science of the stars (ʻilm al-nujūm) and the science of the invisible (ʻilm al-ghāʼib) are jokes that lead nowhere. And [do not listen to] the opinion of those who think, that this knowledge is lying about what it announces. Rather, I say, that the offer of this knowledge is indeed necessary. Because humans, even if they cannot save themselves from what is destined for them, can still prepare themselves inwardly and make sure to defend themselves against it according to their capabilities, just like people do against the cold of winter: by collecting fire wood, by repairing their houses, by preparing firewood and furs, etc. […]. (Badawī 1954, 85; cf. Möller 1963, 54)

This usefulness obviously does not make astrology valid, but the argument seems compelling. This chapter does not give Alexander any rules on how to apply this science, but merely urges him to become acquainted with all aspects of astrology and administer it, as it is efficient. Neither detailed regulations nor prognostic devices are mentioned. These, Aristotle suggests, are presented in a separate treatise (Badawī 1954, 86) which, however, has been translated into Latin as “another part of this book” (in quadam parte huius libri) (Möller 1963, 56). Astrology is mentioned again later in the text (Forster 2006, 97–98). Astrological considerations are recommended in the chapter on medicine: taking the position of the stars into account is particularly important in the preparation of the panacea, for the success of blood-letting, and when taking medication (Badawī 1954, 114–115; cf. Möller 1963, 106–110). In the ninth section, on warfare, the importance of astrology is stressed in two contexts: when flying the flag, and when setting out for a journey – or, rather, a campaign (Badawī 1954, 151–152; cf. Möller 1963, 154, without reference to the flag). Finally, in the last section of Sirr al-asrār, star constellations are important in the preparation of the “Talisman of the king” (Badawī 1954, 160–163), a section usually omitted from the Latin, although at least partially present in Roger Bacon’s edition (Forster 2006, 126). In all of these passages, Sirr al-asrār frames astrological



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considerations as part of ikhtiyār (“choosing”), i.  e. these are cases of catarchic astrology. Astrology is, here, less the art of predicting the future than of making one’s actual endeavors more successful.

Medicine In a similar line, a short passage on the advice of physicians could be called prognostic. Here, Sirr al-asrār provides rules on what to do in order to prevent illness and disease: If you do not have any heaviness of food in your stomach at the evening, you need not be afraid of paralysis or of aches of the joints. Whoever takes seven weights of perfectly sweet raisins in the morning, need not be afraid of the illnesses of phlegm and will be of good memory and sound reason. Who eats a bit of sweet, non-stinking asafoetida during the winter, will be safe of four-day-fever and weakness at the edges above the stomach. Who eats two nuts together with three figs seeds and light leaves of rocket will be safe of poison on that day. (Badawī 1954, 98; cf. Möller 1963, 88)

While this section is not prognostic in nature in a strict sense, it certainly comes close to being so, as it foretells the outcome of certain actions.

Physiognomy A chapter on physiognomy appears in all versions of the Arabic Sirr al-asrār and the Latin Secretum secretorum. In Arabic, it was also relatively successful as an independent text (Forster 2006, 14, 91). However, the position of the chapter on physiognomy within Sirr al-asrār varies. In the long version of the Arabic Sirr al-asrār, physiognomy features in part of the second section, i.  e. it contributes to the discussion of the behavior of a king. A knowledge of physiognomy is thought to be relevant to the success of a ruler. However, as this is followed by the chapter on medicine, the relationship with that science is also stressed. In other Arabic versions, this chapter is transplanted toward the end of the epistle, in close vicinity of other occult sciences (Forster 2019). A similar positioning is found in the most common version of the Latin text, the so-called “Vulgate” (Möller 1963). Here, the chapter on physiognomy forms the last chapter of the work, separated from the sections on both kingly behavior and medicine. As the larger part of the occult sciences is lacking, they do not form the backdrop to physiognomy either. Instead, as the final part of the text, physiognomy can be seen as a kind of summit of Aristotle’s knowledge. In other versions of Philip’s text, including that by Roger Bacon, the ordering is different: Bacon’s text (Steele 1920) contains several

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chapters on the occult sciences that are not commonly found in the Latin tradition and includes physiognomy among them. Finally, in a late thirteenth-century German version translated from Philip’s Latin text, physiognomy is reshaped to include parts of Hugo Ripelin’s Compendium theologicae veritatis, therewith creating yet a new text (Forster 2006, 175–179; Forster 2019, 327–328). Sirr al-asrār’s chapter on physiognomy is threefold, containing a theoretical introduction, a famous story about Hippocrates and Polemon, and a list of bodily parts and their meaning, in order to understand the character of the person in question. Physiognomy is less a prognostic science but rather a method whereby one is able, based on given symptoms, to judge the likely state of a person. Any prognosis can, as exemplified by the story of Hippocrates and Polemon, be wide of the mark: due to his physiognomic expertise, Polemon judges Hippocrates to be “a cheat, a godless man, who loves fornication” (Badawī 1954, 117; cf. Möller 1963, 156). Hippocrates’s pupils, upon this judgement, nearly kill the physiognomer but Hippocrates, as a true philosopher, explains that Polemon is describing his disposition accurately but that he, Hippocrates, does not act upon his impulses: “This is my property and my characteristic. But after I had realized that these things are ugly, I restrained myself from them and my intellect conquered my passions.” (Badawī 1954, 117; cf. Möller 1963, 156). The prognostic validity of physiognomy, it seems, is relatively limited.

Onomancy Onomancy, the art of knowing what will happen based on a name, features in part of the section on warfare. The chapter, in Arabic entitled Kitāb al-ghālib wa-l-maghlūb (“Book on the conqueror and the conquered”), is found in all of the Arabic versions of Sirr al-asrār and seems to have been relatively prominent, as it has been transmitted separately by a considerable number of manuscripts (Forster 2006, 79–80). The process suggested in this chapter is a very simple form of prognostics: one needs to know only the name of one’s opponent. Still, the introduction stresses the very secret character of the knowledge presented (Badawī 1954, 152–153). Following the introduction, the text enumerates the letters of the Arabic alphabet and goes on to explain that Alexander should calculate the names of the generals of both armies, without giving any further specifics. The idea behind this instruction is clearly that every letter of the Arabic alphabet equals a number, so it is possible to calculate to sum these figures in order to ascertain the value of any given name. From this sum, the text explains, one should subtract nine repeatedly, until a figure of nine or less remains. Once this has been applied to both names, the following steps should be followed:



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Chapter on one One and nine: One conquers nine. One and eight: Eight conquers one. One and seven: One conquers seven. One and six: Six conquers one. […] Chapter on nine If both are nine, the attacker conquers the attacked. Manage well this science, Alexander, by your reason and the quality of your understanding, and you will be victorious and triumphant, God the Sublime willing. (Badawī 1954, 153–155)

The whole chapter would have been far shorter if it had simply been stated: if one number is odd and the other even, the name linked with the bigger number wins; if both numbers are either odd or even, but differ from each other, the name linked with the smaller number wins; if both numbers are the same and odd, the attacker wins; and if both numbers are the same and even, the defender wins. Even in the so-called short version of the Arabic Sirr al-asrār, that does not provide a complete list, there is an abbreviated list rather than these shorter, general rules (Forster 2006, 80). By presenting these rules in an extended, list-like frame, Sirr al-asrār is fashioned as a text that should be consultable, perhaps in the way of a handbook. The chapter on onomancy was not translated into Latin. For a long time, a ban by the church has been suggested, but this has been proven to be a myth (Williams 2003a). Rather, the omission of onomancy may be due to the fact that the instructions only work with Arabic script (Forster 2006, 124–125). Although onomancy does exist in Latin, it seems to be independent of Sirr al-asrār (Burnett 1988). Prophecy is almost completely absent from the pseudo-Aristotelian Sirr al-asrār. Prognostics, however, as part of the practices that could be important to a ruler play a central role in the knowledge taught, purportedly, by Aristotle to Alexander the Great. Astrology is defended as a way of knowing and preparing oneself for the future, but is especially praised as a technique that will produce better results, especially with regard to medicine, but also in warfare. Physiognomy is seen as a way of analyzing people, especially courtiers, and even foretelling their likely actions. Onomancy, finally, is the most obvious prognostic feature of the Arabic Sirr al-asrār, although the system presented works only with Arabic script, and so was not translated into the Latin versions.

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Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Badawī, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān. Al-Uṣūl al-yūnāniyya li-l-naẓariyyāt al-siyāsiyya fī l-Islām, part 1. Cairo, 1954. Möller, Reinhold. Hiltgart von Hürnheim. Mittelhochdeutsche Prosaübersetzung des “Secretum secretorum”. Berlin, 1963. Steele, Robert. Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi, fasc. 5. Secretum secretorum cum glossis et notulis. Tractatus brevis et utilis ad declarandum quedam obscure dicta Fratris Rogeri. Oxford, 1920.

Secondary Literature Burnett, Charles. “The Eadwine Psalter and the Western Tradition of the Onomancy in PseudoAristotle’s Secret of Secrets.” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 55 (1988): 143–167. Forster, Regula. Das Geheimnis der Geheimnisse. Die arabischen und deutschen Fassungen des pseudo-aristotelischen Sirr al-asrār/Secretum secretorum. Wiesbaden, 2006. Forster, Regula. “Physiognomy as a Secret for the King. The Chapter on Physiognomy in the pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets.” Visualizing the Invisible with the Human Body Physiognomy and Ekphrasis in the Ancient World. Eds. J. Cale Johnson and Alessandro Stavru. Berlin, 2019. 321–345. Renard, John. “Alexander.” Encyclopaedia of the Qurʼān. Ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe. Vol. 1. Leiden, 2001. 61–62. Williams, Steven J. The Secret of Secrets. The Scholarly Career of a Pseudo-Aristotelian Text in the Latin Middle Ages. Ann Arbor, 2003a. Williams, Steven J. “The Vernacular Tradition of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets in the Middle Ages: Translations, Manuscripts, Readers.” Filosofia in volgare nel medioevo. Atti del Convegno della Società Italiana per lo Studio del Pensiero Medievale (SISPM), Lecce, 27–29 settembre 2002. Eds. Nadia Bray and Loris Sturlese. Louvain-la-Neuve, 2003b. 451–482.

Stefano Rapisarda

The Shoulder-Bone as a Mantic Object This picture (Fig. 53) displays three sheep shoulder bones – two in dorsal view and one in costal view (the one in the center of the picture). This mantic object is related to the divinatory technique named scapulomancy or spatulomancy, or omoplatoscopy in the Byzantine world. It consists of detecting and interpreting prognostics deriving from signs displayed on the scapular bones of various animals, especially ruminants: sheep, rams, and lambs. This divinatory practice is very ancient. It is well attested in various parts of the globe and by different civilizations that are widely separated one from the other (Andree 1906; Eisenberger 1938; Bawden 1958). Particularly in China, scapulomancy holds a special significance: the oldest Chinese writing records, dating from the time of the Shang dynasty, around 1250 BC, are engraved on the shoulders of animals used for divinatory purposes (Keightley 1978; Flad 2008; Eno 2009). A synthesis of the world diffusion in Rapisarda 2017, 1–20. Also, in medieval and early modern Europe, scapulomancy is widely-documented in Germanic areas (Eisemberg 1938, 56), in the Baltic countries (Sayers 1992, 57, reporting a consultation of duke Lengvenis, “an ein schulderbein er sach, / des quam sin hertze in ungemach”), and in the British Isles, especially in Ireland and Scotland, where it has been practiced continuously until

Fig. 53: Three sheep shoulder bones. Photo credits: Stefano Rapisarda. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-083

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recent times (Thoms 1878), and in the Greco-Balkanique domain, where modern records feature in the memories of several veterans of the Greek war of independence against the Turks in 1821 (Eisemberger 1938, 52–54). Other, more recent records concern a singular figure from twentieth-century Russian history, Nikolai Robert Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg (1886–1921), a Zarist general of the White Army acting in Mongolia who, according to some testimonies, never took action before reading prognostications based on the shoulder bones of sacrificed sheep (Perchine 2010, 123–124). Indeed, a report from the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1937 states that the practice of scapulomancy was still common and normal in Mongolia at that time, despite the attempts to enforce Sovietization, which pushed local people to drop as “antimodern” these traditional practices in order to make them disappear (Montell 1937, 113–114). From these records, it appears that scapulomancy is a divinatory technique associated with the most basic forms of livelihood of nomadic populations. Usually, the shoulder bone based on which the prognosis is cast is taken from a herbivorous animal, such as a ram, sheep or cow, but other animals can be used too, as happens in some areas of the Far East where omens can be cast from the grooves in the shells of sea turtles. The practice of basing forecasts on the scapular bones of ruminants is connected with the fact that these bones are flatter and wider than any other bones in the animals’ bodies (Ashdown-Done, 2010). As a result of its features, “primitivism”, and global diffusion, scapulomancy has been the subject of specific ethno-anthropologic research from the very foundation of these disciplines; the first of the modern studies was that, already cited, by Thoms, to which should be added that by Andrée (1908), who in the early twentieth century studied scapulomancy in a comparative sense as an anthropological phenomenon common to the most diverse civilizations throughout the world. Eisenberger (1938), some decades later, impressively expanded the anthropologic documentation, Bawden (1958) deepened the study of the practice among the people of the steppes of Central Asia, and Khayyam Moore (1957) focused on Naskapi people in Northern Canada. The latter also developed a controversial hypothesis which induced both warm acceptation and harsh dismissal in the scientific community (especially Slaughter 1981 and Vollweiler-Sanchez 1983). Khayyam Moore argued that the scapulomancy practiced by the Naskapi with regard to caribou shoulder bones was used to choose hunting trails at random, thus increasing the possibility of the survival of the group during the Arctic winter. He claimed that the practice of this form of divination indeed constituted a way of introducing elements of chance in order to break the repetition of rigid social habits. It is a “general theory” of divination, typical of the anthropology of the functionalist school, which proves to be highly stimulating and has had a great impact on the specific areas of ethno-anthropology and ecology. Beyond its specific validity, the theory of Khayyam Moore gives a general idea of the importance that this type of divinatory technique enjoyed and perhaps continues to enjoy in the material life of many people around the world.



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Such dissemination, that is almost universal, has not yet been fully explained. In the past, it was assumed that this practice it initially developed on the steppes of Central Asia and then “concentrically” spread worldwide, finally reaching the West during the crisis of the Roman Empire, as conveyed through contact with barbarian “tribes” such as the Sarmatians (Andree, 143). More than an explanation based on a documented transmission, this was a sort of framework for representing an idea of translatio scientiae that was widespread in European thought from the eighteenth century onward whereby, in the history of humanity, the “influences of civilization” occurred mainly from East to West (Clark 1997 and Lackner 2008). Other anthropologists, such as Eisenberger, working in a cultural context grimly related to “racial” research, do not see a technique imported from the East in scapulomancy but, rather, regard it as an atavistic practice that originated in Stone Age Europe and spread around the world by hunter peoples (Eisenberger 1938, 111). What is certain is that sheep are the most widely-used animals in the ritual sacrifices of all world religions (Petropoulou 2008). If the “primitive” phases of the dissemination of scapulomancy are impossible to document, nevertheless the first contact with this practice in use in the West among the Mongols is recorded in the testimony of the Flemish Franciscan missionary and explorer William of Rubruck (ca. 1220–ca. 1270). He refers to having seen the charred remains of the shoulder bone of a ram in the house of the Mongol Khan Mangu, and states that the Great Khan did nothing without first consulting these bones. This involved throwing them into the fire before examining them three at a time in order to see if the heat had split them lengthwise, in which case the prognosis was favorable and he could proceed with his action. If, on the contrary, the bones split horizontally or if holes appeared on their surface, then the prognosis was unfavorable and he would suspend whatever action he had been planning to take (Jackson-Morgan 2009, 193, 205). Once again, this method of reading the bones practiced by the Mongols appears to be elementary, based on a simple “analogy”. Other anthropologists report that a Manchu tribe, the so-called Goldi of the Sungari river, read shoulder bones in such a way: the appearance of two long lines shaped like a “tongue” is, according to them, a positive sign, while a single “tongue” or the absence of a “tongue” is a bad omen. Moreover, the closer these signs were to each other, the more positive the prognosis (Bawden 1994, 4–5). Indeed, even if the traces of the ‘primitive’ phases of its diffusion, as we noted, are impossible to record, it is however easier to trace the path by which scapulomancy reached the Latin West, as we can state with relative certainty that it passed through North Africa around the mid-twelfth century (see Fig. 54: MS Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunisie. 18848, fol. 5), and from there reached Islamic Spain before spreading to the north, in the direction of the insular Celtic world and the British Isles in particular. In any case, reports two very different methods of shoulder bone consultation that modern anthropologists name, depending on the process employed, “with calcination” and “without calcination” (Burnett 1996, 30 and Hermes 2001, 253).

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Fig. 54: Evidence of scapulomancy in medieval Northern Africa in an Arabic manuscript (Tunis, Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunisie Ms. 18848, fol. 5). Photo credits: Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunisie.

The first method, also called “piromantic”, that is to say “by the use of fire”, is prevalent in Central Asia, the Far East and also among the Naskapi tribes studied by Moore. The shoulder bone, after being extracted from the animal and carefully cleaned of flesh, is then heated on a fire until cracks appear on its surface. These cracks are then interpreted by the diviner. In China during the Shang dynasty, before being exposed to fire, the shoulder bones were drilled artificially, in order to facilitate and speed up the cracking process, especially when the bone came from a large animal, such as a cow. Drilling also increases the number of cracks, thereby multiplying the potential



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interpretations. In some cases, a question was written or scratched onto the bone, to which, according to the position of the cracks, holes and fissures, a positive or negative response was cast. This same practice of drilling the bone can be found in written texts: Bawden states that, in 1938, a Danish expedition in Central Asia discovered two texts in Mongolian in which this method was described (Bawden 1958, 1–44). As far as Europe is concerned, there is, however, a far wider diffusion of the so-called “apiromantique” scapulomancy; that is to say, “without the use of fire”, whereby the flesh is removed from the shoulder when “cold”, or the shoulder is boiled so that flesh spontaneously detaches from the bone so that it can be read by a soothsayer without subsequent manipulation. In the Arabic-oriental and Middle-Eastern world, both methods are recorded but, in Islamic North Africa, the apiromantique procedure appears to prevail, as in Europe (Burnett 1996, 30). The preparation of the animal follows a procedure which is relatively similar across different civilizations. Among herbivores, the favored animal is usually a sheep, or an animal from the same family, such as a ram or a lamb, since the width of their shoulder bones is considered to make them more easily “legible”, although other animals may also be used, including rabbits. The most important thing is that the animal has a material and symbolic importance in the civilization practicing the technique: in imperial Japan, the shoulders of deer were used; during China’s Shang dynasty, the reading of the shoulder bones of cattle and pigs was practiced, which on the contrary would never be used in the Islamic world, where such animals are regarded in a less positive light. The preliminary procedure for the use of the shoulder bone is long and complex. First of all, one must choose an animal from among those who belong to the “boss of the sheep” (i.  e. the owner of the land and animals, who is normally the person requesting the prognostication), or else it must be chosen by a person of recognized morality who enjoys the trust of the person requesting the prognostication. Certain texts require the animal to be a virgin. To make this procedure effective, a form of transfer ritual between the person requesting the sacrifice for the purpose of prognostication and the sacrificial animal is often requested, whereby the animal must come into contact with the person and spend three days and three nights in his/her house. Finally, the animal is beheaded in a “sacred” place in such a way that it does not see the knife that kills it. Then the carcass is boiled until the flesh separates from the bones. The shoulder bone is extracted, wrapped in an unused piece of canvas, then stored under the head of the diviner as he/she sleeps, so that he/she comes into contact with the animal, according to the common practices associated with “incubation”. On the following day, the enquirer cleans the shoulder bone with the canvas in which it was wrapped and obtains a forecast. The “reader” of the shoulder bone has learned to observe parts of it in order to analyze the various natural lines, cavities, grooves and color variations, before assigning a series of predictions to specific parts.

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According to its anatomical profile, the shoulder bone presents two surfaces – an inner, “costal” part, and an external, “dorsal”, part. Usually, forecasts are based on the outer surface, the dorsal, which in several domestic animals, such as sheep and horses, contains a well-pronounced relief, named the spina or “nose”, which separates it into two sides. In modern anatomical terms, these are named the fossa supraspinata on the left and the fossa infraspinata on the right. Prognostications are generally based on the external surface of the shoulder bone, unless specified in the texts, although some are explicitly attributed to the costal inner surface. Similarly, prognostications can be based on either the left or right shoulder bone, but some of them specifically refer to one of the two shoulder bones. For the parts of the shoulder bone, it is possible to identify the existence of a relatively standard terminological “tradition” both in the Arabic and Western scapulomancies (for the texts, see Rapisarda 2017).

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Hermes Trismegistus. Astrologica et Divinatoria. Cura et studio Gerrit Bos et al. Turnhout, 2001. The Mongol Mission. Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth centuries. Ed. Christopher Dawson. London, 1955. Textes médiévaux de spatulomancie. Ed. Stefano Rapisarda. Paris, 2017.

Secondary Literature Andree, Richard. “Scapulimantia.” Boas Anniversary Volume, Anthropological Papers Written in Honor of Franz Boas, Professor of Anthropology in Columbia University, Presented to him on the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of his Doctorate. Ed. Berthold Laufer. New York, 1906. 143–165.  Ashdown, Raymond, and Stanley H. Done. Color Atlas of Veterinary Anatomy, The Ruminants. Baltimore, 2010. Bawden, Charles R. “On the Practice of Scapulimancy among the Mongols.” Central Asiatic Journal 4 (1958): 1–44 [repr. Confronting the Supernatural: Mongolian Traditional Ways and Means. Collected Papers by Charles R. Bawden. Wiesbaden, 1994. 111–142]. Burnett, Charles. “Divination from Sheep’s Shoulder Blades: a Reflection on Andalusian Society.” Cultures in Contact in Medieval Spain: Historical and Literary Essays Presented to Leonard P. Harvey. Eds. David Hook and Barry Taylor. London, 1990. 29–45 [repr. Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages. Aldershot, 1996, no XIV]. Clarke John J. Oriental Enlightenment. The Encounter between Asian and Western Thought. London, 1997. Eisenberger, Elmar Jakob. “Das Wahrsagen aus dem Schulterblatt.” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie 35 (1938): 49–116. Eno, Robert. “Shang State Religion and the Pantheon of the Oracle Texts.” Early Chinese Religion. Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC–220 AD). Eds. John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski. Leiden and Boston, 2009. I: 41–103.



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Flad, Rowan. “Divination and Power: A Multi-Regional View of the Development of Oracle Bone Divination in Early China.” Current Anthropology 49 (2008): 403–437. Jackson, Peter, and David Morgan. The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck: His Journey to the Court of the Great Khan Möngke, 1253–1255. Indianapolis, IN, and Cambridge, 2009. Keightley, David N. Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China. Berkeley, 1978. Khayyam Moore, Omar. “Divination. A New Perspective.” American Anthropologist 59 (1957): 69–74. Lackner, Michael. “‘Ex Oriente Scientia?’ Reconsidering the Ideology of a Chinese Origin of Western Knowledge.” Asia Major 21 (2008): 183–200 = Festschrift for Nathan Sivin. Eds. Henry Rosemont et al. Montell, Gösta Montell. “The Torguts of Etsin-Gol.” Man 37 (1937): 113–114. Perchine, Dmitri. L’épopéé du baron Ungern-Sternberg en Mongolie. Mémoire d’un témoin sur le temps des troubles en Mongolie-Exterieure (1919–1921). Traduit du russe et presenté par Dany Savelli. Besançon, 2010. Petropoulou, Maria-Zoe. Animal Sacrifice in Ancient Greek Religion, Judaism, and Christianity, 100 BC to AD 200. Oxford, 2008. Sayers, William. “Scapulimancy in the Medieval Baltic.” Journal of Baltic Studies 23 (1992): 57–62. Slaughter, Dale C. “The Shoulder-Blade Path Revisited: a Belated Response to Omar Khayyam Moore.” Arctic Anthropology 18 (1981): 95–103. Sprengling, Martin. “Scapulimantia and the Mongols.” American Anthropologist 35 (1933): 134–137. Thoms, William J. “Divination by the Blade-Bone.” The Folk-Lore Record 1 (1878): 176–179. Vollweiler, Lothar Georg, and Alison B. Sanchez. “Divination: ‘Adaptive’ from Whose Perspective?” Ethnology 22 (1983): 193–209.

Marco Heiles

Sortes

The Latin term sortes is used in modern academia to refer to a textual genre which the Western European vernacular languages call “lot book” (German: “Losbuch”; Dutch: “lot boek”) or “book of sorts” (French: “livre de sorts”; Spanish: “libro de (las) suertes”; Italian: “libro delle sorti”); in English, this type of texts is also called “a book of fate” or “a book of fortune”. In medieval times, the terms sortes and sortilegium could be used in this narrow sense, but were also used to refer to all kinds of sortition and cleromancy. In fact, sortes texts are, in their general structure, comparable to other texts on sortileges, like Mantic Alphabets and geomantic tables but, although they share common features, the sortes form a separate genre and belong to a different tradition (Heiles 2018, 89–126; Lemaitre-Provost 2010, 49–56). There are two types of sortes texts: sortes without questions or “colecciones libres”, as Montero Cartelle (Montero Cartelle and Alsonso Guardo 2004, 20–31) calls them, and sortes with questions or “collectiones dirigidas” (Heiles 2018, 39–68; ­Luijendijk and Klingshirn 2019, 27). Both types provide a number of independent sayings and possess a special layout structure that makes it possible to read only one of these sayings selected through a random process. In its simplest form, a sortes without questions text is divided into 56 paragraphs and the reader is guided by a dice roll. The reader of the Sortes Sanctorum, a Latin sortes text written in late-antique Gaul and transmitted until the fifteenth century, for example, requires the reader to roll three dice and sort them by number. He then needs to look for a paragraph marked with his combination, e.  g. 6–6–4. In this lucky case, he would be informed: “C.C.IIII. Deus te adiuvabit de quo cupis. Deum roga, cito perveniens ad quod desideras” (Sortes Sanctorum, eds. Montero Cartelle and Alsonso Guardo, 70) / 6–6–4 “God will help you regarding what you desire. Ask God, soon you will achieve what you wish.” While these texts make only unspecific declarations, the sortes with questions provide detailed answers to a given set of questions. The Prenostica Socratis Basilei, a twelfth-century Latin translation of Arabic sortes, for example, give a list of 16 questions. These sortes can tell the reader, inter alia, if it is a good idea to take a wife or not, if a captive will escape, if a pregnant woman will give birth to a boy or a girl, or if lost property will be recovered. Here, the reader must randomly select a number between two and ten (or between one and nine in older versions of the text), by creating a line of points without counting them, by turning a wheel, which will point to a number, or by throwing two dice (if the figure obtained exceeds number nine, this amount is ­subtracted). The result determines the answer. A table and set of diagrams lead the reader to his answer spoken by one of twelve kings. If the reader wishes to know, whether he should marry, and if his number is 10, the king of the Tatars would give him a clear answer: Caveas tibi ab uxore (Prenostica Socratis Basilei, eds. Montero Cartelle and Alonso Guardo, 234) – “Beware of the wife.” Sortes books are based on very https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-084



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simple randomizing and search operations. The books are self-contained and do not depend on specialist knowledge or a specific temple cult. This is probably why sortes texts could be adapted from different cultures around the Mediterranean, but also in Asia and India (Strickmann 2005, esp. 98–145). The divinatory power of the sortes derived from the idea that there is no sheer randomness but that even uncontrolled actions, like throwing dice, are influenced by either celestial forces or divine will. The only limit to their prognosis might be free will (Sturlese 2011). Both types of sortes texts have been known in the Latin West since late antiquity (fourth/fifth century CE). These early Latin texts are translations or adaptations of Greek texts from the Eastern Mediterranean (Luijendijk/Klingshirn 2019). The aforementioned Sortes Sanctorum and the closely-related Sortes Monacenses belong to the same family of texts as the Greek dice oracles in South Western Anatolia, which were inscribed on large monolithic pillars in the second century CE and were selected by the throwing of knucklebones or astragaloi (Graf 2005; Wilkinson 2015). The Sortes Sangallenses, a Latin sortes text with questions from the fourth to the sixth centuries, only preserved in a sixth-century manuscript at Saint Gall, are an adaptation of the Greek Sortes Astrampsychi, a text preserved in papyrus fragments from the third to sixth centuries, and in medieval Byzantine manuscripts from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries (Klingshirn 2005). The Sortes Sangermanenses again augment the Gospel of John in tenth-century Gaul with numbered oracular “interpretations”, which offer a randomized reading of the text (Harris 1901, 45, 59–74; Wilkinson 2019). This text forms part of a tradition known to us by a series of Greek, Coptic, Aramaic and Syriac Gospel texts, with interpretations or hermeneiai (Childers 2017, 248–263). Latin translations from Hebrew and Arabic sources appear first in the thirteenth century. The aforementioned Prenostica Socratis Basilei are adaptations of a version of the Arabic sortes al-qur’a al-ma’muniyya (“Sortes of al-Ma’mun”) (Iafrate 2015, 34), and the source of the Liber Alfadohl was identified in a series of Arabic manuscripts by Paul Kunitzsch (Kunitzsch 1968; Kunitzsch 1984). The Prenostica Pitagorice considerationis, Questiones Albedati and the Sortes Albedati are adaptations of the Hebrew sortes Sefer Goralot Sa’adya Ga’on‘ (Iafrate 2015, 34). Latin sortes texts were copied in manuscripts until the seventeenth century. Marco Heiles could currently list a total of 19 different Latin sortes texts – among which only three texts appeared without questions – transmitted in 108 manuscript exemplars (Heiles 2018, 436–450). The majority of the sortes manuscripts dates back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The most popular texts were the Sortes Regis Amalrici (Ed. Burnett, 103–125), formerly known as Experimentarius Bernardi Silvestri, with 27 copies, and the Prenostica Socratis Basilei, with a total of 19 copies. Both texts were transmitted in two versions. Thanks to the studies of Allegra Iafrate the best known Latin sortes manuscript is Oxford Boldleian Library MS Ashmole 304, which is available as a facsimile edition (Iafrate 2015). This manuscript is a collection of one onomatomantic tract and seven sortes texts, written and illustrated by Matthew Paris in St Albans (England) during the first half of the thirteenth century. This is the first extant example of an illustrated sortes text and the

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source of a Anglo-Norman translation of the sortes Divinacio Ciceronalis in manuscript London British Library Royal 12 C. XII (fourteenth century), a multiple text manuscript produced for the nobility (Iafrate 2015, 49, 70). Manuscript MS Ashmole 304 can therefore be regarded as a link between the monastic and clerical sortes manuscripts of the Early and High Middle Ages and the illustrated sortes manuscripts of the Late Middle Age courts. Manuscript Vienna Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Cod. 2352 of King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia, where the Prenostica Socratis Basilei are combined with a depiction of the Rota Fortuna (Zatočil 1968), and the German sortes manuscript Heidelberg Universitätsbibliothek Cod. pal. germ. 7 of the Elector Palantine Louis III (1378–1436) (Heiles 2018, 395–396, 466) are examples of the latter type. None of the Latin texts were printed in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries, but there is an ongoing vivid printing tradition of vernacular sortes texts beginning around 1482, with the prints of Lorenzo Spirito Gualteri’s Libro delle sorti in Perugia (Urbini 2006), the Würfelbuch für Liebende in Augsburg, and the Losbuch der Beginen und Begarden in Strasbourg (1479–82) and Ulm (Heiles 2018, 209–211). Altogether, there are 17 incunabula prints of sortes in German, Italian and French, and Manfred Zollinger could list at least 70 prints in German, Italian, French and Spanish for the sixteenth century and 60 sortes prints for the seventeenth century, now also including one Latin and a few English and texts (Zollinger 1996, 197–267), but Zollinger’s list is incomplete and omits, for example, all of the Dutch sortes prints (Braekman 1981). The vernacular sortes texts were produced since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Anglo-Norman, French, Provencal, Italian, English and German. The only known Dutch manuscript sortes survived as a fragment in the famous Van Hulthem manuscript, Brussels Royal Library 15.589–623, from the early fifteenth century (KuulkerJungman and Gijsen 1995). The Italian manuscript tradition is largely unknown (Urbini 2006, 43–44 with note 79; Thormann 1898) – the research on Italian sortes concentrates on the printed tradition (Procaccioli 2007)  –, but we have a series of studies on Anglo-Norman (Hunt 2013, 269–292; Patterson 2015), English (Braekman 1980; McDonald 2006), and Provencal sortes in manuscripts (Bernard 2014; Bernard 2009) and two recent monographs on the continental French (Lemaitre-Provost 2010) and German manuscript tradition (Heiles 2018). Spanish and Catalonian (Alonso Guardo 2014) as well as Polish and Hungarian sortes (Kiliańczyk-Zięba 2016) are only known since the sixteenth century. The French and German sortes traditions were especially productive. Lemaitre-Provost’s study is based on 20 medieval French sortes texts and Heiles lists as many as 54 different German sortes texts transmitted in 48 manuscripts and 24 print runs prior to 1550. In both traditions, sortes texts were first translated and authored anonymously for noble collectors and their courts, like the aforementioned Elector Palantine Louis III or Charles V of France (1338–1380) (Lemaitre-Provost 2010, 75, 110–111). In addition, especially in the fifteenth century, bourgeois readers play an increasingly important role, be it at universities or among the urban upper classes (Heiles 2018, 250–273). Here, we also find the first nameable compiler and author of vernacular sortes, Konrad Bollstatter (ca. 1420/30–1482/83), who



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was a professional scribe in Ausgburg. His personal, richly-illustrated collection of ten sortes texts is still preserved in manuscript München Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cgm 312 (Schneider 1973). In this manuscript, the sortes are not primarily presented as divinatory texts – parts of the reference systems are missing and the texts themselves warn against superstitious divinatory use. Here, the sortes are combined with a series of Rota Fortuna illustrations and, like them, refer to the volatility of earthly fortune and eternal felicity in the kingdom of heaven (Heiles 2018, 239–249). The condemnation of sortes as superstition and magic is nearly as old as the textual history of Latin sortes itself. As William Klingshirn was able to demonstrate, the use of the Sortes Sanctorum and similar texts was prohibited to clerics at the Councils of Vanes (between 462 and 468) and Agde (506), and for lay persons at Orléans (511) and Auxerre (561/605). Isidore of Seville finally integrated the wording of the council of Agde in his definition of magi in the Etymologiae (623) and, from there, this was repeated in almost every medieval account on magic, including canon law and vernacular catechesis (Klingshirn 2002, 84–90, 104–114; Lemaitre-Provost 2010, 119–158; Heiles 2018, 153–191). In the sortes texts and their framing material, different strategies were elaborated to deal with this condemnation, which influenced the praxis of reading the sortes. Already, the Sortes Sanctorum had a Christianising framing of instructions, which demanded the recitation of specific prayers prior to consulting the text. Other sortes appeared as astrological texts. They use astrological terminology (Burnett 1977; Heiles 2018, 47–56, 82–88) or are attributed to scientific authorities (Iafrate 2014). Others, in turn, emphasized their playful character, presenting themselves as dicing games or using card games as illustrations (McDonald 2006; Bernard 2009; Heiles 2018, 207–217). In particular, printed sortes were presented as entertaining games and it was only this attribution that made their commercial success possible.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Les Livres de Sorts en Moyen Française. Étude et édition critique. Ed. Solange Lemaitre-Provost. Québec, 2010. Los ‘libros de suertes’ medievales. Las Sortes Sanctorum y Los Prenostica Socratis Basilei. Estudio, traducción y editión crítica. Eds. Enrique Montero Cartelle and Alberto Alonso Guardo. Madrid, 2004. Matthew of Paris. Matthieu Paris: Le Moin et le Hasard: Boldleian Library, MS Ashmole 304. Ed. Allegra Iafrate. Paris, 2015. Schneider, Karin. Ein Losbuch Konrad Bollstatters aus Cgm 312 der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München. Wiesbaden, 1973. Writing the Future. Prognostic Texts of Medieval. Ed. Tony Hunt. Paris, 2013.

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Secondary Literature Alonso Guardo, Alberto. “Las artes adivinatorias en la literatura española durante el Renacimiento: los libros de suertes.” Señales, portentos y demonios: la magia en la literatura y cultura españolas del Renacimiento. Eds. Eva Lara and Alberto Montaner. Salamanca, 2014. 517–536. Bernard, Katy Sarah. “Le Dodechedron occitan du manuscrit fr. 14771 de la Bibliotheque Nationale de Franc.” Dialogues among Books in Medieval Western Magic and Divination. Eds. Stefano Rapisarda and Erik Niblaeus. Florence, 2014. 101–126. Bernard, Katy Sarah. “Jouer sur les mots et jouer avec les mots, des aspects ludiques de l’art divinatoire des livres de sorts: exemples occitans.” Interstudia 5 (2009): 54–65. Braekman, Willy. “Fortune-Telling by the Casting of Dice. A Middle English Poem and Its Background.” Studia Neophilologica 52 (1980): 3–29. Braekman, Willy. “Rethoricaal Orakelboek op rijm.” Jaarboek De Fonteine (1981): 5–37, http://www. dbnl.org/tekst/_jaa005198001_01/_jaa005198001_01_0002.php (15 March 2020). Burnett, Charles. “What is the ‘Experimentarius’ of Bernardus Silvestris?” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 44 (1977): 79–125. Childers, Jeff W. “You Have Found What You Seek: The Form and Function of a Sixth-Century Divinatory Bible in Syriac. A Unique Syriac Manuscript.” Snapshots of Evolving Traditions. Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology. Eds. Liv Ingeborg Lied and Hugo Lundhaug. Berlin and Boston, 2017. 242–271. Graf, Fritz. “Rolling the Dice for an Answer.” Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination. Eds. Sarah Illes Johnston and Peter T. Struck. Leiden, 2005. 51–97. Heiles, Marco. Das Losbuch. Manuskriptologie einer Textsorte des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts. Cologne et al., 2018. Iafrate, Allegra. “Pythagoras Index. Denoting Authorship in Sortes Books.” Dialogues among Books in Medieval Western Magic and Divination. Eds. Stefano Rapisarda and Erik Niblaeus. Florence, 2014. 77–100. Jungman, Greet, and Annelies van Gijsen. “Het lot van een orakelboek: een bijdrage tot de reconstructie van het handschrift-Van Hulthem.” Millennium (Nijmegen) 9.1 (1995): 27–45. Kiliańczyk-Zięba, Justyna. “In Search of Lost Fortuna. Reconstructing the Publishing History of the Polish Book of Fortune-Telling.” Lost Books: Reconstructing the Print World of Pre-Industrial Europe. Eds. Flavia Bruni and Andrew Pettegree. Leiden and Boston, 2016. 120–143. Klingshirn, William E. “Defining the Sortes Sanctorum: Gibon, Du Cange, and Early Christian Lot Divination.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 10 (2002): 77–130. Klingshirn, William E. “Christian Divination in Late Roman Gaul: the Sortes Sangallenses.” Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination. Eds. Sarah Illes Johnston and Peter T. Struck. Leiden, 2005. 99–128. Kunitzsch, Paul. “Zum ‚Liber Afadhol’ eine Nachlese.” Zeitschriften der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 118 (1968): 297–314. Kunitzsch, Paul. “Eine neue Alfadhol-Handschrift.” Zeitschriften der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 134 (1984): 280–285. Luijendijk, AnneMarie, and William E. Klingshirn. “The Literature of Lot Divination.” My Lots Are in Thy Hands: Sortilege and Its Practitioners in Late Antiquity. Eds. AnneMarie Luijendijk and William E. Klingshirn. Leiden and Boston, 2019. 19–59. McDonald, Nicola F. “Games Medieval Women Play.” The Legend of Good Women: Context and Reception. Ed. Carolyn P. Collete. Woodbridge, 2006. 176–197. Patterson, Serina. “Sexy, Naughty, and Lucky in Love. Playing Ragemon le Bon in English Gentry Housholds.” Games and Gaming in Medieval Literature. Ed. Serina Patterson. New York, 2015. 79–102.



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Procaccioli, Paolo (ed.). Studi per le ‘sorti’ gioco, immagini, poesia oracolare a Venice nel Cinquecento. Treviso and Rome, 2007. Strickmann, Michel. Chinese Poetry and Prophecy. The Written Oracle in East Asia. Stanford, 2005. Sturlese, Loris. “Thomas von Aquin und die Mantik.” Mantik, Schicksal und Freiheit im Mittelalter. Ed. Loris Sturlese. Cologne et al., 2011. 97–107. The Annotators of the Codex Bezae (With some Notes on Sortes Sanctorum). Ed. James Rendel Harris. London, 1901. Thormann, Franz. “Uno livro de sorti de papa Bonifacio.” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 100 (1989): 77–102. https://archive.org/stream/archivfrdasstu100 brauuoft#page/77 (15 March 2020). Urbini, Silvia. Il Libro delle sorti di Lorenzo Gualteri. Modena, 2006. Wilkinson, Kevin. “A Greek Ancestor of the ‘Sortes Sanctorum’.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 196 (2015): 94–102. Wilkinson, Kevin. “Hermēneiai in Manuscripts of John’s Gospel: An Aid to Bibliomancy.” My Lots Are in Thy Hands: Sortilege and Its Practitioners in Late Antiquity. Eds. AnneMarie Luijendijk and William E. Klingshirn. Leiden and Boston, 2019. 101–123. Zatočil, Leopold. “Das lateinische Punktierbuch Wenzels IV.” Listy filologické 91 (1968): 182–197. Zollinger, Manfred. Bibliographie der Spielbücher des 15. bis 18. Jahrhunderts. Erster Band: 1473–1700. Stuttgart, 1996.

Daniela Wagner

Three Images of Celestial Phenomena in Sixteenth-Century German Illustrated Broadsheets In 1554, a broadsheet printed in Strasbourg reported a peculiar apparition in the sky. On 11 June of the same year, a bloody or fiery (bluttigen oder fewrigen, the sources seem unclear) streak crossed the sun, then blue stars or spheres (blawe stern oder kugeln, again ambiguous) were observed, followed by two troops of armed riders with flags who fought each other in the clouds. The phenomenon lasted for about two hours and then vanished. The title of the sheet (Fig. 55, cf. Harms/Schilling, vol. VI, no. 62) refers to the event as a vision or sign (gesicht oder zeychen) that was witnessed by many people (later, the reader learns that there were two witnesses: a summoner and a priest). It is, however, not the title but the woodcut below it that first indicates the sheet’s prognostic character, as it can be captured at a single glance. While the text must be read successively, the image configures the perception of the whole sheet. This pictorial cognitive frame, however, is set not only by iconographic devices but also by the tradition of interpreting natural phenomena. It is the interaction of visual information and prognostic knowledge that enables the beholder to read the extraordinary combination of the sun, stars, clouds, and riders as the representation of a heavenly sign. Yet, the image does not provide any information about the sign’s meaning. For further explanation, the reader-beholder must turn to the text, in which the phenomenon is interpreted as an announcement of the Last Judgement. When browsing through collections of German illustrated broadsheets, one might gain the impression that the sixteenth century was richer in such celestial phenomena than any preceding era. It is, of course, the medium that makes the difference: printing not only made it possible to spread news at a high print run and frequency, it also enabled the publishers to reproduce images without difficulty, which made the illustrated broadsheet attractive to a broad audience (see Schilling 1990 for the presumed buyers and market regarding illustrated broadsheets, and Pettegree 2017 for broadsheets in general). Signs and prognostication were popular topics and the number of illustrated sheets still preserved leads us to the assumption that prints presenting miraculous births, animals and plants of extraordinary shape or size, and celestial or natural phenomena sold well. The layout and intermediary constitution of the Strasbourg print is characteristic of prognostic themes. In general, the image spans about half of the page, with a relatively brief title above it and a longer text below. The image provides the sign, while the text adds further explanation and reveals the sign’s prognostic value. While the explanatory part of the text draws on canonical and approved sources, like the Bible (for the authority of signs in general) and theological treatises or chronicles (for the interpretation of signs and their conhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-085



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Fig. 55: Im M.D.LIIII. Jar / den XI. tag Brachmonats, ist disz gesicht / […] (Zurich, Zentralbibliothek, Gaphische Sammlung, Inv. No. 000003464 / Sign. PAS II, 12/6). Photo credits: Zentralbibliothek, Zürich.

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sequences), images of celestial phenomena printed in broadsheets often use a symbolic iconography and sometimes copy images from other artworks. It is noticeable that many images of earlier broadsheets resemble illustrations printed in the famous world chronicle by Hartmann Schedel of Nuremberg (1493). This book (and later the Wunderwerk of Conrad Lycosthenes of 1557) seems to have been a fruitful source for printmakers, as it collects not only historical events related to miraculous phenomena but especially provides wondrous signs with more images than any other chronicle so far. We find woodcut images of various phenomena, such as anomalies in the sun, moon, stars, and sky, stones and fire falling from the sky, rainbows, miraculous births, rains of blood, and landslides. The text and image of an illustrated broadsheet are not always closely intertwined but, in any case, both provide unique information for the reader-beholder. Furthermore, word and image reinforce their mutual reception when appearing together. But the dynamics arising from this intermediary interplay differ, as can be seen in a second sheet which represents a celestial phenomenon, and was printed in Nuremberg in 1556 (Fig. 56). It reports the sighting of a comet over Nuremberg in the same year. The page-layout is similar to that of the Strasbourg sheet: a relatively short heading informs us about the topic (Verzeychnus des Cometen so im anfang des merzens erschynen ist / M.D.LVI – “Account on the comet that appeared at the beginning of March / 1556”), and a well-executed, colored image is set in the upper part, the text in the lower part. The image shows three men watching the comet above the town. Though not named with an inscription, it is likely that Nuremberg is portrayed, as the silhouette shows the characteristic church towers and the castle upon a hill. The comet consists of a starry head with a corona and a long, feathery tail. While the image does not contain any prognostic allusion for the modern beholder, again, contemporaries would have seen in this event more than the sheer observation of a natural phenomenon as comets were always known as indicators of upcoming calamities. Biblical references like Luke 21:25 (Et erunt signa in sole, et luna, et stellis […]) or the Revelation of John 6:13 (et stellae de caelo ceciderunt super terram […]) were common knowledge to every Christian. The literati would have connected the comet to similar celestial phenomena mentioned in chronicles or antique treatises, which are the sources to which the text of the broadsheet is directly or indirectly referring. Like the Strasbourg print, the image here presents the sign but neither provides an interpretation nor shows the consequences. At the beginning, the text states that one does not know yet what the comet will bring but that it is intended to remind the faithful of repentance and God’s wrath. Then, the author compiles a historic list of comets and the following events – war, death, plague, hunger, tyranny. In the following, he describes as doomed those who do not recognize the sign of God and believe it to be a natural occurrence. Moreover, he comments on the necessity of recognizing God’s warnings and responding to them with repentance. While the Strasbourg print describes the phenomenon at length in the left hand text column, on the Nuremberg sheet, the comet seems to be solely a means to the moral treatise. The text mentions the comet only briefly in the title and



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Fig. 56: Verzeychnus des Cometen so im anfang des merzens erschynen ist / M.D.LVI (Erlangen, Universitäts­ bibliothek, Einblattdrucke, A VII 1). Photo credits: Digitale Sammlungen der Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg (urn:nbn:de:bvb:29-einblatt-0312-8).

first sentence, without providing any further description (Was der Comet stern so im anfang des Merzens inn diesem sechsundfunffzigsten jar erschienen ist / mit sich bringen werde  / kan man noch der zeyt nicht aygentlich wissen  – “One does not know yet, what the comet that appeared at the beginning of March in this year 1556 will bring”). Therefore, the combination of image and text seems arbitrary initially. One must keep in mind, however, that the image provides the reader-beholder with the information that the text lacks: the comet was spotted above the city of Nuremberg and there were eyewitnesses to the event. All of the facts delivered by the picture affect the text: the observed phenomenon is as true as the meanings and consequences explained in the text. Vice versa, by reading the text, the beholder is reassured of the comet’s character as a baleful sign. The intermediality is essential for the broadsheet’s function. When text and image are perceived together, it becomes clear that the three men are more than just eyewitnesses authenticating the event. They are reflexive figures in a liminal state: will they recognize and obey God’s sign or will they dismiss it disrespectfully? And what will be the consequences of this? The figures indirectly address the beholder, so he or she can identify with them. Since he shares exactly the same position as the reader-beholder, the man, with his back turned to us while looking at

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the comet, serves a particular function. His view of the comet is paralleled with the view of the recipient; both are observing the heavenly sign. The physical sight of the comet now becomes a metaphor for intellectual insight. The recipient’s inner process of recognition begins with the reflection of the depicted men recognizing God’s sign. This leads the reader-beholder to reflect on his or her own piety and faith. While, in this example, the connection between the reader-beholder, image, and prediction is established through the relation between sight and recognition, other broadsheets use an allegedly more scientific approach, as can be seen in a print published in 1544 in Zurich (Fig. 57, cf. Harms/Schilling, vol. VI, catalogue no. 31). The author of the text, Jacob Rueff, refers to a halo with a rainbow seen in Glarus on 19 April of the same year. The introductory text above provides the date and length of the phenomenon and describes it: a white crystal circle crossing the center of the sun was spotted, inside the ring of light spans a rainbow. All emerged from a clear sky. In the longer text below the picture, Rueff refers to his own Praktik for 1544 and interprets the halo of Glarus as a sign of God’s power that announces forthcoming suffering and bloodshed. In the following, he mentions the year’s conjunctions and eclipses that will produce harm, and then corroborates his interpretation by citing authorities like Albumasar and Ptolemy. Repentance is mentioned as the correct way to cope with the threat. The image does not indicate any aspect of the textual interpretation. Standing free on the ground of the page, without any frame marking the area of the image or separating it from its surroundings, the image seems to have appeared on the sheet in the same way as the actual phenomenon appeared in the sky. The geometric composition of the image depicts the phenomenon accurately according to the textual description but also according to actual halos. Even the stylized, anthropomorphic face of the sun does not interfere with the basic impression of scientific correctness. Another difference between this sheet and those discussed earlier lies in the mode of representation. While the Strasbourg image assembles symbolic iconographies and the representation of the Nuremberg comet derives from iconographic traditions regarding comets and eyewitness authentication, the Zurich sheet draws on scientific observations and renounces a scenographic or narrative representation. The context, however, is the same as for the Strasbourg and Nuremberg sheet. The print does not address the scholar, the specialist in meteorological or solar phenomena, but the general public. Resembling a diagrammatic and not easy to understand scheme, the sun crossing halo with a rainbow must be subsumed under the biblical signa in sole. Although the visual approach differs from the Strasbourg or Nuremberg broadsheet, all three images receive their attraction through the prognostic context established over centuries of interpretation, which is part of the beholder’s knowledge and anchored in his or her memory. Despite their differing modes of representation, the depicted phenomena can be perceived as godly signs, even before the textual commentary is read. In all three prints, the representation itself shows no prognostication but a preliminary stage; a sign that requires interpretation and, therefore, leads to prognostication. The relation between the (allegedly) original image in the



Daniela Wagner 

Fig. 57: Im Jar als man zalt M.D.XLIIII. Jar / ist gesehen worden […] (Zurich, Zentralbibliothek, Graphische Sammlung, Inv. No. 000003315 / Sign. PAS II 2/25). Photo credits: Zentralbibliothek, Zürich.

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sky and the printed image is reproductive. Both function as signs, and the original warning is copied in another medium: the broadsheet. Due to this medial transition, the beholder of the printed image is equated with the primary addressee of the godly sign: the eyewitness himself.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Deutsche illustrierte Flugblätter des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. 7 vols. Eds. Wolfgang Harms and Michael Schilling. Tübingen, 1985–1997 [reprint: Berlin and Boston, 2018]. Monster, Wunder und Kometen. Sensationsberichte auf Flugblättern des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts (exhibition catalogue, Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg). Ed. Christina HofmannRandall. Erlangen, 1999.

Secondary Literature Harms, Wolfgang. “Kometenflugblätter in wahrnehmungsgeschichtlicher Perspektive.” Das illustrierte Flugblatt in der Frühen Neuzeit. Wolfenbütteler Arbeitsgespräch 1997. Eds. Wolfgang Harms and Michael Schilling. Frankfurt am Main et al., 1997. 102–136. Heitzer, Elisabeth. Das Bild des Kometen in der Kunst. Untersuchungen zur ikonographischen und ikonologischen Tradition des Kometenmotivs in der Kunst vom 14. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert. Berlin, 1995. Mauelshagen, Franz. “Verbreitung von Wundernachrichten als christliche Pflicht. Das Weltbild legitimiert das Medium.” Medien und Weltbilder im Wandel der Frühen Neuzeit. Eds. Franz Mauelshagen and Benedikt Maurer. Augsburg, 2001. 133–154. Pettegree, Andrew (ed.). Broadsheets. Single-sheet Publishing in the First Age of Print. Leiden and Boston, 2017. Schilling, Michael. Bildpublizistik in der frühen Neuzeit. Aufgaben und Leistungen des illustrierten Flugblatts in Deutschland bis um 1700. Tübingen, 1990.

Alexander Fidora

Tractates on the Division of the Sciences in the Medieval Western Christian World Since Charles Homer Haskins presented his provocative thesis concerning a renaissance of the sciences in the twelfth century, scholarly research has been drawing an ever clearer picture of what that revolution as regards the culture of knowledge meant for almost all areas of social, political and intellectual life. Particular emphasis has been placed upon the role of schools and academic institutions in transforming the concept of the arts, the disciplines and the sciences, as well as upon the emergence of the scholastic method itself. Translations from Arabic into Latin, which included not only philosophical and theological but also scientific works in the fields of medicine, astronomy/astrology, etc., were fundamental to this process. These translations, produced in Spain and Southern Italy, not only broadened and enriched the Western tradition in terms of adding a new corpus of knowledge, but simultaneously represented an important philosophical challenge inasmuch as they called for an epistemological assessment of the novel material in question. By way of reaction to this challenge, twelfth-century philosophers and theolo­ gians devised the genre of “divisions of philosophy”, which offered a systematic and comprehensive conspectus of the various forms of human knowledge that were to configure the ordo scientiarum. From the very outset, such ‘divisions’ accounted for the disciplines of prognostication, particularly for those of astrology and the arts of divination, as occurs in the case of Hugh of Saint Victor’s Didascalicon. De studio legendi, dating from ca. 1125 (Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon, ed. Buttimer). In Chapter 10 of Book II, Hugh discusses both astronomy and astrology as being part of mathematics, distinguishing between superstitious and natural astrology. While in so doing he follows Isidore of Seville (Etymologiae III, 27), Hugh clearly attributes more cognitive potential to natural astrology, which is described as being concerned with the physical properties of the sublunary bodies (e.  g. the health and sickness of the human body) that are affected by their celestial counterparts (Caroti 2011). Less positive is Hugh’s account of the mantic disciplines, which forms an appendix to the work, added either by Hugh himself or one of his disciples (possibly Richard of Saint Victor). Being classified as part of magic, necromantia, geomantia, hydromantia and aeromantia are excluded from the field of philosophy, since they lead one astray from true religion to engage, instead, with demons. By the mid-twelfth century, the ongoing reception of Arabic philosophical and scientific texts called for a reappraisal of the Isidorian account of the predictive arts. This Acknowledgement: I would like to thank both the ICRH (Erlangen) and my home institution ICREA (Barcelona) for supporting my research on the epistemology of divination during the Middle Ages. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-086

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new account of their epistemological status was heralded by Dominicus Gundissalinus’ De divisione philosophiae (Dominicus Gundissalinus, De divisione philosophiae, eds. Fidora and Werner). Composed in around 1150 in Toledo, the treatise represents an unprecedented attempt to synthesize Arabic-Aristotelian and Latin-Christian learning. Gundissalinus addresses the predictive arts in several passages. These include astrology, along with geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, necromancy, the use of talismans, scapulimancy and chiromancy (his treatise being the first to mention this term in Latin [Burnett 1999]). While astrology is introduced alongside astronomy under the heading of mathematics, as in the case of Hugh of Saint Victor, the systematic placing of astrology in Gundissalinus’ tract is within natural philosophy; namely, as one of its subordinate sciences. Gundissalinus stresses that astrology is knowledge secundum hominum opinionem, i.  e. that it is based upon a human, rather than demonic, act of cognition, which act corresponds to an “opinion”. He goes on to explain that this opinion-based science provides answers to questions which are presented in a more or less spontaneous fashion. On this basis, the prognostic disciplines are brought into proximity with topical knowledge. Gundissalinus confirms such a cognitive framework, which also forms the backdrop to Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, when he describes astrology, along with the mantic sub-disciplines of natural philosophy, as scientiae iudicandi, an expression that is closely connected to the twelfth-century logical tradition. This expression is productively combined with that of scientia de iudiciis, a phrase that was probably borrowed from the Arabic aḥkām al-nujūm (iudicia astrorum) (Lejbowicz 1988). The foregoing approach to astrology and the mantic arts remained highly influential within the theory of knowledge and science. The introductions to the concept and subject matter of philosophy, composed from the first half of the thirteenth century onward at the Faculty of Arts in Paris, testify to the impact thereof. Designed for teaching purposes, these texts are hugely significant, since they reflect the self-image of the recently-established Faculty of Arts and, by extension, the philosophy practised at that time. The Philosophica disciplina, dating from ca. 1245, confirms the relevance of the predictive disciplines within the university curriculum (Anonymous, Philosophica disciplina, ed. Lafleur). In the chapter concerning astrology and astronomy, the author claims that the former is subordinate to both mathematics and natural philosophy, thus attempting to reconcile the divergent accounts regarding the place assigned to astrology within the ordo scientiarum proposed by his predecessors, Hugh of Saint Victor and Gundissalinus. He then repeats Gundissalinus’ definition of the cognitive mode of prediction as secundum hominum opinionem as well as its status, alongside the mantic disciplines, as a scientia iudicandi. At the very end of the treatise is included a section on magic, which echoes Hugh’s appendix concerning that matter: although the anonymous author here follows Hugh in excluding the mantic disciplines from the field of philosophy, these disciplines nonetheless do qualify as legitimate forms of non-philosophical knowledge, in his eyes. As far as their epistemological status is concerned, they are said to resemble the mechanical arts, even though, in contrast to



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the latter, they are not considered unreservedly servile in nature. In systematic terms, these remarks are complex and can hardly be reconciled with the previous presentation of the scientiae iudicandi as being subordinate to both mathematics and natural philosophy. They reveal, rather, the unresolved tensions existing between the two prevailing epistemological models for the predictive disciplines; namely, Hugh’s Didascalicon and Gundissalinus’ De divisione philosophiae. Even though Arnulf of Provence’s slightly later introduction, the Divisio scientiarum from ca. 1250, attempted to circumvent some of the inconsistencies of the Philosophica disciplina by turning divination and its disciplines into an integral part of the mechanical arts, it failed to harmonize the two accounts (Arnulf of Provence, Divisio scientiarum, ed. Lafleur). A very similar picture emerges from Robert Kilwardby’s De ortu scientiarum, which is by far the most comprehensive division of philosophy from the mid-thirteenth century (Robert Kilwardby, De ortu scientiarum, ed. Judy). Here, also (Chapter 12), astrology, along with astronomy, receive a positive epistemological appraisal. As occurs in Gundissalinus, astrology is assigned to the field of natural philosophy, although Kilwardby acknowledges that it has recourse to mathematical methods as well. The Dominican explicitly refers to Gundissalinus in his description of astro­ logy, quoting the epistemological description of astrology as belonging to the realm of “human opinion”. Notwithstanding, when discussing the mantic d ­ isciplines, Kilwardby draws exclusively upon Hugh’s account of magic. Deliberately ignoring Gun­dissalinus’ classification of such disciplines as scientiae iudicandi he reproduces verbatim the appendix to the Didascalicon, with its explicit claim that the mantic ­disciplines are to be excluded from philosophy, since they divert one from true ­religion. It is worth noting that, in many of the thirteenth-century introductions, the mantic disciplines are described in an increasingly detailed fashion, with information being provided concerning the practices and instruments of divination, such as buckets of water, fingernails and candles, with the apparent aim of compensating for the absence of a more self-contained theoretical account. The thicker descriptions of the mantic disciplines suggest that the epistemological discussions within the intellectual milieu of mid-thirteenth-century Paris were founded upon a growing experiential base. Evidence in this respect can be found in the famous condemnation of 219 articles issued in 1277 by Bishop Étienne Tempier, that explicitly addressed mantic texts and doctrines, targeting within its prologue the geomantic tract Estimaverunt Indi, as well as necromancy (Hisette 1977). Accordingly, this and similar texts must have been circulating at the University of Paris during the second half of the thirteenth century (Fürbeth 1999). The foregoing condemnation had an immediate impact upon the epistemological discussions regarding the predictive disciplines. Thus, the Divisio scientiae by the Parisian master John of Dacia, dating from ca. 1280, refers to astrology with timidity and only in passing, while claiming that the mantic disciplines are both futile and forbidden (John of Dacia, Divisio scientiae, ed. Otto). In this context, John summarizes the relatively approbatory passages concerning the mantic disciplines

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from the anonymous Philosophica disciplina and Arnulf’s Divisio sicentiae, although clearly bracketing them out and earmarking them as being proscribed. During the last decades of the thirteenth century, the genre of the divisions of philosophy would decline, while their epistemological discussions shifted to the prologues of the commentaries to the Corpus aristotelicum. These prologues developed highly differentiated regional epistemologies, in which non-Aristotelian disciplines, such as divination, hardly found a place. The discussions concerning the status of astrology and the mantic disciplines in the divisions of philosophy of the thirteenth century – whether approbatory or otherwise – demonstrate, however, the extent to which these disciplines played a role in the formal training of several generations of students. All such students were confronted with the epistemological challenges that prognostication raises, and many of them, such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, attempted to respond to this issue in their philosophical and theological oeuvres.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Anonymous. “Divisio scientiarum.” Quatre introductions à la philosophie au XIIIe siècle. Textes critiques et étude historique. Ed. Claude Lafleur. Montreal and Paris, 1988. 255–293. Arnulf of Provence. “Divisio scientiarum.” Quatre introductions à la philosophie au XIIIe siècle. Textes critiques et étude historique. Ed. Claude Lafleur. Montreal and Paris, 1988. 295–355. Dominicus Gundissalinus. De divisione philosophiae – Über die Einteilung der Philosophie (Herders Bibliothek der Philosophie des Mittelalters 11). Eds. and trans. into German Alexander Fidora and Dorothée Werner. Freiburg, 2007. Hugh of Saint Victor. Didascalicon. De studio legendi (Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Latin 10). Ed. Charles M. Buttimer. Washington, D.C., 1939. John of Dacia. “Divisio scientiae.” Opera I/1 (Corpus Philosophorum Danicorum Medii Aevi 1). Ed. Alfred Otto. Copenhagen, 1955. 1–44. Robert Kilwardby. De ortu scientiarum (Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi 4). Ed. Albert G. Judy. Toronto, 1976.

Secondary Literature Burnett, Charles. “The Earliest Chiromancy in the West.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987): 189–195 (also in id., Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages, Aldershot, 1996, n. X). Caroti, Stefano. “Astrologie im Mittelalter. Von der superstitio zur scientia astrorum.” Mantik, Schickal und Freiheit im Mittelalter. Ed. Loris Sturlese. Cologne, 2011. 13–31. Fürbeth, Frank. “Die Stellung der Artes magicae in den hochmittelalterlichen Divisiones philosophiae.” Artes im Mittelalter. Ed. Ursula Schaefer. Berlin, 1999. 249–262. Hisette, Roland. Enquête sur les 219 articles condamnés à Paris le 7 mars 1277. Paris, 1977.



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Lejbowicz, Max. “Le choc des traductions arabo-latines du XIIe siècle et ses conséquences dans la spécialisation sémantique d’‘astrologia’ et ‘astronomia’: Dominicus Gundissalinus et la ‘scientia iudicandi’.” Transfert de vocabulaire dans les sciences. Ed. Martine Groult. Paris, 1988. 213–275.

Michael Grünbart

Treatises for Predicting hora mortis in the Medieval Eastern Christian World The question of the time of a death is, per se, linked to future knowledge. Texts concerning the hora mortis (“hour of death”) or predestined terms of life (horos zoes, “end of life”) are known from throughout the Byzantine period. The topic is connected to predestination (prothesis), that is both God’s universal foreknowledge and His eternal plan. It guides human creatures to their end: either they will enter Paradise or they must descend into hell. In Greek Christian theology, prothesis was a widely-debated topic, connected to the problem of salvation. Salvation is possible by God’s grace and by human free will. The duration and end of human life is defined by predestination. That idea was repeatedly doubted and vigorously denied, because a passage in the Book of Kings (2 Kings 20:1–11 = Isa. 38:1–8) offers another interpretation. Through the prophet Isaiah, God reveals to the terminally-ill King Ezekias that he will add 15 years to his (predetermined) life span. A second argument was also derived from a biblically-justified view: God rewards virtuous conduct in life with longevity and punishes the sinner with an early death; that is, the length of one’s life depends on one’s moral status. If the span of life were predetermined, the meaningfulness of moral action, indeed humans’ freedom of will, would be called into question. Since a clear distinction did not always exist between predetermination by Divine Providence and the determination by a fatum, many authors employed anti-astrological arguments. The subject of hora mortis was a widely-debated issue in late Antiquity, because Christianity had to deal with antique religious ideas in order to distinguish itself from them. One of the first traces of the horos zoes can be found in the Apologia de fuga by Athanasius of Alexandria (d. 373), who quotes John 7:30 (“Then they sought to take him: but no man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come”), because he fled from persecution by the Arians. Athanasius argues that every human being is allocated a certain life span by God (not by Fate or Tyche). He did not understand horos in an astrological sense. Basil the Great believed that God predestines everything down to the smallest human concerns, including the time of one’s death. In his opinion, God cares for humans, even if this is not always apparent. If death is a consequence of sin, then the responsibility lies with humans rather than with God. In the plan of Providence, God must dissolve the body that has fallen into sin. Eusebius of Caesarea wrote a commentary on Isaias. He refers to the prolongation of Ezekias’ life. For him, that narrative provides proof against the power of destiny and, at the same time, proof that only God, who is omnipotent and omniscient, can make decisions regarding the life and death of human beings. It is clear from the text of Eusebius that God knew the hora mortis. He argues here against astrology. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-087



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Leontios of Constantinople (fifth or sixth century) polemicizes against the assumption that the nature, date and hour of one’s death are determined by fate. He cites three reasons for this: if the hour of one’s death were fatefully predetermined, all protective measures against the endangerment of life would be superfluous, punishments for crimes pointless and prayer for healing absurd. Diodoros of Tarsos (d. ca. 390) explicitly argued against the predetermination of the end of one’s life by God in the interest of humans’ freedom of will. He fought against astrology in his work entitled Kata Astrologias, but failed to touch on the subject of hora mortis. In a fragment from a commentary on Exodus, he writes that life depends on the moral probation of human beings. Free will and the meaning of moral action would be called into question if a time limit has been set on one’s life, predetermined by God, in which case a good person would be unable to prolong his/her life by good deeds and a sinner could not be punished by an early death. Although Diodoros tries to solve the problem of mortality from a human perspective, he cannot deny that God foretells humans’ choice between good or evil and the life expectancy that comes with it. In summary, the Fathers of the Church and the early theologians expressed three points of view: 1. the horos zoes is derived from the comprehensive care of God (Athanasius, Basil), 2. the hora mortis is associated with fate and rejected as pagan (Eusebius), and 3. a horos fixed by God is rejected because it is incompatible with the idea of God’s absolute justice and the moral freedom of humankind. From the seventh century onward, the hora mortis continued to be a subject of theological discussion. Theophylact Simocatta started a series of treatises dealing with the predestined terms of life that continued until the fifteenth century. More than 20 texts have been composed by proponents and opponents (Lackner 1985, LIII). Interestingly, the two parties almost never refer to each other. The proponents of the determination of the hora mortis face the problem of reconciling predetermination with humans’ free will. Germanos of Constantinople (eds. Garton and Westerink 1979) and John of Damascus introduce the argument of the supertemporality of divine knowledge and cognition. He writes “God knows all things beforehand but does not determine them beforehand” (Kata Manichaion Dialogos, 394). John was forced to deal with the problem of how one can act freely despite God’s foreknowledge: “What God foresees is what we do ourselves. If we did not perform a certain action, God will not know this in advance.” This concept was mostly used by the scholars of later centuries. Michael Psellos and, later, Nicholas of Methone (d.  1160/1166) adopted the argument that God can definitely recognize indefinite things. This knowledge is bound to the ontic rank of the subject, not of the object. Psellos takes a middle position. Under the influence of the Neoplatonist Proclus (fifth century), he writes that God can recognize in a certain way both irrevocable and possible things. Thus, God’s providence leaves room not only for free will, but also for the consequences of human decision. Gennadios Scholarios (ca. 1400–ca. 1473) finally uses the theology of Thomas of Aquinas in his attempt to find a solution. However, biblical references and quotations from the Church fathers play a minor role here.

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The second group collects the following arguments against the determination of the hora mortis. Theophylact Simocatta may be assigned to this group; he composed a book in the form of a prosopopoeia (the author communicates with his audience in dialogue-form) (Garton and Westerink 1978). The main arguments of Theophylact against the horos are: 1. mass deaths in catastrophes; 2. divine punishment by premature death; and 3. the equation of horos with the pagan heimarmene (fatum), and he therefore rejects this concept. Similar thoughts and theses can be found by Photios (d. 893) and Nicholas Mysticus (d. 925) and also in certain late Byzantine treatises. No development or innovation can be observed in the discussion. The authors almost exclusively use the proof of tradition. More important is the abundance of evidence than the interpretation of the sources. Predestination and fatum are often confused, and the theologians adopt the anti-astrological arguments within the patristic literature. They are one-sidedly oriented toward human freedom of choice. A natural death can only be considered an argument if God’s will is effectively seen in the laws of nature. The works of this group follow the style of popular theology. Since the opponents and proponents of the horos zoes acted on different levels, there was understandably no point of contact between them. As indicated, the discussions about the predeterminability of death were also related to the accomplishment of astrological practices, in particular the production of horoscopes. Overall, the study of that subject has only affected a small proportion of the theological debates.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Germanus of Constantinople. Germanos on Predistined Terms of Life. Eds. Charles Garton and Leendert G. Westerink. Buffalo, NY, 1979. John of Damascus. Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos. Vol. IV: Liber de haeresibus. Opera polemica. Ed. Bonifatius Kotter. Berlin, 1973. Nikephoros Blemmydes. Nikephoros Blemmydes. Gegen die Vorherbestimmung der Todesstunde. Einleitung, Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar. Ed. Wolfgang Lackner. Leiden, 1985. Theophylactus Simocates. Garton, Charles, and Leendert G. Westerink (eds.). Theophylactus Simocates on Predistined Terms of Life. Buffalo, NY, 1978.

Secondary Literature Beck, Hildebrand. Vorsehung und Vorbestimmung in der theologischen Literatur der Byzantiner. Rome, 1937. Tinnefeld, Franz. “Schicksal und Vorherbestimmung im Denken der Byzantiner.” Das Mittelalter 1 (1996): 21–42.

Margaret Gaida

Zījes

The genre of the zīj in Islamic astronomy and astrology played an essential role in prognostication. Zījes were astronomical handbooks containing tables and texts including all the relevant data for astrological prognostications. Zījes also contain descriptions of astrological techniques, or what many modern scholars refer to as “mathematical astrology.” These techniques include the calculation of several parameters determined by astrological theory, such as the division of the ecliptic into houses. In the practice of astrology, for a specific place and at any given moment in time, a particular celestial configuration (the location of the planets with respect to both the sky and other planets) yields a plethora of information relevant to nativities, interrogations, elections and astrological history. This information is determined by both the planetary positions themselves, provided in zījes, and by astrological theory, most of which one finds in introductory texts (the mudkhal; ↗ Gaida, Introductions to Astrology). In this respect, much of the content of zījes may be considered “astrological,” in the sense that it can be used for astrological purposes. Unfortunately, there is not much explicit historical evidence that points to the practical uses of zījes, so modern scholars typically identify operations that yield practical results, such as the determination of the ascendant, as implying this purpose. Tracking the movements of the planets dates back to Babylonian times, and cuneiform tablets depicting planetary data are the earliest records of this practice. The Greek exemplar of the genre of planetary tables is Ptolemy’s Handy Tables. This work, composed in the second century CE, presents the astronomical information in the Almagest in practical format and includes an introduction explaining the use of the tables. Syriac and Pahlavi planetary tables were also likely influential precursors to the zīj, although there are few, if any, extant manuscripts. The Zīj al-Shāh (790 CE) has been linked by scholars to both the Persian and Indian traditions. More is known about the transmission of Indian astronomical tables, discussed in several articles by David Pingree. Some of the earliest known Arabic astronomical tables, the Zīj al-Arkand and the Zīj al-Sindhind, date to the eighth century and have much in common with the Indian tables of Brahmagupta. Arabic translations of these tables are said to have been commissioned by the Caliph al-Manṣūr from al-Fazārī and Ya’qūb ibn Tāriq, launching the genre of the Sindhind zīj, which follows more closely the Indian tradition rather than the Ptolemaic tradition rooted in the Almagest and Handy Tables. There are approximately 250 known zījes, of which 150 are extant. A survey, which presents a catalog of both extant and non-extant zījes, was compiled by Edward Kennedy in 1956 and is currently being updated by Benno van Dalen. The most recent account of the state of research on zījes is in David King, Julio Samso, and Bernard Goldstein’s report from 2001. Kennedy’s survey includes a useful list of topics most frequently treated in zījes: chronology, trigonometric functions, spherical astronomhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-088

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ical functions (including declinations, right and oblique ascensions, and ascendants or rising times, particularly relevant for astrology), equations of time, mean motions, planetary equations (longitudes and latitudes), planetary stations and retrogrades, planetary sectors (likely motivated by astrological concerns), parallax, eclipse tables, visibility tables, geographical tables (including determination of the qibla), and star tables. King and Samso elaborate on these topics in their more recent account. Additional information about non-extant zījes may be gleaned from contemporary references. Kūshyār ibn Labbān, for example, refers to his own zījes in his introductory book on astrology (Kitāb al-mudkhal ahkām al-nujūm). Zījes also treat a variety of more explicitly astrological topics, some of which are explained or described, and some of which are organized into tables. In general, zījes were somewhat detailed about the processes for constructing horoscopes. The determination of the house cusps involves dividing the ecliptic into different segments depending on the local horizon and other parameters. Different methods appear in different zījes, and this information is often presented in a table. Some zījes even contain worked out examples, and other astrological treatises containing horoscopes reference the consultation of zījes. For example, ‘Imad al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Kashī’s 1411 horoscope of Iskandar Sultān makes frequent use of the Ilkhāni zīj from 1273. A few other zījes, mostly within the Persian tradition, give information related to the namudhar, which is a corrective method for establishing the degree of the ascendant when casting horoscopes. The angular relationships between planets – or planetary aspects – was also an important factor in prognostication. Some zījes describe various methods of planetary influence, or rays emanating from and impacting other planets, known as the projection of the rays. In al-Majrīṭī’s ̲ recension (ca. 1000 CE) of the famous zīj composed by al-Khwārizmī in 825 CE, there is a lengthy table devoted to the projection of the rays, which takes up more space than any of the other tables in the zīj. Kennedy notes that the table provides the locations of three major aspects (sextile, quartile, and trine) as they are projected along five-degree intervals of the ecliptic, as well as projections of all sets of thirty-degree intervals measured from the same five-degree intervals. Several zījes, for example the zīj of Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib (ca. 850) give tables for year-transfers and nativity-transfers. The former is the moment when the sun traverses the vernal equinox; the latter refers to the instant every year when the sun enters the same zodiacal point as the moment of birth. Zījes also contain tables for the excess of revolution, or the excess of the true solar year over 365 days, expressed in equatorial degrees. The Mumtaḥan zīj of Yaḥyā ibn Abī Manṣūr (ca. 810 CE), contains a table with a set of values for the excess of revolution found in other zījes. There are additional explanations for several other important astrological points regarding both nativities and world-years. These include the prorogator or tasyīr, the indicator or haylāj, and progressions (including intihāt and firdaria). These points travel along the ecliptic and help to determine significant times in an individual’s life, including the length of life itself, with each degree of motion corresponding to



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 1001

a single year. The Zīj al-Sanjarī of al-Khāzini (ca. 1120) has several sets of tables of indicators. Al-Bīrūnī’s Mas’udic Canon contains an entire treatise devoted to mathematical astrology, in which he gives an in-depth treatment of several topics, including the tasyīr. Also worth mentioning is the fifteenth-century Zīj al-Khāqānī of al-Kāshī, which contains an extensive set of tasyīr and progression tables. There are also a few examples of tables related to Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions, which take place every twenty years. Every 240 years the conjunction shifts to a new triplicity, and every 960 years the cycle repeats. An example of this table may be found in the fifteenth-century zīj of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Halabī. These conjunctions play a significant role in astrological histories, especially the rise and fall of religions and dynasties. Another topic in astrological history is the world-year or world-day, in which all planets, apogees, and nodes are in conjunction. This topic is referenced in the non-extant zījes of Abū Maʻshar and Kūshyār ibn Labbān. Zījes may also contain tables related to other astrological topics, such as lunar mansions, the comet known as Kaid, and lots. There are two types of tables for lunar mansions. The first lists longitude and latitude along the ecliptic with the Julian date for the heliacal rising. The second displays the beginning and end of each mansion within a grid with zodiacal signs spread horizontally and degrees listed vertically. An example of the latter may be found in the zīj Adwār al-anwār of Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Maghribī (ca. 1275). Several noteworthy zījes contain significant treatments of astrological topics compared to others. From the ninth century, these are Yaḥyā ibn Abī Manṣūr’s Mumtaḥan zīj (ca. 832 CE), the Damascene zīj of Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib (ca. 870 CE), and al-Battānī’s Ṣabi’ zīj (ca. 900 CE). In the eleventh century, Kūshyār ibn Labbān’s Zīj al-Jamiʻ was quite popular and is divided into four treatises: directions, tables, explanations, and proofs. Produced in Cairo around the same time, Ibn Yūnus’s Ḥākimī zīj gives a systematic treatment of topics. Zījes produced in the following centuries reflect a sustained interest in astrological topics, including the Ilkhāni zīj of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (1273), the Khāqānī zīj of Ghiyāth al-Dīn Jamshīd Masʻūd al-Kāshī (1413) and the zīj produced at Samarqand by Ulugh Beg (1440). Despite the fact that scores of astrological and astronomical works were translated from Arabic into Latin in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, only a few of these works were zījes. Al-Khwārizmī’s zīj (ca. 825) with revisions from al-Majrīṭī (1000), ̲ is extant in the Latin translation completed by Adelard of Bath (ca. 1134), as well as another Latin translation by Petrus Alphonsi early in the twelfth century. The importance of the translation of this zīj into Latin for the development of astrology in Europe cannot be understated. For the first time, Latin scholars had at hand a reliable set of tables for computing the positions of the planets. Only two more zījes were translated into Latin. Al-Battānī’s Ṣabi’ zīj, originally composed after 900 CE, was translated by Plato of Tivoli in 1116 and also by Robert of Ketton around the same time. Al-Battānī’s Ṣabi’ zīj was highly influential for the

1002 

 Repertoire of Written Sources and Artefacts

Toledan Tables, composed around 1080 and associated with the work of the Andalusian astronomer al-Zarqālī. The Toledan Tables were translated by Gerard of Cremona in the second half of the twelfth century, and remained popular until the updated Alfonsine Tables became available to Latin scholars. The Alfonsine Tables were composed at the court of Alfonso X in 1252 in Toledo and modeled after the Islamic zīj tradition. The tables were quickly assimilated by Latin scholars, including Jean of Ligneres and John of Saxony, at the University of Paris in the 1320s and 1330s. The Alfonsine Tables circulated widely across Europe into the sixteenth century.

Selected Bibliography Primary Sources Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī. Al-Qanūn al-Masū’dī. 3 vols. Hyderabad, 1956. Caussin de Perceval, Armand-Pierre. “Le livre de la grande table Hakémite, observée par le Sheikh […] ebn Iounis (i.  e. Kitāb al-Zīj al-kabīr al-Ḥākimī).” Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale 7 (An VII = 1804): 16–240.

Secondary Literature Bagheri, Mohammed. al- Zī al-Jāmiʻ, an Arabic Astronomical Handbook by Kūshyār ben Labbān. Books I and IV. Frankfurt am Main, 2009. Casulleras, Josep. “Mathematical Astrology in the Medieval Islamic West.” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften 18 (2008/2009): 241–268. Casulleras, Josep, and Jan Hogendijk. “Progressions, Rays, and Houses in Medieval Islamic Astrology: A Mathematical Classification.” Suhayl 11 (2012): 33–102. van Dalen, Benno. “Mathematical Astrology in Islamic Astronomical Handbooks.” Conference Presentation. London, 2008. Debarnot, Marie-Thérèse. “The Zīj of Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib. A Survey of MS Istanbul Yeni Cami 784/2.” From Deferent to Equant: A Volume of Studies in the History of Science in the Ancient and Medieval Near East in Honor of E. S. Kennedy (Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 500). Eds. David A. King and George A. Saliba. New York, 1987. 35–69. Hogendijk, Jan. “The Mathematical Structure of Two Islamic Astronomical Tables for ‘Casting the Rays.’  ” Centaurus 13 (1989): 171–202. Kennedy, Edward S. A Survey of Islamic Astronomical Tables. Philadelphia, 1952. Kennedy, Edward S. Astronomy and Astrology in the Medieval Islamic World. Aldershot, 1998. King, David A., Julio Samsó, and Bernard R. Goldstein. “Astronomical Handbooks and Tables from the Islamic World (750–1900). An Interim Report.” Suhayl 2 (2001): 9–105. Nallino, Carlo Alphonso. Al-Battānī sive Albatenii Opus astronomicum (Pubblicazioni del Reale Osservatorio di Brera in Milan 40). 3 vols. Milan, 1899–1907. North, John D. Horoscopes and History. London, 1986. Samsó, Julio. Astronomy and Astrology in al-Andalus and the Magrhib. Aldershot, 2007. Van Brummelen, Glen. “The Travels of Astronomical Tables within Medieval Islam: a Summary.” Suhayl 13 (2014): 11–21.

Index Aaron, bibl. figure 305 Aaron ha-Levi 895 Abaye, sage 461 Abba Mari 586 Abbo of Fleury, French abbot 275  f. ‘Abd al-Jabbār, author 359 ʻAbd al-Jalīl al-Sijzī, astrologer 474  f. ‘Abd Allāh 323, 417 ʻAbdallāh al-Baghdādī 482 ʻAbd al-Malik ibn Ḥabīb 224 ‘Abd al-Raḥīm Aḥmad 319 ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Bisṭāmī 319 ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III, Emir of Cordoba 322  f. Abner of Burgos 519, 526 Abraham, bibl. figure 110, 205, 210  f., 305, 356  f. Abraham Abulafia, Sephardic mystic 182  f., 185, 307, 310, 343  f., 346, 348  f., 351, 459, 786, 819 Abraham bar Ḥiyya 457, 518, 522–526, 528, 586 Abraham ibn Daud 344 Abraham ibn Ezra 344, 351, 496, 516, 518–520, 522–525, 527  f., 586, 686, 688, 693 Abraham Maimonides, son of Moses Maimonides 352 Abraham Zacuto 524 Abravanel, Don Isaac 311 Absalon, bishop 94 Abū al-ʻAlāʼ Zuhr 601 Abu ‘Alī al-Chayyat 497 Abū Bakr, Caliph 422 Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī, author 360 Abū Daʼūd 224, 320 Abū Ḥanīfa Aḥmad al-Dīnawarī, scholar 641 Abū Ḥarb al-Mubarqa‘ 326 Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, author 359 Abū ‘Isa 310 Abu Jaʽfar 585 Abu ’l-Ḥasan al-‘Ash‘arī 319 Abu’l-Layth al-Samarqandī 318 Abū l-Rijāl al-Andalusī, astrologer 743 Abū Maʻshar (Albumasar) 139, 143, 197, 200, 202, 222  f., 228  f., 250, 473, 485–487, 495–500, 509, 511, 533  f., 546, 569, 572, 581  f., 598–601, 647, 732, 815, 988, 1001 Abu Mena, Coptic Saint 395 Abū Naṣr ʻAdnān ibn Naṣr al-ʻAynzarbī 592 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110499773-203

Abū Nu‘aym al-Iṣfahānī, student of al-Ṭabarānī 318 Abū Rakwa, Umayyad ruler 326 Abū Saʻīd al-Ṭarābulsī 592 Abū Sa‘īd al-Dīnawarī 418 Abū Yaḥyā al-Biṭrīq 194, 228, 533 Abū Yaʻqūb al-Sijzī 224 Abū Ya‘qūb al-Sijistānī, author 359 Achilleus Tatios, writer 925, 928 Achmet ben Sirin, dream interpreter 766 Achmet Ibn Sīrīn, dream interpreter 159, 164, 378, 391, 419, 573 Adalbert, Archbishop of Bremen 940 Adam, bibl. figure 110, 191, 290, 314, 356, 363, 455, 611, 636, 646, 771, 911, 954 Adam of Bremen, historiographer 86, 92, 940 Adelard of Bath, natural philosopher 486, 495  f., 1001 Adelgot, bishop 91 Aden 326 Adomnán of Iona, hagiographer 61 Adso of Montier-en-Der, Benedictine abbot 271, 273, 293 Aegidius de Tebaldis, translator 955 Aegidius Romanus, philosopher 725 Ælfric of Eynsham, abbot 718 Aelius Aristides, Greek orator (Second Sophistic) 47, 49 Aelius Tubero 43 Aetius of Amida, Byzantine physician and medical writer 569, 571, 591, 667 Afghanistan 322 Africa 473, 477, 658, 788 – North Africa 74, 195, 217, 308, 319, 323, 326, 365, 426, 430, 476, 585, 973, 975 Agathos Daimon, myth. figure 23 Agde – Council of Agde 857, 981 Agra – Taj Mahal 322 Agrippa of Nettesheim, German polymath 131, 133, 253, 790, 951 Aḥima’az 179 Aḥmad al-Uqlīdisī 543 Ahura Mazda 25 Akbar, Mughal Emperor 792 Alamut, fortress of the Nizari Isma‘ili 322, 324

1004 

 Index

al-Bahlūl, Ḥasan ibn 419 Albania 448 Albert of Habsburg, King 902 Albert of Stade, historiographer 934 Albertus Magnus 111, 116, 138, 145, 332, 337, 375, 382, 486, 731, 994 Albotini, Yehuda, rabbi 346 Albumasar see Abū Maʻshar Alcabitius see al-Qabīṣī Alcaraz, Saracen King 889 Alda, lit. figure 889 Alemano, author 184 Aleppo 424 Alexander, Paul 285 Alexander Lombard, canonist 699, 703 Alexander Minorita 934 Alexander the Great 24, 26–28, 33, 218, 272, 391, 449, 494  f., 636, 771, 775, 801, 846, 889, 965  f., 968  f. Alexandria 23, 153, 156, 290, 292, 506–508, 571, 624, 628, 713  f. Alexios I, Emperor 166, 169, 448, 572, 576, 581 Alexios II, Emperor 163 Alexios III, Emperor 168 Alexios IV, Emperor 287 Alexios Macrembolites, scholar 294 Alfonso of Valladolid, philosopher 519 Alfonso Pecha, bishop 338 Alfonso X, King of Castile, León, and Galicia 147, 250, 434, 485, 523, 699, 720, 778–780, 948, 953, 955, 1002 Algeciras 743 Algeria 476 ‘Alī al-Rayḥānī 317 ʻAlī, Caliph 202  f., 208, 220, 315  f., 321–323, 325  f., 358, 363  f., 424, 477, 789 ʻAlī ibn Abi al-Rijāl (Haly Abenragel) 491, 497, 815 ʻAlī ibn Dāwūd al-Yahūdī 523 ʻAlī ibn Riḍwān (Haly Abenrudian) 222, 229, 250, 487, 497, 592, 598, 601, 731 Alī ibn Sahl Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Persian physician 591 ‘Alī Riḍā, Imam 322 al-‘Allāma al-Ḥillī 320 ʻAllāma Ṭabāṭabāʾī 790 ʻAllāmī, Abū l-Fażl, architect 792 Almoli, Shlomo 404, 408–410 Alpais of Cudot, visionary 822

Amalarius, liturgist 884 Ambrose, Church Father 274, 615, 654 Ambrosius Autpertus, monk 933 America 296, 658, 732 al-Amīn 206 al-Amīr bi-Aḥkām Allāh Abū ‘Alī al-Manṣūr, Caliph 749 Ammanius Marcellinus, historiographer 843 Ammonios 156 Amun, myth. figure 21 Anan ben David 828 Anania of Shirak 713 Anastasia, nun 799  f. Anastasios of Sinai, Church Father 389, 397 Anastasius Bibliothecarius, translator 292 Anastasius I, Emperor 291 Anatolia 979 al-Andalus 143, 195, 222, 224  f., 365, 418 Andalusia 641, 643, 647  f. see al-Andalus Andrew Salos, Saint 800 Andrew the Fool, Saint 287, 388, 799  f. Andronikos I, Emperor 163, 846  f., 939 Andronikos II, Emperor 451, 510, 630, 902 Andronikos III, Emperor 510 Andronikos IV, Emperor 510 Ankara 294, 511, 760 Anna Komnene, Byzantine princess and scholar 166, 169, 389  f., 448, 508, 572, 576 Annianus of Alexandria, historiographer 290, 628 Anselm of Canterbury, Benedictine abbot and philospher 114 Antichrist, bibl. figure 284, 289–291, 293–295, 307, 320, 708, 724, 726, 734, 772, 798, 801, 899  f., 902, 932–934, 960 Antioch 321, 624, 628 Antiochus, astronomer 667 Antiochus IV Epiphanes, Seleucid ruler 303  f. Antistius Labeo 44 Antonio de Barba 704 Antwerp 806 Aodh Eanghach (= Áed Engach), Irish King 57 Apollo[n], myth. figure 29, 36, 41  f., 45, 50, 431, 926 Appius Claudius Pulcher 42, 44 Apuleius 493 al-ʻArabī 220 Arabia 321  f., 414, 425, 624, 636

Index 

Arabian Peninsula 192  f., 208, 286, 480 Aragon 524 Aratus, poet 658  f., 669, 675 Arcadius, Emperor 842 Arcesilas 32 Archimatheus of Salerno 561 Arcona 92–95, 97–101, 104 Arethas of Caesarea, archbishop 293 Arezzo, ancient oracle 48 ʻArīb ibn Saʻad 647 Aristander, seer 26 Aristotle 32, 111  f., 116, 144  f., 156, 194, 209, 228, 337, 343, 374, 377  f., 389  f., 396, 408, 418, 435, 495, 500, 568  f., 591, 598, 600, 652, 659, 730, 808, 816, 854, 874, 966, 969 – Pseudo-Aristotle 726, 910, 965 Ari Þorgilsson 67, 80 Armenia 156, 713 Arnaldus of Villanova, doctor 277, 375, 553, 766, 903 Arnold, Dominican 278 Arnold Gheylhoven, physician 781 Arnold of Lübeck, historiographer 940 Arnórr jarlaskáld 68 Arnulf of Orléans, bishop 275 Arnulf of Provence 993 Arsenios, monk 447 Artemidorus 29, 47, 49, 159, 194, 210, 378  f., 390–393, 408, 418  f., 439, 569, 572  f., 593, 761, 766 Artemios, Saint 388, 395 Artois 703 al-Aṣbaḥī 547 Ascalon 624 Asclepius, myth. figure 29, 40, 388, 395, 568 al-Ash‘arī, dogmatist 365 ‘Ashiya Khātūn, Ottoman dervish 360 al-Ashraf ʻUmar 200  f., 216 Asmā’, daughter of a Caliph 422 Assyria 386, 390 Astrampsychus, Persian magus 159, 391, 765 al-Aswad al-‘Ansī, Yemeni ruler 365 Ateius Capito, Gaius 44 Athanasius of Alexandria, Church Father 765, 804, 996  f. Athens 26, 28, 507, 580, 953 – Acropolis 395 Athos 511  f.

 1005

Attila, ruler 73 Attus Navius, Roman augur 18 Augsburg 93, 258, 980 August, Elector of Saxony 129, 252 Augustine of Ancona 383, 755 Augustine of Hippo, Church Father 110  f., 114–116, 271, 274  f., 332, 337  f., 377, 430  f., 434, 442, 447, 615, 730, 732, 738, 753–755, 762, 774, 831, 833, 932, 935, 937, 949 Augustinus Hibernicus 60 Augustus, Emperor 17, 45, 49, 579, 628, 645 Ausgburg 981 Austria 854 Auxerre 981 Averroes see Ibn Rushd Avicenna see Ibn Sīnā Avignon 118  f., 280 Ávila 309  f. Avle Vipinas 36 Ayllon 310 al-ʻAynzarbī 592 Azogont, translator 693 Baalbek 291 Babylonia 17–19, 47, 50, 179, 343  f., 352, 386, 390, 392  f., 401  f., 407  f., 458, 461, 585, 612, 769, 818, 829 Bacon, Francis, English philosopher and statesman 788 Baghdad 156, 195, 215, 416, 419, 426, 507, 520, 534, 544, 572, 580, 596, 644, 742, 814, 828  f. – Museum of Baghdad 861 Bahareno, ancient oracle 48 Baḥīrā, Arab Christian monk 361 Baḥya ben Asher 519 Bajezid, Ottoman Sultan 294 Balaam, bibl. prophet 329, 896 Balak, Moabite King 896 Balbillus 46  f. Baldi, Bernardino, bibliographer 694 Baldr, myth. figure 69 Baldwin II of Constantinople 901 Balkh 322 Balʿamī, Samanide vizier 24 Baqlī, Rūzbihān, author on vision 360 Barcelona 143, 310, 353, 457, 497, 917 Bárðr 72 Bar Hedya, oneiromancer 407, 461

1006 

 Index

Barlaam of Seminara, Italian scholar and clergyman 157, 630, 714  f. Barnabas – Pseudo-Barnabas 289 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, encyclopaedist 616 Bartholomew of Parma 497 Bartolomeo Acardo 704 Bartolomeo Sacchi, Renaissance humanist writer 727 Bartolus of Saxoferrato, Italian jurist 728 Barukh Togarmi 351 Barzeh 424 Basel 735 Basil, metropolitan of Neopatras 293 Basileios I, Emperor 167, 450 Basilides 394 Basil of Caesarea, Church Father 389, 513, 629, 669, 671, 673  f., 996  f. Basil the Younger, Saint 799 Basin, lit. figure 889 Basra 326, 351 al-Battānī 524, 533, 715, 1001 Baudouin II, Emperor 497 Béatus of Liébana, theologian 933 Bede the Venerable, Benedictine monk 76, 111, 275, 278, 442, 607, 612, 614, 654, 718, 932, 938 Begoe see Vegoia Beheim, Michel, German wandering singer  833 Beirut 476 Belgrade 512 Bellanti, Lucio 739 Benedict of Nursia, Saint 117, 336, 808 Benedict XI, Pope 903 Benedict XIII, Pope 904 Benjamin of Tudela, Jewish traveller 179 Ben-Sira, author 393, 908 Berchán, Irish abbot 57 Bergen 79 Beringarius Ganellus 836 Bernard, hermit 119 Bernard de Gordon, physician 126, 553  f., 557 Bernard Gui, inquisitor 145, 902 Bernardo de Mezzo 704 Bernard of Clairvaux, abbot 117 Bernardus Silvestris, philosopher 434 Bernoulli, Jakob, mathematician 248

Berthold of Regensburg, preacher 831 Bessarion, Basilios, Cardinal 157, 631, 715 Bethlehem 395 Bianco, Andrea, cartographer 773 Bībī Munajjima, fortuneteller 422 Bībī Rūshanā’ī, oneiromancer 422 Bibulus 39 Birgitta of Sweden, Saint 339, 383, 808 al-Bīrūnī 195, 228, 231, 537, 541  f., 544  f., 595, 637  f., 643  f., 815, 1001 al-Bisṭāmī 220, 319 Bithynia 449, 624 Bivar 890 Blaubirer, Johann, printer 721 Blois 309 Boethius, philosopher 113, 486, 733 Boetius of Dacia 112, 382 Bohemia 89 Bojan, myth. figure 91 Bolland, Jean 806 Bollstatter, Konrad, scribe 833, 980 Bologna 120, 430, 437, 497–499, 731, 737, 816 Bolzano 125 Bonaventura, Saint 375  f., 382 Boniface VIII, Pope 434, 902  f. Bonus of Lucca 616 Bosra (Syria) 361 Braga 143 Brescia 165, 504 – Museum of Brescia 861 Bridget, John of Morigny’s sister 952 Brigit, Saint 61, 63 British Isles 374, 610, 854, 971, 973 Brittany 55, 124 Bruno, Giordano, Italian friar 253 Buddha 369 Bukhara 790 al-Bukhārī 205, 208, 211, 217, 318, 358, 416 Bulgaria 88, 503, 505, 509, 670 Buluqiyā, prince of the Israelites in Cairo 319 al-Būnī 201, 220, 361, 474–476, 646 Burchard of Ursberg, historiographer 940 Burchardt, Bishop of Halberstadt 100 Burgos 310, 890 Burgundy 275, 383, 707 Bury St. Edmunds 277 Buzurgmihr 202 Byrhtferth of Ramsey, monk 718

Index 

Byzantium 143  f., 153, 155  f., 164, 272, 277, 351, 378, 450, 502  f., 507, 510, 568, 571  f., 575, 579  f., 588, 624, 627–630, 666, 670, 713, 715, 765, 811, 900, 910, 928 Cacus 36 Cadiz 704 Caesar 39, 42, 45, 74, 628, 667 Caesarius of Heisterbach, prior 134, 808 Caile Vipinas 36 Cain, bibl. figure 769 Cairo 195, 222, 319, 322  f., 344, 352, 424, 456, 464, 469, 472, 476  f., 522, 547, 746 – al-Qarāfa, cemetery in Cairo 322 – Ben Gurion Synagogue 819 Calabria 280 Calchas, seer 18, 36 Calcidius, philosopher 761 Caligari, Doctor, cin. figure 261 Callippus, astronomer 626 Calvin, John, French theologian 114 Cambrai 117 Cambridge 436 Campanella, Tommaso, Italian philosopher and astrologer 739 Camulodunum 46 Candia 704 Cannae 39 Cappadocia 406, 624 Capua 36 Cardano, Girolamo, Italian polymath 694, 739, 783 Carinthia 96 Carlos III, King of Navarre 524 Carneades 33 Cassar, Vittorio, knight of the Maltese order 469 Cassiodorus, Psalm commentator 334, 336 Castile 181, 523, 896 Castilla 888 Castro, Jacob, rabbi 463 Catalonia 498 Catania 144 Cathay see China Catherine of Siena, Saint 118  f., 129, 131, 334, 339 Cato the Elder, Roman statesman 42, 44 Cattan, Christophe de, encyclopaedist 790 Cecco d’Ascoli 112, 563, 891

 1007

Celestine V, Pope 281, 902 Celsus 552 Cenn Fáelad, myth. scholar 58 Censorinus, Roman grammarian 892 Cerdonis, Mattheus 437 Cesare, cin. figure 261 Ceuta 476 Chaerephon 31 Chalcedon – Council of Chalcedon 449, 843 Charibert, Franconian King 142 Chariklea, lit. figure 926 Charikles, lit. figure 926 Charlemagne, Emperor 275, 375, 889, 900  f., 938 Charles III the Fat, Emperor 331 Charles IV, Emperor 376 Charles I, King of England 247 Charles II, King of England 252 Charles V, King of France 128  f., 146, 378, 431, 756, 980 Charles VI the Mad, King of France 655 Charles I of Anjou, King of Sicily 901 Charles II, King of Naples 902 Chatun, daughter of Quazur 748 Chaucer 559 Chigi, Agostino, banker 260 China 658, 700, 971, 974 Chosroes see Khosrow Chrétien de Troyes, French poet 555 Chrysippus 15 Cicero 15–18, 32, 40–44, 48  f., 86, 115, 377, 389, 429, 439, 752, 888 Cinna 41, 43 Claros, ancient oracle 46 Claudius, Emperor 46, 48 Clavasio, Angelo de, moral theorist 706 Clementia of Hungary, wife of King Louis X of France 335 Clement V, Pope 383 Clement VI, Pope 280  f. Clement III, Antipope 276 Clement VII, Antipope 732 Clodius Pulcher, tribune of the plebs 40 Clodius Tuscus 627, 667, 669 Columba, Saint 61 Columbus, Christopher 296, 732 Columella, Lucius Junius Moderatus, Roman writer 669

1008 

 Index

Conchobar, prophet 58, 64 Conn Cétchathach, myth. Irish King 57 Conrad III, King 279, 285 Conrad of Eberbach, Cistercian monk 808 Conrad of Megenberg, German scholar 372, 382 Constance, Hohenstaufen empress 336 Constans II, Emperor 167 Constantine Akropolites 510 Constantine Angelos 169 Constantine I, Roman Emperor 846 Constantine I the Great, Emperor 46–48, 153, 285, 293, 449, 580, 620, 628, 675, 842 Constantine Manasses 503, 509 Constantine the African, translator 144, 495 Constantine VI, Emperor 508 Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, Emperor 160, 291, 396, 508, 670, 811  f. Constantinople 144, 153–156, 158, 160, 164, 167–169, 195, 285–288, 293–295, 321, 395, 404, 448–450, 497, 504, 506  f., 509, 511, 580  f., 704, 713  f., 801, 812, 841, 843, 846, 900, 928 – Church of Cosmas and Damian 395 Constantius, Emperor 48 Constantius II, Emperor 760, 842 Copernicus, Nicolaus 247, 758 Córdoba 195, 310, 495, 743 – Calendar of Córdoba 641, 643, 647, 690, 805 – Madīnat al-ẓahrā  322 Cordovero, Moshe, Jewish mystic 349 Corinth 394 Cornelia, daughter of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Balearicus 41 Cornelius Lentulus 41 Cornwall 55 Corvus, Andreas 437 Cosmas, Saint 388, 395 Cosmas of Prague, Bohemian priest and writer 89, 101 Cresques de Viviers 524 Crete 624, 704 Crinas 567 Croatia 89 Cromwell, Oliver, general 247 Cruithnechán, Irish priest 61 Cú Chulainn, prophet 58 Culleolus 41, 43 Cumae, ancient oracle 48 Cunstabulus 719

Cybele, myth. figure 40, 43 Cyprus 624, 629 Cyril, Saint 98, 502 Cyril Phileotes 388 Czechia 96 al-Ḍabbī, astronomer 743 al-Dajjāl, evil figure in Islamic eschatology 315 Damascius 21 Damascus 164, 316, 322, 327, 424, 470, 744 Damian, Saint 388, 395 al-Damīrī 419 Daniel, bibl. prophet 110, 161, 179  f., 185, 202, 208, 210, 213, 218, 284, 287  f., 290  f., 295, 304, 307, 309, 342, 350, 374, 390  f., 393, 408, 509, 613, 762  f., 843, 962 – Pseudo-Daniel 842 Daniel, Saint 168 Daniel, visionary monk 287 Daniel of Morley, English scholastic philosopher and astronomer 755 Dante Alighieri 117, 319, 328, 432, 699, 706, 823, 891 Dante da Maiano, Italian poet 891 Daqyā’īl, angel 315 Darius I, Great King 25 David, bibl. king 110, 285, 301, 305 David ben Yom Tov, Catalan Jewish astronomer and astrologer 519 David Kimḥi 946 Decius, Emperor 46 Dee, John, astrologer and occultist 953 Delhi 788 Delphi, ancient oracle 27, 30–32, 40, 46, 99, 141 Demetrios, Saint 395 Demetrios Chrysoloras 629, 715 Democritus 32, 667 Demophilus, astrologer 285, 293 Denmark 67, 76 al-Dhahabī 318 Dían Cécht, physician 64 Didyma, ancient oracle 27, 30, 46, 167 al-Dimashqī 214 al-Dīnawarī 210, 418  f. Dino del Garbo, Italian physician and philosopher 563 al-Dīn Suhrawardī 419 Diocletian, Emperor 645

Index 

Diodoros of Tarsos 997 Diogenes Laertius, biographer 32 Dionysius Exiguus, monk 275 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, historian 18 Dionysus, myth. figure 43, 45 Diopeithes, Athenian general 28 Dodona, ancient oracle 30, 32, 141, 448 Dola, myth. figure 88  f. Dolcino of Novara, heretic 902 Dominic de Guzman, Castilian priest 334 Dominicus Gundissalinus, scientist and philosopher 435, 485–487, 992  f. Domini of Caleruega, Castilian priest 899 Domitian, Emperor 46 Dorotheos of Sidon, astrologer 194, 503, 508 Dositheus, patriarch 286 Douai 703 Drepanum 39 Dresden 259 Dublin 63 Dukas, historiographer 286  f. Dunash ibn Tamīm, Jewish scholar 523 Durandus of Mende, bishop 885 Eddius Stephanus, author 78 Eden, bibl. garden 206, 768  f., 773, 775, 897 Edmund of Beaufort, Duke of Somerset 123 Edward, Prince of England 335 Egill Skallagrímsson, Viking-age poet and farmer 72 Egypt 16–18, 21–23, 156, 202, 224, 305, 308, 322  f., 326, 379, 386, 388, 390, 392  f., 395, 402  f., 455, 476, 479, 522, 524, 581, 588, 612, 629, 638, 641, 645, 828 Einhard, historiographer 938 Eirene, Empress 157 Ekkehard of Aura, historiographer 940 Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester 123, 130 Eleanor, wife of Edward (Prince of England) 335 Eleazar ben Asher HaLevi 305 Eleazar of Worms, rabbi 308, 345, 348, 403, 409, 462 Eleutherios Zebelenos 508 Eliezar ha-Levi 311 Eliezer, Abraham’s servant 829 Eliezer bar Joel HaLevi 304 Eliezer ben Hircanus, rabbi 523 Eli’ezer ben Samuel, French tosafist 945

 1009

Elijah, bibl. prophet 205, 305, 308, 354, 774, 801, 807, 821, 899 Elijah of Vilna, rabbi 464 Elisha, bibl. prophet 354 Eliyahu Mosheh Galino 911 Elvira 495 Endor see Witch of Endor Engelbert of Admont, abbot (Styria) 725 England 67, 77, 122–124, 247, 252, 273, 308, 335, 372, 378, 431, 608, 660, 701, 768 Enoch see also Hermes Trismegistus and Idrīs Enoch, bibl. figure 202, 345–347, 352, 774, 801, 819, 821, 899 Enoch, first city ever 769 Ephesus 624 Ephraim of Bonn, rabbi and writer 304 Ephrem of Nisibis 327 Epidauros 395 Epiphanius, disciple of Andrew Salos 801 Epirus 295, 448, 509 Erfurt 178, 349, 460, 816 Eros (cult) 927 Erpr, myth. figure 69 Ethiopia 488 Étienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris 731, 993 Etruria 16, 18, 31, 33–36, 40, 50 Eudes de Champagne 500 Eudoxus, astronomer 626, 667 Eugene IV, Pope 904 Eugenikos, Mark 157 Eugenius of Palermo, translator 144 Eumathios Makrembolites, writer 927 Euphratas, augur 450 Eurysthenes, myth. figure 753 Eusebius of Caesarea, Church Father 274, 628, 996  f. Eustathios Makrembolites, Byzantine novelist 389 Eustathios of Thessalonica, archbishop 509 Eustatius of Antioch, Bishop and Archbishop of Antioch 441 Eustratius, author 798 Euthymius 841 Eutokios 156 Evagrios of Pontus, monk and ascetic 389, 394 Eve, bibl. figure 611, 646, 771 Évrart of Trémaugon, French author and jurist 378 Ezekias, bibl. king 996

1010 

 Index

Ezekiel, bibl. prophet 154, 284  f., 288, 911, 922, 939 Ezra, bibl. figure 180, 613, 622 Ezra of Gerona, rabbi 347 Ezzelino da Romano, lord of the Ghibelline faction 121, 498 al-Faḍl ibn Sahl 218 Faelli, Benedetto, printer 737 Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, philosopher 216, 360, 473, 593, 791 al-Fārābī 360, 367, 415, 485, 546  f., 597 Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār, epic author 320, 416 al-Fārisī 544 Fāṭima, Muḥammad’s daughter 208, 323, 325  f., 363, 365 al-Fazārī 534, 544, 742 Fenrir, myth. creature 68 Fermat, Pierre de, lawyer and mathematician 248, 707, 783 Ferrara 731 – Palazzo Schifanoia 140, 498 Fez 788 Ficino, Marsilio, scholar and priest 253, 379, 731, 734, 738 Filocalus, Roman calligrapher 613 Fíngen, physician 64 Finnia, Saint 60 Finn mac Cumaill, seer 59 Firmicus Maternus, Latin writer and astrologer 485, 494, 496 Firmin de Beauval, astronomer 660, 662, 694 Fischer, Sebastian, chronicler 120 Flaithbertach mac Muirchertaig, Irish King 57 Flamanca, lit. figure 890 Flaminius 39 Flann Cinuch, Irish King 57 Flavius Josephus, historiographer 525, 933 Flavius Stilicho, magister militum 161, 167 Flóki Vilgerðarson, sailor 76 Florence 433, 439, 737  f., 891 Florus of Lyon, deacon and writer 884 Fludd, Robert, physician, astrologer and cosmologist 790 Foligno – Palazzo Trinci 498 Folz, Hans, German author 833 Forestier, Thomas, physician 561 Forlì 120

Forman, Simon, astrologer 256 Fortuna, myth. figure 47  f. Fra Mauro, cartographer 773 France 128  f., 146, 281, 293, 308  f., 343  f., 346, 378, 383, 391, 395, 403, 430  f., 518, 945 Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, Florentine merchant 698, 700  f. Francesco Petrarca 727, 892 Francis, cin. figure 262 Francisci, Matteuccia, alleged witch 123, 146 Francis of Assisi, Saint 273, 334, 375, 434, 807, 899 Frederick I Barbarossa, Emperor 279, 286, 940 Frederick II, Emperor 130, 145  f., 277  f., 280, 498, 891, 900  f., 939 Frederick III of Aragon, King of Sicily 281, 375, 902 Freyr, myth. figure 68, 70, 76 Fulda 119 Fustat see Cairo Gabriel, archangel 205, 315, 356  f., 360–362, 365, 403, 410 Gabriel of Pentapolius, bishop 295 Gaius Gracchus, politician 40, 43 Galen, physician and philosopher 144, 194, 229, 377, 397, 486, 494, 552–555, 557, 561, 564, 568–571, 574–576, 582, 588, 591  f., 596, 598, 609, 622, 874 Galeottus, Martius, philosopher and astrologer 437 Galilei, Galileo 247, 706, 758 Gallitsur, angel 181  f. Gaul 978 Gaurico, Luca, astrologer 739 Gauss, Johann Carl Friedrich 248 Gaza 624 Geiserich, Vandal King 274, 450 Geminus 668 Gennadios Scholarios, patriarch 997 Gennadius Scholarius, patriarch 295 Gennaro, Bishop of Cagliari 438 Genoa 704 Genseric, Vandal King 167 Gento, rabbi 524 Geoffrey Chaucer, poet and author 121, 498, 555, 615, 655 Geoffrey of Monmouth, historiographer 59, 940

Index 

George Akropolites, historiographer 157, 509 George Cedrenus, chronicler 293 George Chrysokokkes 157, 510, 715 George Hamartolos, monk 507 George Lapithes 157 George of Pisidia, Byzantine poet 674 George Pachymeres, historian and philosopher 389  f., 509, 513, 624, 674, 842  f. George the Synkellos (Syncellus), chronicler 290, 629 Georgius Gemistus Pletho, philosopher 21, 623–625, 631, 715 Georgius Zothorus Zaparus Fendulus 498 Gerald of Wales, historiographer 59, 376, 438 Gerard of Cremona, translator 144, 647, 755, 1002 Gerberga, Queen 293 Gerbert d’Aurillac (later Pope Silvester II) 498 Gerhoch of Reichersberg, theologian and provost 276, 279 Gerland the Computist 719 Germanicus 46, 659 Germanos I, patriarch 159, 292, 391, 997 Germany 276  f., 279, 308, 343  f., 348, 372, 374, 395, 402  f., 703, 854, 945 Gerona 895 Gershom ben Solomon of Arles 912 Gerson, Jean 338, 383, 733  f. Gersonides see Levi ben Gershon Gertruda, Queen 512 Gervase of Canterbury, historiographer 938 Gestr Bárðarson 71 al-Ghalīl 473 al-Ghazālī 318  f., 360, 365, 415, 419, 593, 598, 601 Ghent 703 Ghiyāth al-Dīn Jamshīd Masʻūd al-Kāshī 1001 Gibeon, ancient city in Israel 400 Gilbert of Tournai, bishop 725 Gildas, historiographer 55 Giovanni Boccaccio, writer 892 Giovanni da Legnano, jurist 498 Giovanni da Schio, Dominican Friar 120 Girolamo Benivieni, Florentine poet and musician 737 Girona 181 Gísli 71, 80 Glarus 988

 1011

Glaumvǫr, myhtical figure 70 Glomac 92 Glúmr 70 Godfrey, abbot 962 Godfrey of Viterbo, chronicler 724, 940 Gog and Magog, evil nations (bibl.) 272, 274  f., 280  f., 287–289, 302, 307, 315, 327, 771  f., 775, 799, 801 Golgotha 272 Golindouch, noble Persian lady 798 Gottschalk, monk of Fulda monastery 114 Granada 195 Granmárr, King 75 Gratian, canonist 380, 430, 615, 755 Greece 16–18, 25, 27  f., 42  f., 51, 272, 274, 280, 344, 455 Greer, John Michael, occultist 791 Gregory, Archbishop of Sanok 99 Gregory Chioniades, astronomer 157, 164  f., 504, 510 Gregory I the Great, Pope 377, 381, 394, 438, 754, 762, 805, 807, 822 Gregory VII, Pope 276  f. Gregory IX, Pope 277, 900 Gregory XI, Pope 119 Gregory XIII, Pope 630 Gregory of Nazianzus, Church Father 165, 394, 765 Gregory of Nyssa, Church Father 389, 394, 441, 629 Gregory of Tours, bishop 142, 375, 805, 938  f. Gregory Palamas, theologian 295 Gregory, pupil of Andrew the Fool 799 Grimbald, physician of Henry I of England 962 Gualteri, Lorenzo Spirito, printer 980 Gudea, King of Lagash 16 Guðrún, myth. figure 73 Guðrún Gjúkadóttir, heroic legend 71 Guglielmo dei Romitani, Italian poet 891 Guibert of Nogent, historiographer 371, 376, 939 Guido Bonatti, astrologer 120  f., 130, 491, 497  f., 660  f., 816, 891 Guido da Montefeltro, lord of the Ghibelline faction 121 Guido Novello, lord of the Ghibelline faction 121 Guido Orlandi, Italian poet 891 Guillaume de Nevers, lit. figure 890 Guillaume Durand Bishop of Mende 616

1012 

 Index

Guillem de Perrisse, author 441 Gunnarr, myth. figure 70, 73 Gunthram, Franconian duke 142 Gustav II Adolf, King of Sweden 245 Gutolf of Heiligenkreuz, historiographer 938 Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib, Persian astronomer and geographer 1000  f. Habermel, Erasmus 876 Hadrian, Emperor 46 Ḥāfiẓ, Persian poet 324 Hai Gaon, rabbi 180, 343, 345, 351, 401, 408, 461, 585, 909, 916  f. Haimo of Auxerre, theologian 933 Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf ibn Maṭar 533 Ḥājjī Khalīfa 212, 221, 480, 694 al-Ḥākim, Caliph 326, 547 Haly Abenragel see ʻAlī ibn Abi al-Rijāl Haly Abenrudian see ʻAlī ibn Riḍwān Hamartolos, chronicler 508 Hamburg 703 Hamðir, myth. figure 69 Hammām ibn Munabbih 317 Hananel ben Abraham of Esquira, rabbi 910 Hannibal 41 Harald, King of Norway 71 Haraldr, King of Norway 74, 76 Harold Godwinsson, King of England 74 al-Harra (city near Medina) 326 Hartlieb, Johannes, Bavarian physician 124–126, 130–133, 136, 138, 147, 257, 756, 833–835 Hārūn al-Rashīd, Caliph 194 al-Ḥasan 231 al-Ḥasan al-Khallāl 417 Ḥasan ibn al-Bahlūl, Syriac forecaster 328 Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, leader of the Nizari Isma‘ilis 322, 324 al-Ḥasan, second son of ‘Alī and Fāṭima 326 Ḥasdai Crescas, Catalan Jewish philosopher 519 al-Ḥāsib 478 Heimdallr, myth. figure 68 Heingarter, Conrad 553 Hélinand de Froidmont, poet and chronicler 500 Heliodoros 156, 506, 926 Heliopolis 624 Helios, myth. figure 23 Helmold of Bosau, historiographer 86, 90  f., 104, 939

Henri de Mondeville, surgeon 561, 564 Henry Aristippus, translator 144 Henry Daniel, physician 875 Henry III, Emperor 93 Henry IV, Emperor 276, 336, 939 Henry VI, Emperor 724  f. Henry I, King of England 372, 962 Henry II, King of England 436 Henry VI, King of England 123 Henry of Ghent, scholastic philosopher 111 Henry of Kirkestede 277 Henry of Langenstein, German philosopher and mathematician 338, 731, 758 Hephaistion of Thebes, astrologer 503, 506, 671 Heraclius, Emperor 285, 307, 448, 580, 626, 628, 630, 713, 798 Herakles, myth. figure 36 Herat 422 Herbord 93, 99  f. Herdís 71 Herennius Siculus, haruspex 43 Herihor, Egyptian High Priest 22 Hermann of Carinthia, Slavic astronomer and astrologer 496, 659, 694, 816, 862 Hermann of Reichenau, monk 719, 869 Hermes Trismegistus see also Enoch and Idrīs Hermes Trismegistus, myth. author 23, 139, 144, 202, 215, 247, 478, 489, 491, 495, 599, 626, 954 Herodotus, historiographer 23  f., 33 Hesiod, historiographer 449, 570, 658 Hesychius of Milet, historiographer 291 Hierophilus, physician 627 Hildegard of Bingen, Saint 334, 377, 381, 899 Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims 142, 430 Hind 488 al-Hindī 475, 478 Hipparchus, astronomer 626 Hippocrates 144, 156, 159, 397, 551, 553–555, 562, 564, 568  f., 588  f., 597, 754, 968 – Pseudo-Hippocrates 377 Hippolytus 274, 288, 290–292 Hirsau 119 Hǫðr, myth. figure 69 Hœnir, myth. figure 69, 75 Hǫgni, myth. figure 73 Holy Land 118, 276, 304, 310, 821, 965 Homer 17, 26, 31, 449

Index 

Honorius, Emperor 842 Honorius Augustodunensis, theologian 612, 769, 771, 899, 938 Honorius of Thebes, myth. author 836, 953 Horace, writer 45 Hostiensis, canonist 701 Hrabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz 884, 937 Hrólfr 73 Hucbald of Saint-Armand, theologian and historiographer 613 Hudhayfa ibn Yamān 475 Hugh of Saint Victor, theologian 768, 991  f. Hugo of Santalla, translator 143  f., 496, 790, 831 Hugo Ripelin, theologian 968 Humbert de Romans, Dominican friar 380, 382 Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq 229, 418  f., 533, 573, 593, 596, 598 Hunerich, Vandal King 274 Hungarian 275, 437 al-Ḥusayn, Muḥammad’s grandson 322, 325–327 Hūshank 478 Huygens, Christiaan, mathematician and astronomer 248 Hysminias, lit. figure 927 Hystaspes 25 Iamblichus, philosopher 21, 49, 160, 389, 734 Iberian Peninsula 143, 273, 432, 521 Ibn Abi 'l-Dunyā, scholar 317, 419 Ibn Abī l-Rijāl, poet 744 Ibn al-Aʽlam, astrologer 504, 509, 629 Ibn al-Bannā’, jurist 419, 422 Ibn al-ʻAwwām, agriculturist 214 Ibn al-Jawzī, Bagdadhi polymath and storyteller 318 Ibn al-Kharrāṭ 318 Ibn al-Khayyāṭ, historiographer 742 Ibn al-Mubarak 317 Ibn al-Musayyab 210, 417 Ibn al-Nadīm, bibliographer 215, 369, 418, 475, 479 Ibn al-Nafīs, polymath 591 Ibn al-Raqqām, astronomer and mathematician 214 Ibn al-Rāwandī, author 360 Ibn ‘Arabī, researcher of mysticism 360, 419

 1013

Ibn Bābūyah, scholar 320 Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, traveller 321 Ibn Buṭlān, physician 481 Ibn Farīghūn 199 Ibn Ghannām 210, 418 Ibn Ḥabīb, Spanish writer 317 Ibn ʻArabī, researcher of mysticism 474  f., 479, 481 Ibn Isḥāq, biographer of Muḥammad 319, 321, 358, 361, 416 Ibn Kathīr, historiographer 318, 359 Ibn Khaldūn, learned historian 190, 197  f., 205, 212, 215, 220–222, 231, 320, 357, 360, 366, 420, 424, 473–476, 479, 597 Ibn Lahī‘a 317 Ibn Maḥfūf 470 Ibn Manẓūr, lexicographer 478, 637 Ibn Māsawayḥ, physician 641, 643 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, theologian and spiritual writer 319, 419 Ibn Qunfudh 744 Ibn Qutaybah, scholar 24, 417, 419, 638–640, 646, 690 Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, scholar 318 Ibn Rushd (Averroes), polymath and jurist  111  f. Ibn Sa‘d 210, 417 Ibn Sahula 519 Ibn Saʻīd al-Maghribī, geographer, historian and poet 224 Ibn Sīda 637 Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna), polymath 212, 229, 325, 360, 367, 418, 422, 426, 480, 547, 553, 557, 591, 597  f., 601, 732, 897 Ibn Sīrīn, interpreter of dreams 210, 373, 390, 417 Ibn Sūdūn 210 Ibn Ṭalḥa 319 Ibn Ṭāwūs, Shiite jurist, theologian, historian and astrologer 319, 418, 600 Ibn Taymīyah, scholar 200, 224, 359, 744 Ibn Ṭufayl, Andalusian writer 360 Ibn Tūmart, founder of the Almohad dynasty 207, 323 Ibn Wahb, jurist 317 Ibn Waḥshiyya, alchemist (and much more) 214, 221, 227 Ibn Waraqa, uncle of Muḥammad’s first wife 361

1014 

 Index

Ibn Yūnus, mathematician 547, 1001 Ibn Zunbul, astrologer and historiographer 468 Ibrahim al-Fazārī, Abassid astronomer 999 al-Ibshīhī 480 Iceland 76–78, 81 Idrīs see also Hermes Trismegistus and Enoch Idrīs (Enoch), prophet 202, 319, 475, 478, 592, 789 Ieuan ap Rhydderch 59 Ignatius, author 801 ‘Imad al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Kashī, astronomer 1000 Immanuel ben Jacob Bonfilsrabbi; mathematician and astronomer 504, 511, 524 Immanuel of Rome 519 India 192, 369, 379, 588, 592, 638, 790, 979 Inés, prophetess 178 Ingimundr Þorsteinsson 76 Innocent III, Pope 339, 884, 890 Innocent IV, Pope 278, 900 Ioannes Angelos, nobleman 843 Iraeneus, Church Father 774 Iran 16  f., 23, 25, 195, 224, 324, 472, 638, 641 – Khorasan 365 Iraq 194  f., 208, 214, 224, 641 Ireland 55–58, 60–64, 971 – Ailech 57 – Tara 56  f. Irene, Empress 509 Irene, Sebastokratorissa 509 Isaac, bibl. figure 286, 304  f., 309 Isaac Abravanel 528 Isaac Arama 528 Isaac Argyros, monk and mathematician 157, 164, 623, 630, 714  f. Isaac ben Baruḵ ibn Albalia 523 Isaac ben Polqar 526 Isaac ben Solomon al-Aḥdab 519 Isaac ben Solomon ibn Sahula 519 Isaac ha-Levi Bar Zerahia 519 Isaac ibn Ghiyyat 519 Isaac ibn Latif 353 Isaac ibn Said 523 Isaac II Angelos, Emperor 847  f. Isaac Komnenos, ruler of Cyprus 847  f. Isaac Nafuci 524 Isaac of Polqar 519 Isaac (Ri) of Dampierre, French tosafist 945

Isaiah, bibl. prophet 154, 301, 307, 393, 916, 996 Isaiah di Trani, Italian tosafist 944 Iseut, lit. figure 889 Isfahan 323 Isḥāq ibn Bishr, Iranian author 358 Ishmael, rabbi 345 Isidore of Kiev, cardinal 511 Isidore of Seville, archbishop 61  f., 111, 115  f., 131, 142, 329, 377, 430  f., 440, 582, 654, 661, 730, 755, 771, 831, 833, 857, 884, 937, 981, 991 Isis, myth. figure 42 Iskandar Sultān 1000 Isle of Man 55, 67  f. Israel 455, 458, 520, 522, 524, 528, 828 Isrāfīl, angel 316 Isserlein, Israel, rabbi 946 Istanbul 226 Italy 41  f., 118, 121, 143  f., 179, 251, 273, 281, 311, 344, 518, 697  f., 701, 703, 707, 854, 991 Iziaslav Davidovich, ruler of Chernigov 512 Iziaslav Iaroslavich, King 512 Izrā’īl, angel of death 314 Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, author 229 Jacob al-Qirqisani, Karaite dogmatist and exegete 829 Jacob ben Asher 944 Jacob ben David Yom-tob 157 Jacob ben Sheshet 895 Jacob Corsuno 524 Jacob of Marvège, rabbi 403, 405, 462 Jacobus de Varazze (Voragine), chronicler and Archbishop of Genoa 805 Jacques Despars 563 Ja‘far al-Sadiq, Imam and occultist 200, 202, 208, 218, 229, 320, 326, 352, 363, 418, 478, 646 Ja‘far al-Sadiq, Imam and occultist 789 al-Jāḥiẓ, polymath 215, 359 Jalāl al-Dawla Muʻizz al-Dīn, Seljuk Sultan 644 Jāmāsp, confident of Zoroaster 202 James, bibl. figure 292 James I, King of Aragon 435 James II, King of Aragon and Valencia 375 James of Pecorara, cardinal 900 James of Vitry, cardinal 899

Index 

al-Jawbarī 471 Jawor (Jauer), Nicholas Magni de, theologian 834 Jeake, Samuel, merchant and astrologer 246  f. Jean Buridan, philosopher 113 Jean of Ligneres 1002 Jedaiah ben Abraham Bedersi ("Penini"), Jewish philosopher and physician 526, 586 Jeremiah, prophet 205 Jerome, Church Father 110, 274, 460, 774, 807, 932 Jerusalem 117, 272  f., 276  f., 280  f., 304, 308  f., 315  f., 321  f., 351, 410, 460, 464, 522, 798, 800  f., 821, 899, 917 – Heavenly Jerusalem 768, 825 – Holy Sepulchre 643 – Tempelberg (al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf)  322 Joachim of Fiore, Calabrian abbot 111, 273, 279–281, 334, 336, 899, 902, 933, 935 Joan I of Navarre, Queen of France and Navarre 335 Johan Zonaras, chronicler 502, 513 John, Byzantine Saint 388, 395 John, evangelist and trad. author of the Book of Revelation 190, 270, 273–278, 284  f., 293, 336 John, Exarch of Bulgaria 503  f. John Abramios 510, 513 John Apotyras, minister of Andronikos I 847 John Arderne, surgeon 561 John Ashenden 657, 659  f. John Beleth, liturgist 884 John Chortasmenos, Bishop of Selymbria 157, 714  f. John Chrysostom, Church Father 284  f. John Duns Scotus, priest and philosopher 111, 661 John III Vatatze, Emperor of Nicea 900 John I Tzimiskes, Emperor 508, 800 John Kamateros 165, 503, 505, 509, 669, 671  f. John Kinnamos, historiographer 389 John Malalas, Greek chronicler 285 John Mirfield, priest and physician 126  f., 134 John Mystacon, Byzantine general 798 John of Asturias 899 John of Dacia 993 John of Damascus, Church Father 164, 368, 505, 507, 513, 674, 714, 997 John of Legnano, canonist 378

 1015

John of Morigny, priest and visionary 135, 948, 951  f. John of Nikiu, Coptic Bishop in Pashati 507, 613 John of Parma 901 John of Patmos, visionary 961 John of Rupescissa, alchemist 280  f. John of Sacrobosco, astronomer 112, 613, 616, 733, 816 John of Salisbury, philosopher and Bishop of Chartres 123–125, 133, 135, 376–379, 381, 383, 430, 436, 438  f., 564, 726  f. John of Saxony, astrologer 497, 500, 720, 816, 1002 John of Seville, translator 143, 496, 659, 816, 965 John of Toledo, astronomer and prophet 277, 937 John of Toledo, cardinal 901 John of Westphalia, printer 732, 734 John of Worcester, historiographer 372, 962 John Philoponus of Alexandria, philologist and theologian 156, 165, 671, 674, 861 John Scotus Eriugena, theologian and philosopher 114 John Skylitzes, historiographer 160  f., 389, 450 John Somer, Canon of Windsor 720, 881 John Synadinos 509, 513 John “The Alchemist”, Margrave of Brandenburg 756 John the Baptist, bibl. figure 205, 643 John the Deacon 628, 713 John the Exarch, Bulgarian scholar 673 John the Grammarian, patriarch of ­Constantinople 164, 801 John the Lydian, writer 34, 160, 504, 507, 626  f., 630, 667, 669, 672, 811 John Tzetzes, scholar 285  f., 451 John V, Emperor 510 John XV, Pope 275 John XXII, Pope 903 John Zonaras, chronicler 293 Jonah, bibl. figure 184, 218, 442 Jordanus de Quedlinburg 733 Josef ben Eliezer Bonfils 519  f. Josef ben Solomon Ṭaiṭaṣaq 519 Joseph, Archbishop of Thessalonica 841 Joseph, bibl. dream interpreter 22, 178  f., 209, 211, 357, 359, 374, 393, 401, 413  f., 417, 568, 760

1016 

 Index

Joseph Albo, philosopher and rabbi 519 Joseph Barsabbas, bibl. figure 442 Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla 344, 351, 519, 786, 896 Joseph ben Judah ibn Aknin, writer on the Mishnah and Talmud 526 Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi, kabbalist 308 Joseph Bryennios, Byzantine monk 295 Joshua, bibl. figure 305, 395 Joshua ibn Shuaib, rabbi 895, 911 Jourdemayne, Margery, 123, 146 Juan d’Aspa, translator in Castile 954 Juan I, King of Aragon 524 Judaea 47 Judah al-Ḥarizi, Jewish poet 912 Judah ben Barzillai, Catalan Talmudist 518 Judah ben Moses ha-Cohen 523 Judah ben Solomon Canpanton, rabbi 911 Judah ben Solomon ha-Cohen, Jewish philosopher, astronomer and mathematician 518  f., 525 Judah ben Verga 524 Judah Hadassi 910 Judah Halevi, poet and philosopher 308, 344, 346, 351, 353, 526  f., 687, 909, 917, 923 Judah he-Ḥasid, author 402  f. Judah of Barcelona, rabbi 457 Judah Sirleon, French tosafist 945 Judas Iscariot, apostle 442 Julian, Emperor 46, 160, 167, 460, 571 Julian the Chaldaean 21 Julian the Theurgist 21 Julius Africanus, historiographer 290, 292 Julius Firmicus Maternus, astrologer 892 Juno, myth. figure 41, 48 Junonia 40 Jupiter/Zeus, myth. figure 30, 34  f., 38–40, 42  f., 45, 48, 448, 956 Jurby 68 Justine 165 Justinian I the Great, Emperor 160, 167, 395, 507, 580 Juvenal, poet 42

al-Kamil, Sultan 277 Kantakouzenos, John 389 Karo, Joseph, rabbi 462, 944–946 Kashgar 788 al-Kāshī 1001 Kassel 259 Katanankes 508 Kaysersberg, Johann Geiler of, priest 833 Kazi, myth. healer 89 Kepler, Johannes, physician 247, 758 Kerver, Jacob, printer 693 Ketill 73 Khadīja, Muḥammad’s fist wife 361 Khalaf al-Barbarī, myth. figure 592 al-Khallāl 419 al-Kharkūshī 418 al-Khāzini 1001 al-Khazrajī 475 Khosrow II, Great King 24, 448, 798 Khrabr Charnoresiets 98 al-Khujandī 535, 542 al-Khwārizmī 199, 534, 1000  f. al-Kindī 215, 218, 228, 418, 544, 546, 597, 651, 691, 693  f. Kirill Beloozerskii 512 al-Kirmānī 210, 417 al-Kisā’ī, author 319, 359 Kleitophon, lit. figure 925 Koðrán 71, 76 Kormákr, skald 75 Kosmas Andritzopoulos, cleric 295 Kotkell, myth. figure 77 Krakow – University of Krakow 660 Kratippos, historian (?) 32 Krishna 369 Krok, myth. founder of the Premyslid dynasty 89 Kufa 320  f., 327 Kūshyār ibn Labbān, mathematician 223, 522, 815, 1000  f. Kyprianos, magician 165 Kyros, Saint 388, 395

Kabul 788 Kaʻb al-Aḥbār 205 Kalasiris, lit. dream interpreter 926 Kalīlah wa Dimnah 164 Kalonymus ben David 518

Lactantius, Christian author 290, 332 Lagash 16 Lambert of St Omer, French chronicler and abbot 771, 773 Lampert of Hersfeld, chronicler 276

Index 

Lampon, seer 26, 29 Lancelot, myth. knight 889 Laodicea 513 Laon 939 Laonikos Chalkokondyles, historiographer 286 Laplace, Pierre-Simon, scholar 248 Lapo Gianni, Italian poet 891 Leardo, Giovanni, cartographer 773 Leeds 121 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, philosopher 476 Leiden 481 Lengvenis, Lithunian Duke 971 Leo I, Emperor 168, 801 Léon – San Isidoro 140 Léon l’Africain, diplomat 474, 476 Leontios of Constantinople, patriarch 997 Leontios of Panopolis, Anti-Emperor 506 Leopold of Austria, astrologer 497, 657, 659  f. Leo the Deacon 508 Leo the Mathematician 156, 672 Leo Tuscus, translator 144, 378 Leo V, Emperor 160  f., 841, 846 Leo VI the Wise, Emperor 159, 161, 285, 295, 391, 396, 508, 511, 670, 901 Leukippe, lit. figure 925 Levi ben Gershon (Gersonides), philosopher and mathematician 344, 347, 351  f., 518  f., 524, 526–528, 586 Libya 396 Liechtenstein, Peter, printer 693 Liedwy of Schiedam, visionary 119  f., 129, 135, 558 Lilly, William, astrologer 246  f. Livy, historiographer 38, 43 Lóegaire, Irish King 56 London 121, 126, 165, 437, 469, 555, 559, 561 Lope de Barrientos, inquisitor 756 Lorraine 275 Lorsch, monastery 718 Lothar of Segni see Innocent III Louis III, Count Palatine of the Rhine 980 Louis the Child, King of Sicily 281 Louis X, King of France 335 Lubuša, myth. prophetess 86, 89 Lucas of Tuy, cleric 899 Lucius Caesar 44 Luke, evangelist 388, 394, 960 Luke Chrysoberges, patriarch 509, 675

 1017

Luria, Isaac, rabbi and Jewish mystic 922 Luther, Martin 111, 114, 252, 855 Lycia 624 Lycosthenes, Conrad, humanist 986 Lyon 295, 309  f. – Council of Lyon 902 al-Ma‘arrī 320 Macedonia 26  f., 389, 394 Machiavelli, Niccolò 728 Macrobius 377–379, 381, 389, 761, 852 Madrid 592 Maghreb 224, 424, 432, 477, 479, 641, 743, 790 al-Maghribī 479 Magister Speculi, anonym. author of the Speculum astronomiae 487  f., 490 Magni, myth. figure 69 Mahdī, messianic figure 315  f., 320, 325–327, 365, 479 Mahdī Amīn, shayk 476 al-Mahdī, Caliph 155, 164, 207, 210, 417 Maimonides, philosopher and astronomer 176, 182, 185, 310, 403, 405, 408, 457, 462, 518, 526  f., 686  f., 786, 895, 908, 923, 944  f. Mainz 119, 306 al-Majlisī 319  f., 328, 359 al-Majrīṭī 1000   f. ̲ Malaquin, lit. figure 889 Mālik, angel 316 al-Malik al-Afḍal al-ʻAbbās, Sultan 640 al-Malik, Caliph 210 Malta 249, 469  f. Mambré, Michele, Italian traveller 325 al-Ma’mūn, Caliph 156, 164, 418, 580 Manfred, King of Sicily 144 Mangu, Mongol khan 973 Manilius 49, 494 Manlius Vulso, Roman Consul 42 al-Manṣūr, Caliph 195, 523, 999 Manuel Bryennios, scholar 157, 164 Manuel Holobolos, orator and monk 447 Manuel I Komnenos, Emperor 153, 159, 163, 169, 287, 378, 451, 503, 509, 581, 583, 630, 671  f., 812, 843, 847 Manuel II Palaeologus, Emperor 159, 390  f., 397, 573 al-Maqqarī 224 Maragha 226

1018 

 Index

Marbach 277 Marcellus 44 Marcian, Emperor 167, 450 Marcius, prophet 41 Marcius Rex, consul 40 Marco Polo 322 Marcus Aemilius, consul 34 Marcus Messalla 44 Marcus of Regensburg, author 822 Marduk, myth. figure 19 Marinus of Neapolis, biographer 612 Marius, consul 43 al-Marjānī 474  f. Mark Antony, politician and general 45 Marquard of Lindau 832, 835 Marrakech 475 Marseille 720 Marsyas, King of Lydia 18 Martha, prophetess 43 Martin IV, Pope 556 Martin V, Pope 904 Martin of Amberg 832–834 Martin of Braga, Archbishop of Bracara Augusta 755 Martin of Tours, Saint 290 al-Marwazī 206, 208 Mary, mother of Jesus 275  f., 310, 357, 388, 804 Mary of Luxembourg, Queen of France and Navarre 147 al-Marzūqī, astronomer 646 Masada 307 Māshā’allāh (Manasse, Messalla, Messahallah) 232, 475, 496  f., 523, 544, 647, 692 al-Mas‘ūdī 420, 644 Matthew, evangelist 116, 388, 394 Matthew Blastares, computist 630, 715 Matthew Paris, historiographer 435, 940  f., 979 Matthias, apostle 442 Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary 437 Maurice, Emperor 162, 507, 798 al-Māwardī, author 360 al-Mawṣilī 471 Maximilian II, Emperor 846 Maximus, Emperor 808 Maximus Planoudes, translator 389 Maximus the Confessor, Saint 713 al-Maʼmūn, Caliph 194, 206, 209  f., 218, 523 Mecca 200, 211, 321  f., 327, 357, 413, 424

– Hira, town near Mecca 361 – Ka‘ba  323 – well of Zamzam 322  f. Medici, Lorenzo de 738 Medina 322, 357 Meir ben Isaac Aldabi of Toledo 912 Meir ben Todros HaLevi Abulafia, Spanish talmudist 944 Meir of Rothenburg, German rabbi 911, 944 Melanchthon, Philipp 251  f., 379 Memphis (Egypt) 23 Mena, Juan de, Spanish poet 890 Menahem Zioni, rabbi 912 Mercury (cult) 956 Merlin, myth. wizard 59, 901–903, 940 Merovech, Franconian King 142 Mesopotamia 16–21, 34, 36, 202, 214, 220, 588 Messer Imberal del Balzo, lit. figure 891 Messiah ben David 302, 312 Messiah ben Joseph 302, 312 Messina 335 Metatron see also Enoch Metatron, king of angels 345–347, 349, 819 Methodius, patriarch 841 Methodius, Saint 98, 272, 284  f. Methodius of Olympus, Church Father 291 Michael, archangel 184, 800 Michael, usurper 160 Michael Balsamon 513 Michael Glykas, historian, theologian, and astronomer 509, 513, 581, 583, 669, 672, 674, 844 Michael II, Emperor 841 Michael of Ephesos, commentator 390 Michael of Rhodes, Venetian mariner 608 Michael Psellus, monk, philosopher, politician, and historian 21, 153, 160, 169, 390, 397, 449, 451, 508, 572, 669, 714, 997 Michael Scot, mathematician and translator 112, 145  f., 436, 497  f., 891 Michael Strategopulos, nobleman 843 Michael VIII Palaeologus, Emperor 294, 447, 842  f. Michael Zorianos, high official 295 Miðgarðsormr, myth. creature 68 Milan 707 Miller, William, religious enthusiast 262 Minerva, myth. figure 35 Miṣrī, Niyazī, author 360

Index 

Móði, myth. figure 69 Moises Baco, astrologer 524 Moivre, Abraham de, mathematician 248 Molcho, Solomon, mystic 311 Moldova 673 Mongolia 972 Montecassino 144, 560, 675 Montpellier 554, 562–564 Mordeḵai ben Eliezer Comtino, Talmudist and scientist 519 Morocco 403, 470, 476 – Tétouan 365 Morrígan, myth. figure 58 Moses, bibl. figure 181, 184, 205, 301, 304  f., 307, 310, 342, 345, 347, 350, 354, 356, 393, 828 Moses ben Baruch Almosnino, rabbi 519, 525 Moses ben Judah Galeano 519 Moses ben Shemtob de León, philosopher 896 Moses of Coucy, tosafist 945 Moses of León 344, 519, 896 Moses Taku, rabbi 348 Moshe Isserles, rabbi and talmudist 462 Mount Sinai 828 al-Mufaḍḍal 320, 327 al-Muftarī, Ḥā-Mīm ibn Mann Allāh, prophet 365 Muhammad, prophet 189  f., 192, 199  f., 202, 204  f., 207–209, 211, 218, 221, 232, 326, 351, 356–369 Muḥammad, son of Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ 324 Muḥammad al-Bāqir, imam 326 Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan 326 Muḥammad Nūrbakhsh Qahistani, mystic 326 al-Muḥāsibī, mystic theologian from Bagdad 318 Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Maghribī, astronomer and astrologer 1001 al-Muʻtaḍid, Caliph 644 Muʻtamid, ruler of Seville 523 Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī, visionary 325 Mumtāz, wife of the Mughal Emperor Shāh Jahān’s 322 al-Munajjim 217, 468 Munajjim Shīrāzī, Hidāyat Allāh 792 Munich 957 Muñoz, Jeronimo, astronomer 816 Münster 250 Müntzer, Thomas, theologian 379 al-Muqanna‘, prophet 365

 1019

Mūsā ibn Sāliḥ, myth. magician 365 Musaylima, tribesman 365 Muscovy 504  f., 670, 673 Mushka 310 Muslim, author 318 Muspell, myth. creature 69 Muṣṭafä Efandī ibn Sahrāb 479 Nachmanides (Moses ben Naḥman), rabbi and kabbalist 351, 353, 459, 519 al-Nadîm 24 Nahmanides (Moses ben Naḥman), rabbi and kabbalist 895  f., 909, 917  f., 923, 946 Naibod, Valentin, astronomer 816 Najaf, city in Iraq 424 Najm al-Dīn al-Misrī, Egyptian astronomer 861 Napier, Richard, astrologer 256 Naples 704, 953 Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, Persian polymath 510, 593, 791, 1001 Nathan, bibl. figure 393 Navarra 524 Nebuchadnezzar, bibl. king 72, 110, 288, 408, 760, 762  f., 962 Nechepso, myth. figure 23, 627, 629 Nectanebus, myth. king and magician 494, 846, 888 Nehemiah ben Shlomo, rabbi 178, 349, 460 Neopatras 293 Neri, Raffaele de 707 Nero, Emperor 47, 932, 938 Nicaea 157, 581 – Council of Nicaea 630, 805 Niccolino de Fieschi, cardinal 704 Niccolo Bertuccio 564  f. Niccolò di Toldo 119 Nicephorus 390 Nicephorus, patriarch 159, 391 Nicephorus, presbyter 801 Nicephorus Gregoras, historiographer and theologian 157, 164, 389, 510, 630, 714  f. Nicephorus I, Emperor 762, 765 Nicephorus II Phokas, Emperor 800 Nicetas Choniates, historiographer 162  f., 169, 285, 288, 389, 508  f., 581, 672, 812, 846 Nicetas Eugenianos, Byzantine novelist 389 Nicetas Paphlagon, writer 292  f. Nicetas Seidos 714 Nicholas, patriarch 448

1020 

 Index

Nicholas III, Pope 185, 277, 901–903 Nicholas IV, Pope 902 Nicholas Kabasilas, Byzantine mystic 157 Nicholas Mysticus 998 Nicholas of Lynn, astronomer 720, 881 Nicholas of Lyra, Franciscan scholar 934  f. Nicholas of Methone 997 Nicholas of Otranto, geomancer 447 Nicholas Rhabdas 630, 715 Nicias, Athenian general 26 Nicole Oresme, philosopher 146, 383, 431, 441, 500, 661, 708, 731, 756 Nider, Johannes, theologian 699 Nigidius Figulus, Late Roman scholar and praetor 18, 34, 44, 669, 753 Nineveh 184 Niphon, Saint 800 Nishapur 359, 422 Nissim ben Reuben, Spanish talmudist 946 Noah, bibl. sailor 110, 190, 205, 455, 636, 769, 954 Nordhausen 703 Norway 69, 72, 74, 76–79 Norwich 121 Notker the German, monk in Saint Gall 276 Novgorod 511 Nu‘aym ibn Ḥammād, traditionist 317 Numa, King 38, 45 Numerius Fabius Pictor 44 Numerius Suffustius 48 Nuremberg 258, 986–988 – St Martha 963 al-Nuwayrī, historian 214–216, 480, 640 Occitany 888 Octavius, consul 41 Óðinn, myth. figure 68, 76–79 Odo of Cluny, abbot 275 Óláfr, Saint 69, 72 Oleg, prince 103 Olympia 30 Olympiodorus the Younger, philosopher and astrologer 506, 672 Onomacritus 28 Orderic Vitalis, historiographer 940 Oribasius of Pergamum, encyclopedist 569, 571, 591 Origenes 441 Orkney 68

Orléans 981 Orosius, priest, historian and theologian 933 Orpheus, myth. figure 18, 36 Ósvífr 74 Otloh of St Emmeram, monk 332, 821 Otto III, Emperor 276 Otto of Freising, historiographer 279, 723  f., 937  f., 940 Ovid 440, 706, 780 – Pseudo-Ovid 136, 699, 780  f. Ovingham 68 Owain Glyn Dŵr 59 Oxford 470  f., 655, 816 – University of Oxford 660 Pacioli, Luca, Franciscan mathematician 701, 707 Padilla, Juan de, Spanish poet 890 Padua 437, 731, 816 – Chiesa degli Eremitani 498 – Palazzo della Ragione 498 Palencia 310 Palestine 401  f., 407 Paltiel, father of Aḥima’az 179 Pamphylia 624 Pamprepios of Panopolis, philosopher and poet 506 Panaetius 32 Pankratios, astrologer 508 Panodorus, Egyptian monk 290, 628 Pantaleon, metropolitan of Synada 508 Paphos, ancient oracle 46 Pappos, astronomer 156 Paracelsus, Swiss physician, alchemist, and philosopher of the German Renaissance 245 Paris 145, 261, 275, 492, 496  f., 562  f., 592, 733, 788, 816, 993 – Faculty of Arts 992 – Université Sorbonne 338 – University of Paris 338, 720, 734, 816, 952, 993, 1002 Pascal, Blaise, French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic theologian 248, 707, 783 Paschalis Romanus, translator 144, 373, 766 Paschasius Radbertus, Abbot of Corbie 430 Patmos, island 336 Patrick, Saint 55  f., 59

Index 

Paul, apostle 289, 328, 333, 338, 394, 434 Paul II, Pope 715 Paul III, Pope 739 Paul of Aegina, physician 569, 571, 591 Paul of Alexandria, astrologer 156, 503, 506, 513, 671  f. Pavia 130, 731 Pedro IV, King of Aragon 524 Pepys, Samuel, mariner 246 Perez of Corbeil, tosafist 944 Pericles, statesman, orator and general 28 Persia 164, 193, 287, 318, 324, 379, 391, 588 Perugia 980 Perun, myth. figure 89 Peter, apostle 289 Peter Abelard, scholastic philosopher and Theologian 114 Peterborough 726 Peter Comestor 616 Peter John Olivi, theologian 699, 702, 903, 934 Peter Nightingale (Petrus de Dacia), astronomer 614, 720 Peter of Abano, philosopher, astrologer and professor of Medicine 383, 563  f., 816 Peter of Cornwall, scholar and prior 332, 821 Peter of Eboli, chronicler 498, 725 Peter the Deacon, librarian 675 Peter the Philosopher 509, 513 Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny 381 Petit, Jean, printer 733 Petosiris, myth. figure 23, 627, 629 Petrarch see Francesco Petrarca Petrus Alphonsi, Jewish Spanish physician, writer, and astronomer 1001 Peuntner, Thomas 832  f. Philip II, King of Macedonia 26 Philip of Tripoli 965, 967 Phillip IV, King of France 335, 902 Phlegon of Tralles, writer 49 Photios I of Constantinople, patriarch 998 Photius I of Constantinople, patriarch 294, 389 Piacenza 18, 34, 36 Pico, Gianfrancesco, nephew of Giovanni Pico 737  f. Pico, Giovanni (della Mirandola), nobleman and philosopher 253, 500, 731, 737–739 Pierre d’Ailly, astrologer and cardinal 731  f., 738, 816 Pignon, Laurens, friar 383, 756

 1021

Pigouchet, Philippe, printer 963 Pisa 704 – Council of Pisa 904 Pizan, Christine de, poet 129 Plato 31  f., 49, 111, 351, 495, 761, 888, 966 Plato of Tivoli, translator 143, 497, 1001 Plautus 42 Plethon see Georgios Gemistos Plethon Pliny the Elder 49, 654, 658, 669 Pliny the Younger 47 Plotinus, philosopher 734, 736 Plutarch, philosopher and biographer 35, 46, 623 Polabia 85, 92, 96, 103 Poland 96 Polemon 968 Polyainos, writer 812 Polybius, historian 33, 101 Pomerania 85, 92, 103 Pompey 41  f. Pontius Pilate, governor of Judaea 394 Pontius Pilate’s wife (exact name is unknown) 394 Porphyrios of Gaza, Bishop of Gaza 388 Porphyry 21, 49, 160 Portugal 496 – Lisbon 365 Posidonius, philosopher, politician, astronomer, geographer, and historian 57, 754 Postumius, haruspex 43 Praeneste 47 Prague 90, 306, 499, 876 Prester John, legendary Christian patriarch 901 Pretorius 98 Pripegala, myth. figure 91 Procles, myth. figure 753 Proclus 21, 49, 156, 160, 612, 997 Procopius, scholar 85, 87  f., 167, 389, 450 Prometheus, myth. figure 29 Prove, myth. figure 90  f. Provence 306, 440, 462, 554 Pseudo-Callisthenes 494 Pseudo-Eustathius of Antioch 290 Pseudo-Methodius 161, 272  f., 286, 288, 290, 293–295, 331, 771, 899, 941 Ptolemy, Alexandrian scholar 49, 139, 143  f., 156, 164, 194, 222, 250, 485–488, 491  f., 497–499, 503, 508, 510, 524, 533, 537, 542, 546, 554, 559, 568–573, 578, 580,

1022 

 Index

582, 592, 594, 596, 598–600, 621, 623, 626, 651, 655, 659, 662, 668, 692, 713–715, 719, 731, 779, 814  f., 862, 988, 992, 999 – Pseudo-Ptolemy 491, 495, 497, 499, 731 Ptolemy Auletes, Ptolemaic King 41 Ptolemy III, Pharaoh 22 Ptolemy of Lucca, historian 727 Publicius 41, 43 Publius Claudius Pulcher, Roman Consul 39 Pythagoras 493, 554 Pythia, priestess in the oracle of Delphi 30  f., 99, 926  f. al-Qabīṣī (Alcabitius), astronomer and mathematician 143, 488, 491–493, 496  f., 499  f., 534, 545, 731, 815  f. al-Qādir, Caliph 418 al-Qaṣrānī 476 al-Qayrawānī 420 al-Qazwīnī, cosmographer 324, 646 Quintus Julius Hilarianus, African bishop 290 Quintus Tullius Cicero, statesman and brother of Marcus Tullius Cicero 15, 42–44, 752 Qumran 302, 307 al-Qunawī, philosopher 479 al-Qurṭubī, Andalusian scholar 318, 955 Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāwandī, compiler and author 359 Rabad of Posquieres 946 Rabbeinu Behaye ben Asher 911 Rabi ben Zayd 495 Radigast, myth. figure 90 Rainer of Viterbo, cardinal 900 al-Rājī 220 Ramon Lull, polymath 476 Ramses II, Pharaoh 21 Raniero da Ponza, follower of Joachim of Fiore 899 Ranulf Higden, chronicler and monk 772 Rashīd al-Dīn Sinān, Syrian Isma‘ili leader 322 Rashi (Solomon ben Isaac, Shlomo Yitzchaki), rabbi 305, 307, 312, 348, 403, 895 Ratdolt, Erhard, printer 832 Rava, sage 461 Ravenna 277 Rayḥāna bint al-Ḥasan 231, 545 Raymond of Capua, hagiographer 118

Raymond of Marseille 720, 754  f. Raymond VI, count of Toulouse 890 Raziel, archangel 954 al-Rāzī, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyā’ (Rhazes) 229, 372  f., 382, 480  f., 591, 598, 601 al-Rāzī (Rhazes), Persian polymath 910 Reda see Riedegost Regensburg 306, 402 Reginald Lambourne, fellow of Merton College 655 Regino of Prüm, canonist and ­historiographer 142 Regiomontanus (Johannes Müller), astrologer 870, 875 Reims 331 Remus, myth. figure 449 Rennes 335 Rethra see Riedegost Reubeni, David, religious prophet 311 Reuchlin, Johannes, German humanist 253 Rhazes see al-Rāzī Rhetorios 503, 506, 508 Rhineland 301, 307, 309 Ribe (Denmark) 76 Ricco da Varlungo, minor Italian poet 891 Richard de Fournival, poet 781 Richard I, King of England 335, 615 Richard of Saint Victor, Scottish philosopher and theologian 337, 991 Richard Wallingford, astronomer and cleric 660 Ridolfi, Lorenzo de, Florentine jurist 699, 704 Riedegost (Rethra), temple-stronghold 91–94, 97, 99  f., 104 Robert Grosseteste, statesman, scholastic philosopher, theologian, and Bishop of Lincoln 111  f., 656 Robert Guiscard, conqueror 508 Robert Kilwardby, Archbishop of Canterbury and cardinal 113, 993 Robert of Ketton, translator 1001 Robert Perscrutator 660 Rocca di Angera, castle 498 Rod, myth. figure 89, 91 Rodulfus Glaber, monk 276, 937 Roger Bacon, philosopher and Franciscan friar 145, 731, 734, 781, 792, 966  f. Roger of Hereford, astronomer 719 Roger of Howden, English chronicler 335

Index 

Roger of Wendover, historiographer 941 Rǫgnvaldr kali 74 Roland, lit. figure 375, 889 Rolandino of Padua, historiographer 615 Romania 704 Romanos I, Emperor 167 Rome 16–18, 21, 27  f., 31, 34  f., 37  f., 41, 43–45, 48, 50, 118  f., 167, 260, 274, 281, 301, 307, 321, 394, 449, 509, 612, 624, 777, 801, 857, 899  f. – University of Rome 739 Romulus, myth. figure 35, 45, 449 Rosweyde, Heribert, Jesuit hagiographer 806 Rüdiger, monk 381 Rudolf II, Emperor 876 Rueff, Jacob 988 Rufinus, historiographer 933 Rügen 91  f., 104 Runkelstein, castle 125 Rupert of Deutz, exegete and mystic 278  f., 336, 381, 885  f., 933 Rus (hist.) 85, 89, 91, 102–104, 502, 511  f., 799 Russia 395, 673 Rust, Hans, cartographer 773 Rutherford, Ernest, physicist 262 Rūzbihān BaqlīPersian poet, mystic and sufi from Farsa (Iran) 419 Saadia Gaon, rabbi 180, 307, 344, 350, 353  f., 520, 523, 528, 686, 828 – Pseudo-Saadia 308 Saba Malaspina, historiographer 939 al-Sabtī 473, 475  f. Saepinum, ancient oracle 48 al-Ṣafadī 479 Sahl ibn Bishr 476, 491, 496, 523, 534 Saint Gall 560, 979 Saint-Germain 275 Saladin see Ṣalāh al-Dīn Ṣalāh al-Dīn, Sultan 195, 277, 280 Salem, Cistercian abbey 117 Salerno 144, 560  f., 564 Sāliḥ al-Barghwatī, savant and astrologer 365 Salimbene of Adam, historiographer 278, 940 Salisbury 121 Samarqand 194, 226, 790  f., 1001 al-Samarqandī 319 Sampson 388 Samuel, bibl. prophet 72, 376, 393, 441

 1023

Samuel bar Abba, judge, physician, and astronomer 523 Samuel ben Kalonymus the Elder, rabbi of Speyer 350 Samuel ben Meir, rabbi 305 Samuel ha-Nagid, Talmudic scholar 519 Samuel ha-Qaṭan, scholar 523 Samuel ibn Moṭoṭ 519 Samuel ibn Tibbon, philosopher 686 Samuel ibn Zarza 688 Samuel (Zech) 406 Sanaa 321, 471, 477 Sanad ibn ʻAlī 523 Santarém, Pedro de, Portuguese jurist 699, 705 Santiago de Compostela 276 Satan, bibl. figure 270  f., 275–277, 291, 338, 357, 386  f., 394, 396  f., 421, 771, 833, 957 Saul, bibl. King 178, 347, 436, 441, 829 Savonarola, Girolamo, Dominican friar and preacher 738 Saxo Grammaticus, historiographer 86, 90, 92–94, 98–100, 103 Saxony 100, 255 Schedel, HartmannGerman historian and cartographer 986 Scipio Africanus 43, 381, 753 Scotland 971 Sedulius Scottus, scholar 724 Seleucia 624 Seleucus I, King 27  f. Šem Tov ibn Falaquera, philosopher 525 Seneca the Elder 42 Seneca the Younger 49 Serapion, Bishop of Vladimir 512 Serapis, myth. figure 22 Serbia 89, 505, 670 Sergios, Byzantine official 165 Servius Fulvius, consul 34 Severus Sebokht, bishop 713, 864 Seville 523, 778 Sextus Empiricus, philosopher and physician 504, 661 Shabbetai Donnolo, physician and writer on medicine and astrology 348, 518  f., 523, 909, 917 al-Shādhilī, Sufi 475 al-Shāfi‘ī 365 Shāh Jahān, Mughal Emperor 322 al-Shahrāfī 479

1024 

 Index

al-Shahrastanī, heresiographer 369 Shajāḥ, contemporary of the Pseudo-magician Musaylima 365 Shakespeare, William 123 Shams al-Dīn 475, 791 Shapur, Great King 404 Sharaf al-Dīn ʻAlī Yazdī, scholar 472 al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā, scholar 320 Shaykh al-Mufīd, theologian 320 al-Sheikh Manṣūr 469 Shem-Tov ibn Falaquera, philosopher and commentator 518  f., 526 Shem-Tov ibn Shaprut 586 Sherira Gaon, rabbi 909, 916 Shihāb al-Dīn al-Halabī 1001 Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī, jurist 638 Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī, mystic and philosopher 360 Shulgi, King of Ur 19 Sibyl 34, 37, 40–42, 45, 50  f., 160  f., 167, 284, 332  f., 724, 940, 960, 963 – Erithrean Sibyl 144, 333, 900  f., 904, 940 – Tiburtine Sibyl 273, 291, 331, 899, 901, 940 Sicily 144, 310, 647, 888 Sidon 624 Ṣidūq, angel 415 Siger of Brabant, philosopher 112 Sigtuna (Sweden) 80 Sigvatr 76 Silvester, priest 376 Silvester I, Pope 934 Simeon, Bulgarian czar 167 Simon de Montfort 890, 940 Simone Mestaguerra, lord of Forlì 120 Sind 488 Sisenna, historiographer 44 Siva, myth. figure 21, 27, 90  f. Sixtus IV, Pope 739 Sixtus V, Pope 431 al-Sizjī, astrologer 475 Skipwith (England) 68 Skleros Seth 847 Skuld, myth. figure 69 Smith, Joseph 262 Snofru, Pharaoh 22 Snorri Sturluson, skald and historiographer 68, 70, 72, 76  f. Sockburn (England) 68 Socrates 31, 434

Sogn og Fjordane 69 Solomon, bibl. King 400, 568, 687, 921, 949  f. Solomon ben Isaac see Rashi Solomon Bonafed, Spanish rabbi and poet 519 Solomon ibn Adret, Spanish talmudist 946 Solomon ibn Gabirol, poet and philosopher 519, 523  f., 528 Sophonias 390 Sophronios, greek writer 395 Southampton 704 Spain 192, 301, 305  f., 308, 310, 317–319, 322, 344, 347–349, 359, 403  f., 430  f., 518, 585, 857, 973, 991 Sparta 26  f. Speyer 306, 350 Spirito, Lorenzo 128, 131 Stefan III, King of Serbia 512 Stephan of Landskron 832 Stephanos Hagiochristophorites, advisor of Andronikos I 847 Stephen of Alexandria, astronomer 156, 507, 580, 713 Stephen of Athens – Pseudo-Stephen of Athens 292 Stephen of Messina, translator 497 Stephen the Astrologer 507 Stephen the Philosopher 156 Stiborius, Andreas, scholar 875 Strabo, geographer 57 Stralsund – St. Nicolai church 250 Strasbourg 733, 980, 984, 986, 988 Sudan 395 Suetonius, writer 46  f., 74 al-Ṣūfī 533, 537 Ṣufyānī, eschatological character 326 Suhrawardī, illuminationist philosopher 325 al-Sulamī, Sufi author 360 Sulaymān, Caliph 207 Sulla, dictator 43, 45 Sulpicius Galus, polymath 44 Sulpicius Severus, historiographer and hagiographer 274, 290, 804, 807, 937  f. Surtr, demon 68 al-Suyūṭī, polymath 318–320, 365, 419 Suzdal 512 Svanr, lit. magician 74 Svantevit, myth. figure 90, 92, 94, 100, 103  f. Svarozic, myth. figure 92, 94, 99–101, 104

Index 

Sveinn Ásleifarson 74 Sverrir, King of Norway 72 Sviatopolk Iziaslavich, King 512 Sviatoslav, Grand Prince 505 Sweden 68, 80 Switzerland 854 Syllaion 801 Symeon of Thessalonica, archbishop 295 Symeon Seth, official and translator 164, 508, 629 Symeon Stylite the Younger, Saint 388 Symeon the New Theologian 389 Synada 508 Synesios, Bishop of Kyrene and philosopher 379, 389 Synkletike 388 Syria 20, 47, 156, 164, 193  f., 224, 272, 290, 294, 310, 322, 326, 477, 641 Syrianos, writer 812 Szczecin 92, 97, 99–101, 104 al-Ṭabarānī, scholar 318 al-Ṭabarī, historiographer 24, 320, 358  f., 362, 416, 496, 544, 692  f. Tabriz 164 Tacitus 46, 67, 75  f., 98  f., 101  f., 940 Taddeo Alderotti, physician 563 Tages, Etrurian medium 33, 50 Tahmāsp, Shah of Iran 325 Talhoffer, Hans, well-educated man 257 Tangier 476 Tanstetter, Georg, scholar 875 al-Ṭarābulsī 471 al-Ṭarafī, Andalusian author 359 Tarazona 496 Tarquinii (Italiy) 35 Tartaglia, Niccolò, mathematician 128, 783 al-Tawḥīdī, philosopher 360, 419 Terence 42 Tertullian 274, 288, 761, 774 Tetka, myth. priestess 89 Thābit ibn Qurrah, philosopher 487, 495 al-Tha‘labī, scholar 319, 359 Thalamai, ancient oracle 27 Thales of Miletus, mathematician 888 Thaqīf, sacred precinct in Arabia 322 Thebes (Egypt) 21 Thekla, Greek martyr 388 Themistios, early Byzantine writer 389

 1025

Themon Judeus 113 Theoderic, King 167 Theodora, Empress 447 Theodore, monk 843 Theodore Balsamon, commentator 844 Theodore Gaza, scholar 624 Theodore II, Emperor 509 Theodore Meliteniotes, astronomer 157, 165, 715 Theodore Melitenos, calculator of the end of time 295 Theodore Metochites, statesman and philosopher 157, 164, 390, 510 Theodore Prodromos, Byzantine novelist 389, 927 Theodore Styppeiotes, head of the imperial chancery in Constantinople 843  f. Theodosius I, Emperor 167, 800 Theodosius II, Emperor 49, 675, 842 Theognostos, slave master of Andrew Salos 801 Theon of Alexandria, astronomer 156, 504, 713  f. Theophanes Continuatus, Theophanes the Confessor, chronicler 288, 291  f., 389, 448, 450, 508, 629, 672 Theophilus, Emperor 841 Theophilus of Edessa, astrologer 155, 158, 164, 169, 507 Theophrastus of Eresus, philosopher 669 Theophylact of Ochrid, archbishop 509 Theophylact Simocatta, historiographer 798, 997  f. Thessalonica (Thessaloniki) 395, 672, 801 Thietmar of Merseburg, bishop and historio­ grapher 86, 92  f., 371, 376 Thiota, pseudo-prophetess 119, 937 Thomas Aquinas 113  f., 116, 138, 146, 330, 332, 337  f., 371  f., 382, 727, 731, 733, 735, 755, 833, 949, 994 Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury 124, 436, 439 Thomas the Slav, revolter 508 Þórðr 71 Þorfinnr 68 Þorgils Örrabeinsstjúpr 70 Þórólfr Mostrarskegg 76 Þórr, myth. figure 68–70, 76 Þorsteinn rauðnefr 76 Thrasyllus 46  f.

1026 

 Index

Thucydides, historiographer 26, 28, 33 Thutmosis IV, Pharaoh 22 Tiberius, Emperor 36, 46–48 Tiberius Gracchus 42  f. Tibertus, Antiochus 437 al-Tiflīsī 214 Tihāma 476 Timbuktu 788 Timur Lenk, conqueror 294, 510 Tírechán, hagiographer 56  f. al-Tirmidhī, scholar 318, 360, 419 Tisamenus, Spartan politician 26 Titus, Emperor 46 Tjarnaglofi, myth. figure 91 Tobiah ben Eliezer, rabbi 305 Todi (Italy) 123 Toledo 143, 157, 277, 353, 496, 720, 755, 863, 867, 953  f., 992, 1002 – Council of Toledo 857 Trajan, Emperor 46  f. Trebizond 164, 510, 581, 622 Trent – Council of Trent 251 Trewythian, Richard, astrologer 121  f., 130, 136 Trier 512 Triglav 92 Troyes 309 Tryggvason, visionary 72 Tuán, prophet 60 Tübingen 291 al-Ṭūkhī 474, 476 Ṭumṭum al-Hindī 592 Tunis 704, 744 Tunisia 476 Turkey 324, 643 al-Ṭūsī 547 Twardowski, myth. sorcerer 86 Tyche (cult) 928, 996 Tyconius, bishop 274, 932  f., 935 Tyre 624 Ubertino of Casale, Franciscan 903 Uguccione da Lodi, Italian poet 891 al-ʻUkbarī 547 al-Ukhayḍir, city near Mecca 321 Ulm 119, 980 Ulrich of Pottenstein 832 Ulugh Beg, Sultan and astronomer 791, 1001

ʻUmar, Caliph 417, 641, 644 ʻUmar II, Caliph 206, 326, 365 Umm Salama, one of Muhammad’s wives 363 Ungern-Sternberg, Nikolai Robert Maximilian von, general and scapulimancer 972 Uppsala 75 Urban VI, Pope 277, 732 Urban VIII, Pope 739 Urðr, myth. figure 69 Uruk 19 ʻUthman, Caliph 363 Utrecht 119 Valens, Emperor 842  f. Valentinian III, Emperor 842 Valerian, Emperor 46 Valerius Maximus, writer 36, 43, 49, 439 Váli, myth. figure 69 Vanes – Council of Vanes 981 Varro 44, 432 Vaucelles, Cistercian abbey 117–119, 129 Vegoia 33, 50 Veles, myth. figure 91 Vel Saties, seer 35 Venice 311, 437, 704 Veranius, grammarian 44 Verðandi, myth. figure 69 Vergil 669, 761 Verona 128 Veronica Negronis of Binasco, visionary 371 Vespasian, Emperor 46 Vettius Valens, astrologer and astronomer 156, 293, 503, 508 Victorinus, bishop 932 Vidal Efraim Bellxom 524 Víðarr, myth. figure 68  f. Vienna 259, 338 – University of Vienna 875 Vikar, King 103 Vincent of Beauvais, Dominican friar 372 Vintler, Hans, poet 125  f., 136, 147, 833 Vištāspa, patron of Zoroaster 25 Vital, Ḥayyim, rabbi 349, 922 Viterbo 48 Vitruv 165 Vladimir, duke 102 Volcatius, haruspex 45 Vulci 36

Index 

Wahb ibn Munabbih 205 Walafrid Strabo, theological writer 884 Walcher of Malvern, astronomer 498, 614, 719 Wales 55, 59, 62 Wallachia 673 Wallenstein, Albrecht von, military leader and statesman 260 Walsperger, Andreas, cartographer 773 Walthard, prior 376 Weles, myth. figure 99 Wenceslaus IV, King of Bohemia 980 Werner of Friedberg 835 Westminster 123 Whab ibn Munabbih, Yemeni author 358 Wickram, Jörg, poet and novelist 256 Wiene, Robert 261 Wilfrid, Saint 78 Wilhelm Peraldus 834 William I the Conqueror, King of England 74 William II, King of Sicily 498 William Me 660 William of Aragon, dream interpreter 376, 382 William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris 380, 382, 948 William of Conches, philosopher 111, 379, 381 William of England, physician 561 William of Malmesbury, historian 93, 331 William of Marseille, physician 731 William of Moerbeke, translator 143, 497 William of Newburgh, historiographer 615 William of Ockham, Franciscan friar and philosopher 114 William of Poitiers, biographer 74 William of Rubruck, missionary 973 Willigis, dean of Walbeck 371 Wirsing, Johannes, abbot 855 Witch of Endor 178, 441, 829 Wittenberg 252 Władysław Jagiełło, King 98 Worms 306 Würzburg 119

 1027

Xenophanes, philosopher 31 Xenophon, historian and philosopher 33 Yaḥyā ibn Abī Manṣūr, astronomer  1000  f. Yakhin, Jewish dignitary 749 al-Ya‘qūbī, author 358 Ya’qūb ibn Tāriq, astronomer and mathematician 999 Yazdegird III, Great King 644 Yefet ben Ali, Karaite 351 Yehuda ben Moshe, physician and translator 954  f. Yemen 192, 321, 361, 365, 469, 471  f., 476  f., 639, 641 Yeroḥam ben Meshullam, rabbi 944 Yitzhak Abuhav 687 Yitzhak Arama, rabbi 687 Yom Tov ben Avraham Asevilli 911 Yophiel, angel (prince of Torah) 345 Yudghan 310 Yuḥannā ibn Ṣalt 596 al-Zabīdī, scholar 473 Zagreb 36 Zakariyā al-Qazwīnī, astronomer, geographer and writer 643 al-Zanātī, geomancer 217, 447, 470  f., 592, 789 al-Zarqālī, Andalusian astronomer  1002 al-Zawāwī 360, 419 Zbrutsh (Poland) 96 Zcerneboch, myth. figure 90  f. Zechariah, bibl. prophet 389, 393 Zeno, Emperor 168, 506  f. Zerbi, Gabriele, professor 565 Zerubbabel 301 Zoroaster 21, 25, 202, 811 al-Zubayrī 419 Zurich 988