Lunar Prognostications

Lunar prognostications, also called lunaria, flourished in late medieval vernacular manuscripts, including books of secrets.¹⁴ These prognostications are not the same as those based on the Moon’s phases or location in the Zodiac, though they often appear in collections with that more properly astrological material. Instead, lunar prognostications make recommendations for elections based solely on the age of the Moon. Though the Moon’s cycle is approximately 29.5 days, the advice is always given in 30 day increments. Though the prophecies for each day vary, they are consistently linked to biblical events. A sense of this material as it appeared in the sixteenth century can be seen in De Cursione Lune, ascribed to Aristotle and printed by Robert Wyer in 1528, which describes “the course and disposición of the dayes of the Moone in laten and in Englisshe

Astrology 29 whiche be good: and whiche be badde” (title page). The material in Latin in this publication provides prognostications based on the mansions of the Moon (its place in the Zodiac). The material in English tracks the origin of “good” and “badde” nature of the days to the Bible: “The fyrst day of the moone Adam / Our forne father in to this world cam / That day is good withouten synne / All thynges for to be gynne.” Other days receive their character from their association with Cain, Abel, Noah, Shem, Jacob, Isaac, Mary Magdalene, etc. (A4v). A sixteenth-century prose version of similar material is later published in Godfridus’ Boke of Knowledge of Thynges Unknowen, discussed in more detail in Chapter 1.4. Later compilers of astrological almanacs have nothing but scorn for such lunar prognostics; Arthur Hopton, for example, attacks Godfridus by name for his lunar prognostications in “a little foolish booke, called the Booke of Knowledge” (Concordancy, 74). Hopton substitutes a more scholarly prognostication conducted according to the mansions of the Moon, not its age (75-77).

Egyptian Days

Another calendar tradition with uncertain roots but great staying power was lore concerning good or evil days anchored to particular dates in the Julian calendar. These were sometimes called the Egyptian Days, to reflect (it seems) the punishment of the Egyptians for their mistreatment of God’s chosen people as recounted in the Old Testament. In a medieval poem edited by Linne Mooney, “The Compendium of Astrological Medicine,” evil days for bleeding are referred to as “the dismall days” that were recognized “When God chastid Egypcians.”¹⁵ These Egyptian or evil days have remarkable longevity, but they are also utterly inconsistent, as Keith Thomas has noted: neither medieval nor early modern sources agree on the specific dates. For example, Hopton confidently provides a list in the Concordancy of Years; the evil days of January, for example, are “The 1.2.4.5.10.15.17.19” (71). But these lists are not consistent in early modern printed material. Even if they were consistent, the Egyptian Days would inevitably clash with astrologically calculated good or evil days for particular elections (bleeding, purging, traveling, etc.) based on the ever-changing location of the Moon, its aspects with other planets, and its phases. Yet as their appearance in Hopton’s Concordancy suggests, the Egyptian Days continue to be invoked well into the seventeenth century.

Brontologies

Another surprisingly long-lived calendrical tradition concerned prognostications based on the occurrences of thunder in the twelve months of the year. This was an ancient practice which David Juste and Howard Chiu have

“traced back to cuneiform tables of the neo-Assyrian period (ca. 1000-612 BC)”; it survives in a number of classical and medieval manuscripts in languages including Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic. An early medieval tract outlining this scheme titled De Tonitrius was attributed to the Venerable Bede; it appeared among his works printed in Cologne in 1537 and Basel in 1563. Brontologies also appear in an unusual sixteenth-century English folding almanac, now BL Addl. MS 17367, which includes (among other things) a xylographic calendar with saints, images for the twelve Zodiac signs with basic descriptions of their qualities, circular charts indicating the number of daylight and nighttime hours for each month, and the twelve labors of the month. In Plate 1.1, the November calendar from this manuscript, the left side of the image is a labor for that month (slaughtering livestock, a labor usually associated with December). The image to the right illustrates the text at the top of the page: “If yt thunder In November yt syngnyfyeth In that yere shalbe grete plenty of good corne and gret myrthe Among the peopyll.” Brontologies appear in books of secrets, including Godfridus’ Boke of Knowledge, and in a work attributed to Aristotle, Here Begynneth the Nature, and Dysposycyon of the Days in the Weke (1554). Like the Egyptian Day prophecies, the brontologies also persevere: brontologies appear in the Erra Pater prognostications of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (discussed in more detail in Chapter 1.4), and in Gervase Markham’s The Second Booke of the English Husbandmen (1614).