Spring 2004 Issue 12

Issue 12 Spring 2004 More than three dozen different texts in about three dozen Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, many surviving in multiple copies, have been labeled What is and ‘prognostics’.1 The category is convenient for bibliographical purposes but is conceptually vague; it includes a broad assortment of works in Latin and English ranging from lunar calendars noting good and bad days for is not Magic: bloodletting, childbirth, health, or the reliability of dreams, to lists of lucky and unlucky days in the year, to predictions (generally weather forecasts) for the year based on the day of the week on which January 1 falls or on the occurrence of thunder or sunshine or wind at a given time, to alphabetical the case of dream glossaries, to divinatory devices for predicting the outcome of illness or generating an answer to a question through the casting of lots. Anglo-Saxon Many of these texts survive into the later medieval and early Modern periods under various names — the Somniale Danielis, the Revelatio Esdrae (“Erra Pater”), the Sortes Sanctorum, or the Sphere of Pythagoras. These later works have generally been well studied, but their earlier versions have Prognostics received only perfunctory attention, and most available editions and studies are barely adequate and even misleading.2 Thorndike’s History of Magic Roy M. Liuzza and Experimental Science is still occasionally cited as a sufficient account of University of Tennessee, Knoxville their history; Cockayne’s Leechdoms, Wortcunnings, and Starcraft of Early [email protected] England, a poor piece of work even by the standards of the 1860s, is still the only edition of some texts. I suspect that the larger category into which the prognostics have been placed — “folklore” — has deterred any close study of their texts, context, history, or use.3 Max Förster’s series of articles in the 1910s and 20s, which serves as the only edition of most of these texts, bears the general title What is and What is Not cont’d To encounter these texts in their nor the gathering of plants with Beiträge zur mittelalterlichen original manuscripts makes it clear charms, except with the paternoster Volkskunde, even though the series that prognostics were deeply embed- and the credo or with some prayer 7 itself was intended to prove that ded in eleventh-century monastic pertaining to God.” Archbishop such texts were not Volkskunde at all life and treated as part of the science Wulfstan condemns divination but learned survivals from the late- of computus and time-keeping; they among pagan practices involving classical world.4 To classify a are no more “folklore” than the unauthorized places of worship: particular text as “folklore” is to Divine Office or the calendar. This “take no notice of spells and empty place it beyond (or beneath?) the fact does not, however, exclude divination, nor prognostication nor scope of literary study and into the them from a recent popular anthol- witchcraft (ne gyman ge galdra ne realm of anthropology or sociology. ogy of Aspects of Anglo-Saxon idelra hwata, ne wigelunga ne 5 One does not “edit” folklore; its Magic. I can only assume that it is wiccecræfta); and do not honor individual material contexts are their modern classification as “folk- wells nor trees of the forest, because irrelevant. The relative neglect of lore” that makes prognostics eligible all such empty things are the devil’s 8 these texts in modern studies of for inclusion in such a work; they deceptions.” Divination is gener- monastic life and of the history of are placed among charms and ally associated with pagan survivals science seems to arise from the medical recipes, historically the or practices of popular religion — categories into which they have domain of those seeking traces of charms over herbs, cursing of cattle, been placed, an unfortunate side- “pagan” belief and “magical” prac- abortion and infanticide, offerings at 6 effect of the disciplinary differences tice in Anglo-Saxon England. stones and trees and wells. This context is vividly invoked in the that have shaped modern scholar- But this is not simply another Canons of Edgar 16: “It is right that ship. instance of the incongruity between each priest zealously teach the modern and medieval ways of Even a glance at the manuscript Christian faith and extinguish all parsing the world; the generic context of the prognostics, however, heathenism among all people, and categories and schemes of classifi- makes it clear that they were re- forbid the worship of springs and cation available to the Anglo-Saxons garded by their scribes and presum- necromancy, and divination and themselves were similarly impre- ably by their original users as works spells (wyllweorðunga, and cise. Laws and penitentials pro- of monastic science; they are found licwigelunga, and hwata, and scribed diuinos, sortilegos, and in collections such as London, BL galdra), and the worship of trees auguries of all sorts as forms of Cotton Titus D. xxvi/xxvii, a book and stones, and the devilish practice magic; vernacular homilies and laws of computus texts and prayers in which a child is dragged through naturally did the same, but English written for Ælfwine, abbot of New the earth, and the error which is condemnations of augury and Minster, Winchester in the 1030s; practiced on New Year’s night with divination (the Latin terms were BL Cotton Tiberius A. iii, a late various spells and in meeting-places most commonly translated as eleventh-century miscellany from and elder trees, and many various hwatung or wiglung) are usually Christ Church Canterbury which delusions which men perform far directed not just against the practice contains the Benedictine Rule and more than they should.”9 the Regularis Concordia (both itself but against its cultural setting. glossed in English by the same hand The Pseudo-Ecgbert Penitential In effect these official responses to that glossed the Somniale Danielis places the forecasts of lunar calen- divination and prognostication also and the lunar calendars that follow dars on a par with the use of charms treat such practices as “folklore,” these texts); and Oxford, St John’s over medicinal herbs: “it is not survivals of popular practices and College 17 (a lavishly-illustrated permitted that any Christian man symptoms of incomplete conver- scientific anthology from Thorney practice idle divination (idela sion. Many modern scholars, includ- Abbey c. 1110). Many early conti- hwatunga) like the heathens do, that ing Valerie Flint, seem to concur nental copies of these texts are is, they believe in the sun and the with this assessment; Flint suggests found in computus manuscripts moon and the secrets of the stars, that prognostics and related texts from the school of Abbo of Fleury. and seek divination of time (tida were “controlled compromises” and hwatunga) to begin their business; deliberate accommodations of Page 2 Societas Magica Newsletter— Spring 2004 What is and What is Not cont’d within the cloister itself. They Latin texts, under the rubric of Christianity to pagan “magical” should be regarded as part of the computus and science, they would practices; she argues that “the revival of monastic learning in not have regarded their acts as monks made their rather simpler tenth-century England, not part of heterodox, marginal or dangerous. efforts in the direction of astrologi- the conversion of the English to a Yet, notably, the scribe of the pas- cal divination … primarily to make more ‘complete’ or orthodox Chris- sage just quoted felt it necessary to friends, and indeed Christians, of tianity. defend it; clearly the cultural space inhabited by the prognostics was a the people in the countryside in The problem, for the Anglo-Saxons complex and not entirely stable one. which they settled, and among as for us, seems to be primarily a whom the old magic persisted in so terminological one: categories like However we choose to classify 10 many of its forms.” Such a charac- ‘folklore’, ‘divination’, or ‘magic’ them, texts like these offer much terization is almost entirely incor- are not primarily descriptive but insight into the psychology of the rect, and not simply because it prescriptive. The anonymous copyist monastic life, seen through its maintains an implicit and unsup- of one prognostic text, a calendar of perception of a relationship between portable distinction between “high” unlucky days found in London, BL a closely-measured sense of time, and “low” culture, “inside” and Cotton Caligula A.xv, fol. 130v, the closely-regarded motions of the “outside” practices. Manuscript takes pains to assert that such heavens, and the closely-observed evidence indicates that these prac- observance is not wiglung: “Now movements of the body’s mental and tices were widespread, and in fact concerning the moon be very careful physical currents. Texts we regard as were spread from the monasteries at not to let blood when the moon is marginal are generally badly edited, the very heart of the tenth-century four or five nights old, as books tell barely studied, indefinable and monastic reform — Winchester’s us, before the moon and the sea are indescribable in modern terms; they New Minster, Christ Church Canter- in harmony. We have also heard a slip into the cracks between modern bury, Glastonbury and Worcester. certain man say that no one could disciplines and conceptual catego- Ælfric, writing in the decade before live who had blood let on All Saints’ ries and elude the deceptively clear 1000, repeatedly condemned all Day, even if he were wounded. This labels we try to apply to them. They forms of wiglung ‘divination’, but is no sorcery, but wise men have have no place here or there, yet are the evidence of surviving manu- discovered it through holy wisdom found everywhere, and I believe scripts supports Malcolm Godden’s (Nis þis nan wiglung, ac wise menn they have much to tell us about the argument that he was preaching not hit afunden þurh þone halgan interior landscape of the early against lay practices but clerical wisdom), as God almighty directed Middle Ages.

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