Presented to you through Paradigm Publishing Services
Boydell & Brewer
Book
Licensed
Unlicensed
Requires Authentication
Onomantic Divination in Late Medieval Britain
Questioning Life, Predicting Death
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2024
About this book
Demonstrates the wide prevalence of supposedly impermissible divination techniques found in a wide range of manuscripts from medieval Britain.
When will I die? What is the sex of my unborn child? Which of two rivals will win a duel?As today, people in the later Middle Ages approached their uncertainties about the future, from the serious to the mundane, in a variety of ways. One of the most commonly surviving prognostic methods in medieval manuscripts is onomancy: the branch of divination that predicts the future from calculations based on the numbers that correlate to the letters of personal names. However, despite its ubiquity, it has been relatively little studied.
This book analyses the intellectual and physical contexts of onomantic texts in some 65 manuscripts of British provenance between around 1150 and 1500, focusing on its two main varieties It demonstrates that onomancies were copied, owned and used by a people from a wide range of literate society in late medieval England: medical practitioners; the gentry and aristocracy; university scholars; and monks. And it seeks to answer the question of why a divinatory device, condemned in canon law as "Pythagorean necromancy", enjoyed such popularity in mainstream books of religion, medicine, and scholasticism.
When will I die? What is the sex of my unborn child? Which of two rivals will win a duel?As today, people in the later Middle Ages approached their uncertainties about the future, from the serious to the mundane, in a variety of ways. One of the most commonly surviving prognostic methods in medieval manuscripts is onomancy: the branch of divination that predicts the future from calculations based on the numbers that correlate to the letters of personal names. However, despite its ubiquity, it has been relatively little studied.
This book analyses the intellectual and physical contexts of onomantic texts in some 65 manuscripts of British provenance between around 1150 and 1500, focusing on its two main varieties It demonstrates that onomancies were copied, owned and used by a people from a wide range of literate society in late medieval England: medical practitioners; the gentry and aristocracy; university scholars; and monks. And it seeks to answer the question of why a divinatory device, condemned in canon law as "Pythagorean necromancy", enjoyed such popularity in mainstream books of religion, medicine, and scholasticism.
Author / Editor information
Contributor: Joanne Edge
JOANNE EDGE is a historian of medieval and early modern Britain. She is presently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh.
Reviews
This is a very nuanced and scholarly study, with careful attention paid to historiographical debates, textual variants and manuscript contexts. Edge's knowledge of the British manuscript tradition of this genre is exemplary.
Topics
-
Download PDFPublicly Available
Frontmatter
i -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Contents
vii -
Download PDFPublicly Available
List of Illustrations
viii -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Acknowledgements
ix -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Introduction
1 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
1. ‘A Certain Foretelling of Future Things’: Divination and Onomancy, Definitions and Types
18 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
2. Platonic Relationships: Onomancy’s Intellectual and Visual Contexts
38 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
3. Lost in Translation: Greek Beginnings and Latin Corruptions, c. 400–c. 1125
59 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
4. Body of Evidence: the Manuscript Corpus
76 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
5. Anathema Sit: Condemnation and Punishment
94 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
6. Certain Death? Onomancy and the Physician
112 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
7. Trial and Error: Onomancy and the Nobility
134 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
8. A Numbers Game: Onomancy at the University
151 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
9. Morbid Curiosity: Onomancy in the Monastery
165 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
10. Reformations: Onomancy c. 1500–c. 1700
180 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Conclusion
209 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Appendix I. Transcriptions and Editions of ‘Sphere of Life and Death’ Texts
214 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Appendix II. List of Manuscripts Containing Onomancies of British Provenance, 1150–1500
237 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Bibliography
239 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Index
259
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
February 28, 2024
eBook ISBN:
9781787447820
Original publisher:
York Medieval Press
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9781787447820
Keywords for this book
prognostication; prognosis; prediction; phenomena; antiquity; physicians; commonplace books; occult; clergy; monasteries; intellectuals; Christianity; Sphere; magic; Victorious and Vanquished
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
