CHAPTER XXIX

LATIN ASTROLOGY AND DIVINATION : ESPECIALLY IN THE NINTH, TENTH, AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES
Astrology in Gaul before the twelfth century — Figures of astro- logical medicine — The divine quaternities of Raoul Glaber — Celestial portents and other marvels — An eleventh century calendar — Astrology and divination in ecclesiastical compoti — Notker on the mystic date of Easter — Prediction from the Kalends of January — Other divination by the day of the week — Divination by the day of the moon — Authorship of moon-books — Spheres of life and death: in Greek — Medieval Latin versions — Survival of such methods in medical practice of about 1400 — Egyptian days — Their history — Medieval attempts to explain them — Other perilous days — Firmicus read by an archbishop of York — Rela- tion of Latin astrology to Arabic — Appendix L Some manuscripts of the Sphere of Pythagoras or Apuleius — Appendix IL Egyptian days in early medieval manuscripts.
Astrology in Gaul before the twelfth century.
Astrology had continued to flourish in Gaul in the last de- clining days of the Roman Empire, despite the strictures of Christian writers and clergy,^ and it was one of the first subjects to revive after the darkness of the Mero- vingian period. Two centuries ago Goujet in a treatise on the state of the sciences in France from the death of Charlemagne to that of King Robert noted that from the reign of Charlemagne astronomy continued to be increas- ingly studied. "The councils in their decrees, the bishops in their statutes, the kings in their capitularies, expressly recommended the study of it to the clergy." ^ With the study of astronomy naturally developed a belief in as- trology. According to the Histoire Littcrairc dc la France it became quite the fashion during the reign of Louis the
* See De la Ville de Mirmont, L'Astrologie chez les Gallo-Ro- mains, Bordeaux, 1904; also pub- lished in Revue des Etudes an-
ciennes, 1902, p. 115- ; 1903, p. 25s- ; 1906, p. 128-.
^Goujet (1737), p. 50; cited by