Abstract
It is generally assumed that astrology enjoyed a vigorous revival, centred on the European courts, in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. According to Jourdain, for example:
A partir des Valois surtout, l’astrologie judiciaire prit en France un développement comparable à celui qu’elle avait en Italie, en Allemagne et en Espagne, au temps de Frederick II et d’Alphonse X. Ses disciples se multiplièrent et furent confondus dans l’estime publique avec les véritables astronomes.1
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Notes
Charles Jourdain, ‘Nichole Oresme et les astrologues de la cour de Charles V’, Revue des questions historiques 18 (1875) 139.
Adam of Usk, Chronicon A.D. 1377–1421. ed. E. M. Thompson 2nd ed. (London, 1904) p. 36: ‘Sed Roboe Salamonis filio, consilium juvenum quia insecuto, regnum Israel amittenti iste Ricardus merito poterit cum suis juvenibus consilariis assimulari: iij. Regum, xij capitulo. (1 Kings xii)’ Thompson notes a similar sentiment expressed in Richard the Redeless, 3.254, ed. Thomas Wright in Political Poems and Songs, 2 vols, R.S. 14. (London, 1859–61) I, 397–8.
See Hilda Johnstone, Edward of Carnarvon (Manchester, 1946) p. 1, n.3.
The charges laid against the Templars, which are repeated by Walsingham, Historia Anglicanum, ed. H. T. Riley R.S.28 (London, 1863) I. 127–8, exhibit the range of possible accusations. For numerous other examples see the fascinating account by W. R. Jones, ‘Political Uses of Sorcery in Medieval Europe’, The Historian 34 (1971–2) 670–687.
The portrait of Richard II drawn by the monk of Evesham in his Historia Vitae et Regni Ricardi Secundi, ed. G. B. Stow (Philadelphia, 1977) p. 166, is a classic illustration of the type.
See also C. M. Barron, ‘The Tyranny of Richard II’, B.LH.R. 41 (1968) 1–2 and references.
Hist. Angl.; Annales Ricardi Secundi 1392–1399. ed. H. T. Riley, R.S.28c (London, 1866) pp. 55–281;
Ypodigma Neustria pp. 911–1419 ed. H. T. Riley, R.S.28g (London, 1876).
The standard biographies of Richard II are those of H. Wallon, Richard II, 2 vols (Paris, 1864)
And Anthony Steel, Richard 11 (Cambridge, 1941). Despite the Freudian terminology, Steel’s analysis of Richard’s character demonstrates the lasting influence of Lancastrian propaganda.
For the historiography of Richard from Shakespeare to McKisack, see the well-balanced account of R. H. Jones, The Royal Policy of Richard 11 (Oxford, 1968) pp. 113–24.
See the analysis by C. M. Barron, who suggests that Richard merited at least some of the deposition articles in ‘The Tyranny of Richard II’. Steel concludes, on the other hand, that Richard was a more reliable debtor than Henry IV, Receipt of the Exchequer (Cambridge, 1954) ch. 3. Cited by Barron art. cit. 1, n.5.
Cal Close Rolls (1400) pp. 469, 548, 570; 1401, 999; Cal. Pat Rolls (1401–5), p. 126; Select Cases before the King’s Council, ed. L. G. Leadam and J. F. Baldwin (Section Soc. 1918) p. xxxiv; See also Steel, Richard II, pp. 287–8.
Kirkstall Abbey Chronicles, ed. John Taylor (Leeds, 1952) pp. 127–8.
Adam of Usk, Chronicon AD 1377–1421. ed. E. Maunde Thompson (London, 1904) p. 42.
For a fuller account of this considerable subject see: Rupert Taylor, The Political Prophecy in England (New York, 1911);
George L. Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England (Cambridge, Mass., 1929) esp. ch. XIV, ‘The Seer’, where the connection between prophecy and politics is described as ‘almost primeval’;
J. S. P. Tatlock, The Legendary History of Britain (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1950) W. R. Jones ‘Sorcery’;
Lucy Paton, Les Prophécies de Merlin (New York, 1926);
Margaret E. Griffiths, Early Vaticination (Cardiff, 1937).
For some English prophecies see Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries ed. R. H. Robbins (New York, 1959) pp. xliv–xlv, 113–47, 307–317
And for Joachim of Fiore, the various studies of Marjorie Reeves, esp. The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1969).
Ed. and trans. John Webb, Archaeologia 20 (1824) 1–423. The full title reads: ‘Histoire du Roy d’angleterre Richard, Traictant particulièrement la Rebellion de ses subiectz et prinse de sa personne. Composée par un gentilhom’e français de marque qui fut a la suite dudict Roy, avecq permission du Roy de france. 1399.’
J. J. N. Palmer, ‘The authorship, date and historical value of the French chronicles of the Lancastrian Revolution’, B.J.R.L. 61 (1978–9), 145–181; 398–421. For Creton see 151–4.
The phrase is May McKisack’s, The Fourteenth Century (vol. V of the Oxford History of England) (Oxford, 1959) p. 496. McKisack’s assessment is judicious, but she nevertheless accepts at face value Walsingham’s slanderous account of the ‘megalomania’ of Richard’s last years, including his alleged dependence on the pseudo-propheta, ibid, p. 490.
Kaiendars and Inventories of the Treasury of His Majesty’s Exchequer, ed. Francis Palgrave (London, 1836) III. 41.
I was alerted to this problem by Mr F. R. Maddison, curator of the History of Science Museum. See A Catalogue of European scientific instruments in the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities of The British Museum by F. A. B. Ward (London, c.1981). Ward regards both quadrants as fakes.
A. P. Stanley, ‘On an Examination of the Tombs of Richard II and Henry III in Westminster Abbey’, Archaeologia 45 (1880) 309–27.
Margaret Rickert, The Reconstructed Carmelite Missal (London, 1952) pp. 76, n.2, 92;
Margaret Rickert, Painting in Britain: The Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Penguin Books, 1965) pp. 152–3;
Margaret Rickert, English Illumination of the 13th and 14th Centuries (Oxford, 1954) P1.22a–d. Other representatives of the group are Cambridge, MS Trinity Hall 17, a copy made for Richard II of Dymok’s Contra haereses; Cambridge, St John’s 7, a book of English statutes made after 1387; Oxford, Bod. Lib. Ashmole 1831, a charter given by Richard II to Croyland Abbey in 1393; and two Westminister MSS, the ‘Lytlington Missal’, and the Liber Regalis. There is certainly a marked resemblance between the portraits of a king in the St John’s MS (fol. 1), the Croyland charter, and Bodley 581. See Rickert, Carmelite Missal, Plates XLIV, XLVb. The miniatures on fos 15v–22v have been described by Fritz Saxl and Hans Meier, in Catalogue of Astrological and Mythological Illuminated Manuscripts of the Latin Middle Ages III ed. Harry Bober (London, 1953) 1.311–12, and represent the sixteen geomantic figures, and not ‘fourteen figures of philosophers’, as in Madan and Craster, Summary Catalogue, vol. II, pt. 1, p. 252, or ‘figure(s) from a horoscope’ as in Pãcht and Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, III, p. 61, Plate LXX. The manuscript is also discussed by North, Chaucer’s Universe, p. 242 and Fig.32.
For the earliest inventory of the royal books, dating from Feb. 1534/5, see H. Omont, ‘Les manuscrits français des Rois d’Angleterre au chateau de Richmond’, in Etudes Romanes dediées a Gaston Paris (Paris, 1891); Henry Savile of Banke, who once owned Bodley 581, probably copied certain parts of the older manuscripts into what is now Oxford, Bod. Lib. MS Ashmole 4.
For Savile’s other books see A. G. Watson, The Manuscripts of Henry Savile of Banke (London, 1969). In a private letter dated 10 September 1982 Dr Watson kindly informed me that he thought Ashmole 4 was probably one of Savile’s books.
For the art historians, see n.1 on the previous page; Thérèse Charmasson, Recherches sur une technique divinatoire: la géomancie dans l’occident médiéval (Geneva-Paris, 1980) provides the most enlightening account of geomancy;
Jean-Philippe Genet, Pour English Political Tracts of the Later Middle Ages, Camden Soc. 4th ser. 18 (London, 1977) gives the fullest discussion of the manuscript, and edits the tract on fos 1–3, pp. 31–9;
Emilie Savage-Smith and Marion B. Smith, Islamic Geomancy and a Thirteenth-Century Divinatory Device (Malibu, 1980) p. 68, n.9; Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic III, p. 590, n.23, refers to MS Royal 12 C.v and, in error, to a non-existent copy in the Staats-Bibliothek, Munich; Thorndike and Kibre Incipits, 1098, lists the geomancy in both the Bodley and Royal MSS.
Gervase Matthew, The Court of Richard II (London, 1968) p. 40.
Edith Rickert, ‘King Richard II’s Books’, The Library 13 (1932) 144–7.
Froissart, Chroniques, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, 25 vols, (Brussels, 1867–77) XV. 167.
Cited by Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry 2 vols, 2nd ed. (London, 1969) I. pp. 64–5.
B. Soldati, La poesia astrologica nel quattrocento: Richer che e studi (Florence, 1906).
An earlier use of astrology is studied by A. C. Cawley, ‘Astrology in the Owl and the Nightingale’, M. L. R. 46 (1951) 161–74.
Chaucer’s use of the sciences has been studied extensively, but see now J. D. North, Chaucer’s Universe (Oxford, 1988)
And North’s earlier’ ‘“Kalenderes Enlumyned ben They”. Some Astronomical Themes in Chaucer’, Review of English Studies, NS XX, no.78 (1969) 129–54; 257–85; 418–44;
Chauncey Wood, Chaucer and the Country of the Stars (Princeton, N.J., 1970);
W. C. Curry, Chaucer and the Medieval Sciences (London, 1926).
Richard II’s Wardrobe accounts for 1393–4 have been published by W. P. Baildon, Archaeologia 62 (1911) 497–514. There is no mention of books or book-makers. I have not seen the accounts for 1392–3 in the British Library MS Additional 35115.
‘Ex Alberti Magni (1205–1280) Speculo astronomico excerpta libris licitis et prohibitis’, ed. Fr. Cumont and Fr. Boll, Catalogus codicum Astrologorum Graecorum V, pars I (Brussels, 1904) pp. 85–105. The complete text was published in an unsatisfactory edition by Augusti Borgnet, B. Alberti Magni Opera Omnia (Paris, 1891) X.629–650. For a discussion of the authorship of the Speculum, which he regards as a genuine work of Albertus Magnus, see Thorndike, History of Magic II, pp. 692–717 with an Appendix listing twenty–three MSS. The passage cited by our author occurs in Borgnet’s edition, p. 650; ed. Cumont and Boll, pp. 104–5, and suggests the tone of the whole: ‘Sunt praeterea quidam libri experimentales, quorum nomina necromantia sunt conterminalia, ut sunt geomantia, hydromantia, aeromantia, pyromantia, et chironmantia, quae ad verum non merentur dici scientiae sed garrimentiae … In geomantia vero nihil tale invenio, sed confidit in Saturno et domino horae, qui ei prop radice ponuntur, gaudetque numeri, ratione fulciri: et multi sunt qui ei testimonium perhibent.’
For geomancy see North, Chaucer’s Universe, pp. 234–54. See also Stephen Skinner, Terrestrial Astrology: Divination by Geomancy (London, Boston etc., 1980) pp. 167–230. This is not an academic study but mentions a number of medieval geomancies, including Richard II’s (p. 112), and is a readable account of the art.
A. L. Rowse, The Case Books of Simon Forman (London, 1976);
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971), esp. chs 10–11.
Thomas Favent, Historia sive narracio de modo et forma Mirabilis Parliamenti ed. May McKisack, Camden Miscellany XIV (London, 1926) p. 18.
Pearl Kibre, ‘The intellectual interests reflected in libraries of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’, Journal of the History of Ideas 7 (1946) 257–97, esp. 285–7.
The classic studies of the library of Charles V were made by Leopold Delisle, Recherches sur la librarie de Charles V (Paris, 1907) 3 vols;
Leopold Delisle, Le Cabinet des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Impériale vol. I (Paris, 1868);
More recently Leopold Delisle, La Librarie de Charles V, Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris, 1969), an illustrated inventory of the extant MSS, does not supersede Delisle.
Bibl. Nat. MS fr. 24287, fol. 1; Oxford, MS St John’s College 164, fols 1 and 33. For the portraits of Charles V, see C. R. Sherman, The Portraits of Charles V of France (New York, 1969).
Bruxelles, Bibl. Royale de Belgique MS 10319 fol. 3; C. Gaspar and F. Lyna, Les principaux manuscripts à peintures de la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique (Paris, 1937) I. 337–8, Plate LXXII.
Philippe de Mézières, Le Songe du Vieil Pèlerin, ed. G. W. Coopland (Cambridge, 1969) I. 517: ‘Le chevelaire doit souverainement garder son ost de toutes sorceries, de signes, divinations, de sciences deffendues, et de tous jugemens d’astrologie encontre franc arbitre; desquelx jugemens plusieurs grans seigneurs et autres se sont trouvez deceuz.’
Philippe de Mézières: Letter to King Richard II, ed. G. W. Coopland (Liverpool, 1975). The ‘letter’ was completed in 1395.
G. W. Coopland, ed. Nicole Oresme and the Astrologers. A Study of his Livre des Divinacious (Liverpool, 1952).
For Oresme’s other writings see A.D. Menut, ‘A provisional bibliography of Oresme’s writings’, Medieval Studies 28 (1966) 279–99.
Coopland, Nicole Oresme, pp. 39–41. Coopland’s introduction is an excellent and succinct account of the astrology debate in the middle ages. For Oresme on astrology and divination see also Charles Jourdain, ‘Nicolas Oresme et les astrologues de la cour de Charles V’, Revue des questions historiques 18 (1875) 136–59; Thorndike, History of Magic III, pp. 398–471.
Jean Gerson, Oeuvres Completes, X. ‘L’Oeuvre polémique’ ed. Mgr. Glorieux (Paris, 1963) pp. 75–121. For Gerson and d’Ailly’s writing on astrology see Thorndike, History of Magic IV, pp. 101–31.
Ed. Ernest Wickersheimer (Paris, 1927); For Symon see also dd Thorndike, History of Magic IV, pp. 54–61; Alexander Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978) pp. 207–9.
E. Curtis, Richard II in Ireland (Oxford, 1927).
J. J. N. Palmer, ‘The authorship, date and historical value of the French chronicles on the Lancastrian Revolution II’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 62 (1979) 399–400. ‘Sir Peter Exton’, who is otherwise unknown, is probably the product of confusion with Sir Peter Buxton, one of Richard II’s goalors.
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Carey, H.M. (1992). The Courts of Richard II of England and Charles V of France: Royal Astrology. In: Courting Disaster. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21800-4_6
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