Details
Medieval prognostic texts - a survival from the classical world - are the ancestors of modern almanacs; a means of predicting future events, they offer guidance on matters of everyday life, such as illness, childbirth, weather, agriculture, and the interpretation of dreams. This volume provides the first full critical edition, with a facing-page translation, of a diverse and peculiar group of prognostic guides and calendars, in Latin and Old English, found in an eleventh-century manuscript from Christ Church, Canterbury; they are collated with related versions in both Anglo-Saxon and continental manuscripts. A lengthy introduction and commentary examine the transmission and translation of these texts, and shed light on their origins and uses in late Anglo-Saxon monastic culture.