The early Saxons in England were extremely credulous in regard to the
luck or misfortune of particular days of the month, and derived a legion
of prognostics, both good and evil, from the age of the moon. Thus, they
considered the twelfth day of the lunar month a profitable one for
sowing, getting married, traveling, and blood-letting, but the thirteenth
day was in bad repute among the Saxons, an evil day for undertaking
any work. The fourteenth was good for all purposes, for buying serfs,
marrying, and putting children to school; whereas the sixteenth was
profitable for nothing but thieving. The twenty-second was a proper time
for buying villains, or agricultural bondmen, and a boy born on that day
would become a physician. The twenty-fifth was good for hunting, and a
girl then born would be of a greedy disposition and a “wool-teaser.”[414]
In an English manuscript of the twelfth century mentioned in Chambers’s
“Book of Days,” and known as the “Exeter Calendar,” New Year’s is set
down as a _Dies mala_. As an illustration of the credulity prevalent in
England in the fifteenth century regarding the influences, meteorological
and moral, of the occurrence of important church festivals on particular
days of the week, a few lines from a manuscript of the Harleian
Collection in the British Museum are here quoted:—
Lordlings all of you I warn,
If the day that Christ was born
Fell upon a Sunday,
The winter shall be good, I say,
But great winds aloft shall be;
The summer shall be fair and dry,
By kind skill and without loss.
Through all lands there shall be peace.
Good time for all things to be done,
But he that stealeth shall be found soon.
What child that day born may be
A great lord he shall live to be.
Not alone in Britain, but throughout the world, men have esteemed one
day above another. This universal tendency of the human mind is tersely
expressed in a translation by Barnaby Googe of some verses accredited
to the Bavarian theologian, Thomas Kirchmaier (1511-78), whose literary
pseudonym was Naogeorgus:—
And first, betwixt the dayes they make no little difference,
For all be not of vertue like, nor like preheminence,
But some of them Egyptian are and full of jeopardee,
And some againe, beside the rest, both good and luckie bee,
Like difference of the nights they make, as if the Almightie King,
That made them all, not gracious were to them in everything.[415]
John Gaule, in his “Magastromancer” (1652), remarks that, according to
the teachings of the astrologers,
Times can give a certain fortune to our business. The magicians
likewise have observed, and all the antient verse men consent
in this, that it is of very great concernment in what moment
of time and disposition of the heavens everything, whether
naturall or artificial, hath received its being in this world:
for they have delivered that the first moment hath so great
power that all the course of fortune dependeth thereon and may
be foretold thereby.
In the dark ages, and also in early modern times, the false doctrines of
astrology, an inheritance from the ancients, dominated the actions of
men. In all important enterprises, as well as in every-day labors, it was
deemed essential to make a beginning under the influence of a favorable
planet. Nor did these beliefs prevail exclusively among ignorant people,
but were as well a part of the creed of scholars, and of the nobility and
gentry. Modern astronomical discoveries, and especially the Copernican
system, availed to banish a vast amount of superstition regarding the
malevolent character of certain days. But neither science nor religion
have yet been able wholly to eradicate it, as is evident from the
ill-repute associated with the sixth day of the week even at the present
time, a subject to be considered later.
In the “Loseley Manuscripts,” edited by Alfred John Kempe, London, 1836,
is to be found a letter, some extracts from which may serve to illustrate
the paramount influence of astrology in England in the sixteenth century.
The letter is addressed to Mr. George More, at Thorpe:—
As for my comming to you upon Wensday next … I cannot possibly
be wᵗʰ you till Thursday.
On Fryday and Saterday the signe will be in the heart, on
Sunday, Monday and Tuesday in the stomake, during wᶜʰ tyme
it wil be no good dealing wᵗʰ your ordinary phisicke until
Wensday come Sevenight at the nearest, and from that tyme
forwards for 15 or 16 days passing good. In w’ch time yf
it will please you to let me understand of your convenient
opportunity and season, I will not faill to come along
presently wᵗʰ your messenger.
Your worship’s assured
lovinge fr(ie)nd
SIMON TRIPPE, M. D.
WINTON. Septemb. 18. 1581.
The influence of the position of the moon in determining the proper
seasons for surgical operations, and for the administration of medicines,
may be best illustrated by a few extracts from ancient almanacs.
An antique illustrated manuscript almanac for the year 1386 contains the
following advice to physicians:
In a new mone sal not be layting of blode, for yan are mennys
bodyes voyed of blode and humos, and yan by layting of blode
sal yay more be anoyded.