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  • The De tonitruis Attributed to Bede:An Early Medieval Treatise on Divination by Thunder Translated from Irish
  • David Juste and Hilbert Chiu

The De tonitruis (or De tonitruis libellus ad Herefridum) attributed to Bede is a short text containing a prologue and four chapters dealing with the meaning of thunder heard (I) in each of the four cardinal directions, (II) in each of the twelve months of the year, (III) on each of the seven days of the week, and (IV) at certain hours of the day and of the night. The text was first published among Bede’s works by Noviomagus in Cologne in 1537 and was subsequently reprinted in all editions of the complete works of Bede, including Migne’s Patrologia Latina.1 Charles W. Jones, who was the first to discuss the De tonitruis in detail,2 convincingly dismissed the attribution to Bede and identified what he thought to be the only extant MS (and also the exemplar used by Noviomagus): Cologne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, 102, fols. 49r –52v, copied in Cologne in the first half of the eleventh century.3 [End Page 97]

In the prologue, the author says that he translated the tract into Latin at the request of his master, a certain “father Herenfridus” (pater Herenfridus). Jones proposed to identify this Herenfridus with Herefridus, the bishop of Auxerre who died in 909 and who is known to have received letters from students in reply to his questions. While the connection between Herefridus of Auxerre and our text must remain conjectural, the Cologne MS guarantees that the translation existed by the first half of the eleventh century. This fact alone is remarkable, for it makes the De tonitruis one of the earliest medieval Latin texts — and perhaps the earliest — openly and entirely devoted to divination, a subject that had been, throughout the early Middle Ages, repeatedly condemned by ecclesiastical authorities as part of the magical arts.4 The author was fully aware of the danger of dealing with such sulfurous matter, as he makes plain in the prologue, where he denounces in advance his detractors and other “envious people” who would allege that he was inspired in his task by a “demonic spirit” or by a “wicked investigation of the magical art.”

Up to now, our knowledge of the De tonitruis has been based solely upon the printed version and the Cologne MS. However, both these copies are truncated. Chapter IV is incomplete in the Cologne MS and entirely missing from the printed version.5 Moreover, the prologue, as we have it in those two copies, does not say from what language the text was translated, thus leaving the origin of the text unknown. Both these problems can be resolved with the help of five new MSS of the text:

  1. 1. Trier, Bibliothek des Priesterseminars, 61 (R.III.13), fols. 100v–102v. This MS, which contains chapters II–IV only, was copied at the monastery of St. Eucher and Matthias in Trier in the eleventh century.6

  2. 2. Herten, Bibliothek des Grafen Nesselrode-Reichenstein, 192, fols. 92r–93v. This MS is now lost, but we are fortunate to have a detailed description, with partial transcription of its content, published by Karl [End Page 98] Sudhoff in 1917.7 Fols. 21–96 were copied in Germany in the eleventh or twelfth century and later belonged to the monastery of Brauweiler in the diocese of Cologne. At an unknown date before 1682, the MS became the property of the counts of Nesselrode-Reichenstein in Herten and was eventually transferred to the Gräflich Nesselrodesche Bibliothek in Herrnstein (near Siegburg), where it was apparently destroyed with the rest of the library during the Second World War.8 It contained the complete text with attribution to Bede.

  3. 3. Liège, Bibliothèque de l’Université, 77, fols. 62v–68r. This MS, which is missing the prologue, was copied in the Meuse region at the very end of the eleventh or in the beginning of the twelfth century, and later belonged to the monastery of St. Trond in present-day Belgium.9

  4. 4. Prague, Archiv Pražského Hradu (olim Knihovna Metropolitní Kapituli), M. XXI (1374), fols...

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