DT3
Medieval Medicine: Horoscope for Dummies
Some things never change. The astrology girls on social media insisting that because you’re a Scorpio, you’re obviously mysterious and secretive, had to get it from somewhere. That somewhere, in fact, is medieval medicine, as discovered in my transcription and interpretation of a page in a folio of a medieval manuscript.
Transcription
As you can see here, this is a page detailing what people who were born in the signs of Tarus and Aeries should watch out for and be sure to do during their specific times. In fact, one line advises even that a Tarus-born should take a wife of an easy disposition because they tend to be so stubborn and it is important to have the balance in their marriage. The full transcription is also included below:
drye. Colerike of kynde of that fire. than it
is good to make what thynge that longith
to mevynge as forto bathene. to be late blood.
that tyme is forto eschewen. forto touche the
heed of man with iren. for why that signe
Aries maketh the heed. And if eny man be
wounded inne his heed whan the mone is
under aries. unnethe it is possible that evere
he shulde be heled. either be cured. And so is it
to understonde of all membres of mannys
body annswerynge to the xii. signes.
<head>Tarurus coold and drye.</head>
When the mone is in Tauro that is
a signe of a bole. Taurus that is a bole.
is coold & drye. Malencolie. of kynde of that
erthe. good thynge. it is that tyme in that
syne. for the signe is stedfastnesse. to take a
wyf of gentel kynde. forto make edificacioun
& groundyng of castelles & of toures and
of comyn housyng. and to comun & to entre
Analysis
I might discuss this as though it were simple to decipher and let me be clear, it was not. I found the easiest way was to take a couple of passes through the text while writing down whatever letters I thought I saw, regardless of whether or not they made sense in a sentence or in a word, and looking at the bigger picture. Once we began to walk through some specific handwriting practices and tutorials in class together, it became much easier to find the meaning. Honestly, it helped to read it aloud, with complete disregard for how words were “supposed” to be spelled in today’s English.
With now a greater understanding of what I’m looking at when I see the page, I honestly want to do more. It seems as if the portion of the folio we’re working with has all of the signs, as well as general medical advice and predictions for what should be expected, and it would be interesting to look at each of the interpretations to compare it to the modern practices and beliefs of astrology, to see what has changed and what hasn’t.
Marking up this text with the much more easily searchable and readable XML text makes it so much more accessible to the people who are invested in the field and also serves as a fantastic filtering system when scholars, or whomever the audience may be, are searching for what they’re looking for. This text specifically is more niche, but the transcription still will open doors to more knowledge and understanding about what was important in daily life in the Middle Ages.
This process feels awfully similar in nature to the initial reasoning that might have been used to write down these thoughts and processes in the first place. It’s about knowing the importance of recognizing our understanding of the world around us, as well as what is important to societal norms and cultures, because someday someone else will be reading these words if they survive and trying to decipher what it was we had to say. Humans seem to write things down for the present and for the future, which we saw as early as the Romans with their epitaphs and identification, and through today with how we publish and transcribe everything that we are experiencing with record pace and accuracy. It restores a sense of humanity in how while our understanding may have evolved, there are things that will still stay the same.