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IMC 2019: Sessions

Session 1708: Only Time Will Tell?: On Prognostic Thinking in Early Medieval Life

Thursday 4 July 2019, 14.15-15.45

Organiser:Ria Paroubek-Groenewoud, Departement Geschiedenis en Kunstgeschiedenis, Universiteit Utrecht
Moderator/Chair:Joanne Edge, Department of History & Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
Paper 1708-aThinking Inside the Box?: The Problem of Genre and Prognostic Texts in 8th- and 9th-Century Manuscripts
(Language: English)
Annemarie Veenstra, Departement Geschiedenis en Kunstgeschiedenis, Universiteit Utrecht
Index terms: Computing in Medieval Studies, Historiography - Modern Scholarship, Science
Paper 1708-bA Dark Cloud on the Horizon: On Brontologies, Brontological Thinking, and Thunder as a Predictive Force in the Early Medieval Mind
(Language: English)
Bram van den Berg, Departement Geschiedenis en Kunstgeschiedenis, Universiteit Utrecht
Index terms: Computing in Medieval Studies, Historiography - Medieval
Paper 1708-cLuna VIII: A Medicus curabitur - Prognostic Texts as an Aid for the Medieval Medic
(Language: English)
Ria Paroubek-Groenewoud, Departement Geschiedenis en Kunstgeschiedenis, Universiteit Utrecht
Index terms: Computing in Medieval Studies, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Medicine
Abstract

What day of the moon is a good day to let blood? What does it mean if you hear thunder on a Tuesday? Do you want to know if your Monday is cursed? Texts that offer this kind of information are known as prognostics. Recent scholarship has stepped away from the notion that these texts are pagan. However, they are often still approached as a clear and defined body of texts; but are they really? This session will break away from this tendency by looking at how prognostic texts, found in manuscripts from the 8th-11th century, function within different intellectual contexts.