Egyptian days.
Brief lists of “Egyptian Days” are of rather common occurrence in both Latin and Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of the ninth, tenth, and succeeding centuries.[2763] Often it is merely stated what days of the year they are; sometimes it is simply added that the doctor should not bleed the patient upon them. As early as a ninth century manuscript,[2764] however, we are further warned not to take a walk or plant or carry on a lawsuit or do any work upon these days. And under no circumstances, no matter what the seeming necessity, is it permitted to bleed man or beast on these days. Two Egyptian days are then listed for each month, one reckoned as so many days from the beginning and the other as so many days before the close of the month. Eleven days is the farthest removed that any Egyptian day is from the first of the month and twelve the most from the close, so that they never fall in the middle of a month nor on the very first or last day. Our ninth century manuscript then mentions three of these days in April, August, and December as especially dangerous. Whoever falls ill or receives a potion on them is sure to die soon. Whoever, male or female, is born on one of them will die an evil and painful death. “And if one drinks water on those three days, he will die within forty days.” The account then closes with the statement that on the Egyptian days the people of Egypt were cursed with Pharaoh. In another ninth century manuscript a bare list of the Egyptian days is followed by a somewhat similar account of the three which must be observed with especial care.[2765] In a calendar of saints’ days in this same manuscript only the third of March and the third of July are marked dies egiptiagus.[2766] Egyptian days are also marked in the calendar of Marianus Scotus, the well-known chronicler and chronologist.[2767] A somewhat different account in a twelfth century manuscript states that “these are the days which God sent without mercy.” It also, however, lists two of them for each month and distinguishes the three in April, August, and December as especially dangerous.[2768]
Their history.
There seems to be no doubt that these Egyptian days were a relic of the unlucky days in the ancient Egyptian calendar,[2769] of which we learn from several papyri, although of course the ancient Egyptians were also accustomed to distinguish further the three divisions of each day as lucky or unlucky. The Egyptian days are noted in official calendars of the Roman Empire about 354 A. D., and in the Fasti Philocaliani there are twenty-five in all, of which three fall in January. In the middle ages, as has already been illustrated, there were usually but twenty-four, two to each month.[2770] They were mentioned in the Life of Proclus by Marinus, and both Ambrose and Augustine testified that many Christians still had faith in them.[2771] Indeed, they passed into the ecclesiastical calendar, as the Franciscan, Bartholomew of England, states in the thirteenth century.[2772]
Medieval attempts to explain them.
By that time the notion had become prevalent that they were anniversaries of the days upon which God afflicted Egypt with plagues, as our citations from the manuscripts have shown. Bartholomew, indeed, is at pains to explain that the days are placed in the church calendar, “not because one should omit anything upon them more than upon other days, but in order that God’s miracles may be recalled to memory.” The circumstance that there are twenty-four days does not embarrass him; he simply explains that this proves that God sent more plagues upon Egypt than the ten which are especially famed. Our citations from earlier manuscripts have shown that most people would not agree with Bartholomew that nothing should be omitted on these days. Moreover, other explanations of their origin had been already given in the middle ages than that from the plagues of Egypt. Honorius of Autun stated in the twelfth century that they were called Egyptian days because they had been discovered by the Egyptians, and since Egypt means dark,[2773] they are called tenebrosi, because they are declared to bring the incautious to the shadows of death.[2774] The Dominican, Vincent of Beauvais,[2775] who probably wrote his encyclopedia soon after that of Bartholomew, did not find the discrepancy between ten plagues and twenty-four days so easy to explain away. He states that of the two Egyptian days in each month one comes near the beginning and the other near the close, as we have already learned. He adds that some call them lucky days, while others say that the astrologers of Egypt discovered that they were unlucky. Yet another explanation of their origin is that on these days the Egyptians were accustomed to sacrifice to demons with their own blood, a circumstance which would not seem to recommend them for inclusion in the ecclesiastical calendar. Bernard Gordon, a medical writer at the end of the thirteenth century, reverts to the position that the Egyptian days were in memory of the plagues in Egypt. He declares that there is no sense in the prohibition of blood-letting upon these days, since they have no astrological significance, but are the anniversaries of miracles worked by special providence.[2776] Gilbert of England, earlier in the thirteenth century, had advised against bleeding on Egyptian days, if the moon was then influenced by any evil planet.[2777]
Other perilous days.
On the other hand, not only did the twenty-four Egyptian days and the three in April, August, and December which were considered especially dangerous, continue to be listed in the fourteenth and fifteenth century manuscripts, but imitations of them appeared. Thus in a fourteenth century manuscript we read of forty perilous days which should be observed with the utmost care and which Greek masters have tested by experience;[2778] while in a second manuscript of the closing medieval period appear fifty-eight dangerous days “according to the Arabs.”[2779] Of the Greek days only twenty-nine are actually listed, seven in January, three in February, and so on, omitting the months of July and August entirely, which perhaps should contain the missing eleven days.[2780] The Arabic days vary in number per month from seven in March, which is the first month listed, to three in February. “And there are four other days and nights according to Bede on which no one is ever born or conceived, and if by chance a male is conceived or born, its body will never be freed from putridity.”[2781]
Firmicus read by an archbishop of York.
That astrological knowledge in England, at least soon after the Norman conquest, was not limited to such meager and simple treatises as the moon-books described above from Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, is seen from the closing incident in the career of Gerard, a learned and eloquent man, bishop of Hereford under William Rufus and archbishop of York under Henry I, whom he supported in the investiture struggle with Anselm and the pope. The story goes that Gerard, who had been feeling slightly indisposed, lay down to rest and enjoy the fresh air and fragrance of the flowers in a garden near his palace, asking his chaplains to leave him for a while. On their return after dinner they found him dead, and beneath the cushion upon which his head rested was a copy of the astrological work of Julius Firmicus Maternus. Gerard had not been popular with the inhabitants of York, and when his corpse was brought back to town, boys stoned the bier and the canons refused it burial within the cathedral, which, however, his successor granted. “His enemies,” we are told, “interpreted his death, without the rites of the church, as a divine judgment for his addiction to magical and forbidden arts.” At any rate the story shows that the work of Firmicus was well known by this time; it is from the eleventh century that the oldest manuscripts of it date; and we suspect that some of his enemies were rather hypocritical in the horror which they expressed at a bishop’s reading such a book. “Too independent a thinker for his contemporaries,” writes Miss Bateson, “his opponents held up their hands in horror that an astrological work by Julius Firmicus Maternus should be found under his pillow when he died.”[2782] The style of Firmicus is much imitated by the anonymous author of The Laws of Henry I and another legal work entitled Quadripartitus written in 1114. F. Liebermann states that the author was in the service of archbishop Gerard aforesaid.[2783]