[2778] Ashmole 361, mid 14th century, fols. 158v-159.
[2779] BN 7337, 14-15th century, p. 75. Ad-Damîrî states in his zoological lexicon, (ed. A. S. G. Jayaker, 1906, I, 134) that Mohammed is reported to have said, “Be cautious of twelve days in the year, because they are such as cause the loss of property and bring on disgrace or dishonor.”
[2780] M. Hamilton, Greek Saints and Their Festivals, 1910, p. 187, states that “in all parts of (modern) Greece on certain days of August and March it is considered necessary to abstain from particular kinds of work in order to avoid disaster.”
[2781] Mention may perhaps be made in this connection of the “Tobias nights,” three nights of abstinence which newly wedded couples were sometimes accustomed to observe in the middle ages in order to defeat the demons. The practice is mentioned in the Vulgate, but not in most ancient versions of the Book of Tobit. In 1409 the citizens of Abbeville won a lawsuit with the bishop of Amiens who claimed the right to grant dispensations from the observance of the Tobias nights and required that fees be paid him for that purpose. See J. G. Frazer (1918), I, 498-520, where analogous practices of primitive tribes are listed.
[2782] Bateson, Medieval England, 1904, p. 72; I have in the main followed the fuller account in DNB “Gerard,” from which the previous quotation is taken. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, III, 118 (ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, RS, vol. 52, 1870) does not say definitely that the book found under Gerard’s pillow was Firmicus. Also he says nothing of boys stoning the bier or of Gerard’s enemies interpreting his death as a divine judgment, and in his autograph copy of the Gesta Pontificum he afterwards erased the statements that rumor accused Gerard of many crimes and lusts, and that he was said to practice sorcery because he read Julius Firmicus on the sly before the midday hours, and that people say that a book of curious arts was found beneath his pillow when he died. This, the late medieval chroniclers say, was Firmicus: see Ranulf Higden, ed. Lumby, VII, 420, and Knyghton, ed. Twysden, X, SS., 2375.
[2783] Firmicus Maternus, ed. Kroll et Skutsch, II (1913), p. iv; and F. Liebermann, ed. Quadripartitus, Halle, 1892, p. 36, and Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, Halle, 1903-1906, I, 548.
[2784] C. Jourdain, Nicolas Oresme et les astrologues à la cour de Charles V, in Revue des Questions Historiques, 1875, p. 136.
[2785] English translation, ed. of 1898, p. 508.
[2786] N. Valois (1880), p. 305.
[2787] Additional 17,808, a narrow folio in vellum with all the treatises written in the same large, plain hand with few abbreviations. A considerable part of the MS is occupied by the work on music of Guido of Arezzo (c. 995-1050). This MS is not noted by Wickersheimer or by Bubnov, although it includes treatises on the abacus and the astrolabe which are perhaps by Gerbert.