Dream-Books ascribed to the prophet Daniel are found in Latin manuscripts at least as early as the tenth century, and continue through the fifteenth century despite the denial of their authenticity by John of Salisbury in the twelfth century. At least three different types of Dream-Books of Daniel are represented in incunabula editions in the British Museum.[928] The Dream-Book of Joseph occurs with less frequency.[929] These Latin Dream-Books do not go into details of politics like the Byzantine books which Liutprand described. The simplest form, which we have already mentioned in speaking of the Moon-Books of the tenth and eleventh centuries, is according to the days of the moon.[930] It is often embodied in the fuller versions. Their usual arrangement is an alphabetical list of objects seen in dreams with a line of interpretation for each and perhaps a page for each letter of the alphabet. Sample lines are:
Aerem serenum videre lucrum significat
(“To see a clear sky signifies gain”)
Intestina sua videre secreta manifesta
(“To see one’s own intestines means secrets revealed”)
This alphabetical arrangement already appears in the early manuscripts.[931] Sometimes, however, the procedure is by opening the Psalter at random, taking the first letter on the page opened to, and then referring to a list where the letters of the alphabet have various significations, such as “A signifies power of delight,” “B signifies victory in war.”[932] This last method might, of course, be employed without having any dream at all, and perhaps should not be regarded as a Dream-Book. It is interesting to note that in one manuscript it is called Experiments of Daniel. In these books of Daniel further instructions are sometimes given, as when it is stated that dreams which occur before midnight are of no value for purposes of interpretation, or when one is told before opening the Psalter to repeat on bended knees a Lord’s Prayer, Ave Maria, and Miserere. Days to be observed are also sometimes mentioned as a sort of accompaniment to the Dream-Book: forty dangerous days “which the masters of the Greeks have tested by experiment,”[933] “bromantic days” from the twenty-fourth of November to the eighteenth of December, and “perentalic days” from the first of January to the first of March. “And these are the days when the leaves fall from the trees,” which is apparently supposed to have a disturbing effect upon the clarity of dreams.[934]
Sompniale dilucidarium Pharaonis.
A Sompniale dilucidarium Pharaonis, as it is entitled in the manuscript of it which I have examined,[935] or Morale somnium Pharaonis, as it is called in the printed editions,[936] was addressed by a John of Limoges[937] to Theobald, King of Navarre and Count of Champagne and Brie, who died in 1216.[938] It is really not a Dream-Book but a series of imaginary and fulsomely rhetorical letters between Pharaoh and his Magi, Pharaoh and Joseph, and Joseph and adulators and detractors. John states in his introductory letter to Theobald that the famous dream of Pharaoh will here be “morally expounded concerning royal discipline.” Pharaoh typifies any curious king; Egypt stands for any studious kingdom; Joseph represents any virtuous counselor; and the dream will be interpolated with flowers of rhetoric and theology.
An anonymous Exposition of Dreams.
More elaborate and making more pretense to philosophical character than the brief Dream-Books of Daniel is an anonymous work on dreams contained in a Paris manuscript of apparently the later part of the thirteenth century.[939] It is the first treatise in the manuscript, which further contains two important works of the first half of the twelfth century, namely, the Imago mundi of Honorius of Autun and the De philosophia of William of Conches. The texts of these two latter works are much cut up and intermixed with each other. It is therefore not unlikely that the opening treatise on dreams is also a work of the twelfth century, although there does not seem to be much reason for ascribing it either to Honorius of Autun or William of Conches. A long prohemium fails to throw much light upon the personality of the author, but the work does not seem to be a translation. That it is not earlier than the twelfth century is indicated by its citation of the Viaticum and Passionarius, presumably the well known medical works of Constantine Africanus and Gariopontus,[940]—unless indeed it be by Constantinus himself, to some of whose views it shows a resemblance.