RABELAIS.
A minute's recollection will carry the reader back to the chapter whereon that accidental immolation took place, which was the means of introducing him to the bas-bleus of Poictiers. We were then engaged upon the connection which in Peter Hopkins's time still subsisted between astrology and the practice of medicine.
Court de Gebelin in his great hypothetical, fanciful, but withal ingenious, erudite, and instructive work, says that the almanack was one of the most illustrious and most useful efforts of genius of the first men, and that a complete history of it would be a precious canvas for the history of the human race, were it not that unfortunately many of the necessary materials have perished. On peut assurer, he says, que sans almanach, les operations de l'agriculture seroient incertaines; que les travaux des champs ne se rencontreroient que per hazard dans les tems convenables: qui il n'y auroit ni fêtes ni assemblées publiques, et que la memoire des tems anciens ne seroit qu'un cahos.
This is saying a little too much. But who is there that has not sometimes occasion to consult the almanack? Maximilian I. by neglecting to do this, failed in an enterprize against Bruges. It had been concerted with his adherents in that turbulent city, that he should appear before it at a certain time, and they would be ready to rise in his behalf, and open the gates for him. He forgot that it was leap year, and came a day too soon; and this error on his part cost many of the most zealous of his friends their lives. It is remarkable that neither the historian who relates this, nor the writers who have followed him, should have looked in the almanack to guard against any inaccuracy in the relation; for they have fixed the appointed day on the eve of St. Matthias, which being the 23d of February, could not be put out of its course by leap year.
This brings to my recollection a legal anecdote, that may serve in like manner to exemplify how necessary it is upon any important occasion to scrutinize the accuracy of a statement before it is taken upon trust. A fellow was tried (at the Old Bailey if I remember rightly) for high-way robbery, and the prosecutor swore positively to him, saying he had seen his face distinctly, for it was a bright moon-light night. The counsel for the prisoner cross-questioned the man, so as to make him repeat that assertion, and insist upon it. He then affirmed that this was a most important circumstance, and a most fortunate one for the prisoner at the bar: because the night on which the alleged robbery was said to have been committed was one in which there had been no moon; it was during the dark quarter! In proof of this he handed an almanack to the bench,—and the prisoner was acquitted accordingly. The prosecutor however had stated every thing truly; and it was known afterwards that the almanack with which the counsel came provided, had been prepared and printed for the occasion.
There is a pleasing passage in Sanazzaro's Arcadia, wherein he describes two large beechen tablets, suspended in the temple of Pan, one on each side of the altar, scritte di rusticane lettere; le quali successivamente di tempo in tempo per molti anni conservate dai passati pastori, contenevano in se le antiche leggi, e gli ammaestramenti della pastorale vita: dalle quali tutto quello che fra le selve oggi se adopra, ebbe prima origine. One of these tablets contained directions for the management of cattle. In the other eran notati tutti i di dell' anno, e i varj mutamenti delle stagioni, e la inequalità delle notte e del giorno, insieme con la osservazione delle ore, non poco necessarie a viventi, e li non falsi pronostici delle tempestati: e quando il Sole con suo nascimento denunzia serenita, e quando pioggia, e quando venti, e quando grandini; e quali giorni son della luna fortunati, e quali infelici alle opre de' mortali: e che ciascuno in ciascuna ora dovesse fuggire, o seguitare, per non offendere le osservabili volonta degli Dii.
It is very probable that Sanazzaro has transferred to his pastoral, what may then have been the actual usage in more retired parts of the country; and that before the invention of printing rendered almanacks accessible to every one, a calendar, which served for agricultural as well as ecclesiastical purposes, was kept in every considerable church. Olaus Magnus says that the northern countrymen used to have a calendar cut upon their walking sticks (baculos annales, he calls them); and that when they met at church from distant parts, they laid their heads together and made their computations. The origin of these wooden almanacks, which belong to our own antiquities, as well as to those of Scandinavia, is traced hypothetically to the heathen temple, authentically to the church. It has been supposed that the Cimbri received the Julian calendar from Cæsar himself, after his conquest as it is called of Britain; and that it was cut in Runic characters for the use of the priests, upon the rocks, or huge stones, which composed their rude temples, till some one thought of copying it on wood and rendering it portable, for common use:—donec tandem, (are Wormius's words), ingenii rarâ dexteritate emersit ille, quisquis tandem fuerit, qui per lignea hæcce compendia, tam utile tamque necessarium negotium plebi communicandum duxit: cujus nomen si exstaret æquiore jure fastis hisce insereretur, quam multorum tituli, quos boni publici cura vix unquam tetigit.
The introduction of the Julian calendar at that time is however nothing better than an antiquary's mere dream. At a later period the Germans, who had much more communication with the Romans than ever the Scandinavians had, divided the year into three seasons, if Tacitus was rightly informed; this being one consequence of the little regard which they paid to agriculture. Hyems et ver et æstas intellectum ac vocabula habent; autumni perinde nomen ac bona ignorantur.
Moreover Wormius was assured, (and this was a fact which might well have been handed down by memory, and was not likely to have been recorded), that the wooden almanacks were originally copied from a written one in a very antient manuscript preserved in the church at Drontheim. There is no proof that a pagan Rimstoke ever existed in those countries. The clergy had no interest in withholding this kind of knowledge from the people even in the darkest ages of papal tyranny and monkish imposture. But during the earlier idolatries of the Romans it seems to have been withheld; and it was against the will of the Senate that the Fasti were first divulged to the people by Cneius Flavius Scriba.