Now! Then! Archbishop Gerald of York dies reading Roman astrology

21 May 1108: Archbishop Gerald of York dies reading Roman astrology

Ranulf Higden and John Trevisa. 1865. Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden monachi Cestrensis, Vol. 7. Ed. Joseph Rawson Lumby. London: Longman. Get it:

Excerpt

Thomas, Archbishop of York, having died this year, Gerald succeeded him: a man, as rumour has it, subject to licentiousness, lust and malice. For, under his pillow, when he was died in a pleasure garden, was found a book of curious arts, Julius Firmicus, which he read in secret and in the noon hours. Wherefore the clerics of his church would scarcely allow him to be buried under the grass of heaven outside the church.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

John Trevisa’s “a lecherous man, a witch, an evil doer” strikes me as deliberate mistranslation. My “grass of heaven” can’t be quite right, or else the Spanish would have coined “césped del cielo.” Wikipedia says that he died at Southwell, and that

His canons refused to allow his burial within his cathedral, but their hostility probably owed more to Gerard’s attempts to reform their lifestyle than to his alleged interest in sorcery. Gerard was at first buried beside the porch at York Minster, but his successor, Thomas, moved the remains inside the cathedral church.

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Original

Mortuo hoc anno Thoma Eboracensi episcopo, successit Gyraldus, vir quidem, ut fert rumor, licentiae, libidini et malificiis obnoxius. Sub ejus nempe pulvillo cum in viridario quodam decederet inventus est codex curiosarum artium videlicet, Julius Firmicus, quem secreto et meridianis horis lectitabat; quamobrem clerici ecclesiae suae eum sub coeli cespite extra ecclesiam vix sepeliri permiserunt.

56 words.