Pseudo-Bede: De Tonitruis

This short work on what thunder foretells is addressed to a venerable father Herefrid, at whose repeated request the writer says he has rendered it into Latin, while asking protection against envious critics who will say it was composed by diabolical inspiration or magic. The work then gives prognostications: what thunder signifies when heard from each of the four quarters of the world, what it portends in each month of the year, and what on each day of the week. Thunder in September, for example, is said to foretell many deaths among the laity, and in other months storms, good harvests or the death of fish and serpents.

The treatise has been printed among Bede’s works but is not accepted as his, and its date and origin are uncertain. It belongs to a widespread medieval genre of brontologies and other prognostic texts that predicted events from natural signs. Its preface, anxious to defend such prediction from the charge of magic, shows how these texts sat uneasily between learned natural science and popular divination. Such prognostics were copied in many manuscripts, often beside computistical material.