The De tonitruis Attributed to Bede: An Early Medieval Treatise on Divination by Thunder Translated from Irish

David Juste and Hilbert Chiu
Traditio. Volume 68, 2013, pp. 97-124.

The De tonitruis (or De tonitruis libellus ad Herefridum) attributed to Bede is a short text containing a prologue and four chapters dealing with the meaning of thunder heard (I) in each of the four cardinal directions, (II) in each of the twelve months of the year, (III) on each of the seven days of the week, and (IV) at certain hours of the day and of the night. The text was first published among Bede’s works by Noviomagus in Cologne in 1537 and was subsequently reprinted in all editions of the complete works of Bede, including Migne’s Patrologia Latina. Charles W. Jones, who was the first to discuss the De tonitruis in detail, convincingly dismissed the attribution to Bede and identified what he thought to be the only extant MS (and also the exemplar used by Noviomagus): Cologne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, 102, fols. 49r–52v, copied in Cologne in the first half of the eleventh century.

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