Components of the records

Case number (e.g. CASE796). This is an arbitrary number assigned by the editors for the purpose of data maintenance and is of use primarily as a reference number. Every case number is unique and permanent.

Manuscript details: the shelfmark of the volume in which the record is contained, the page number, and a broad indication of whereabouts on the page the entry appears. Generally speaking, entries can be specified as occupying one of four quarters or ‘quadrants‘ of a given page: upper left, lower left, upper right and lower right. Where more than one case appears in a given quadrant, they are both or all given the same designation. Where a case occupies more than one quadrant (or more than one page), this is passed over in silence if the sequence is logical (e.g. from upper left to lower left) but spelled out if it is counter-intuitive (e.g. from lower right to lower left, or from one quadrant of one page to another quadrant of another).

In page references such as ‘f. 1r’, ‘f.’ stands for ‘folio’, meaning a single sheet of manuscript paper, and ‘r’ and ‘v’ stand for ‘recto’ (right) and ‘verso’ (left). If a volume is opened between its third and fourth folios, the page on the left is f. 3v and the page on the right f. 4r.

Consultant: the practitioner.

Date and time: these have normally been taken from the entry in question, but if the relevant information is either missing or obviously incorrect, it has (where possible) been supplied or corrected by the editors.

Text: this field contains the transcription of the main part of the record. It can be viewed in either ‘normalised’ or ‘diplomatic’ format: the ‘Switch’ function above each entry enables users to flip between the two displays. See our editorial policies for a definition of these terms and an account of our sampling policy.

Querent: the person asking the question.

Patient: the person undergoing investigation. This is usually, but by no means always, the same person as the querent. It is important to bear in mind that ‘patient’ in this sense does not necessarily mean medical patient. If, for instance, a woman asks about her husband’s prospects of preferment, her husband is the ‘patient’. At times this can be counter-intuitive: when Forman asks the stars whether or not he should offer medical treatment to a given person, Forman himself is considered the ‘patient’ since the question is being asked in his own interests. This occasionally leads to the inclusion of non-human ‘patients’ when, for instance, a ship-owner asks about the wellbeing of one of his ships. In Forman’s entries, the first person mentioned in the case is normally the patient, whether or not this is the same person as the querent. Napier’s records are less consistently structured.

A given case may feature more than one querent and/or patient.

Third parties: any people mentioned in the record who are neither querents nor patients but are directly relevant to the case. For instance, if Mr A asks about his sick son B and whether Miss C has bewitched him, Mr A is querent, B is patient, and Miss C is a third party.

Relation: any social, familial or professional relationships between people mentioned in the case.

Topic: what the question is about. There is a wide range of medical and non-medical topics of consultations.

Further information: a summary of the presence or absence of other characteristic details of the consultation, under the following headings:

Circumstances of the consultation

Diagnostic

The ‘Further information’ section of the detailed case view also includes, where relevant, any editorial comments about the condition, layout or content of the manuscript.

Punctuation

Like almost all writers of their period, Forman and Napier did not follow formalised rules of punctuation. Questions are sometimes but by no means always terminated by a question mark. Full stops frequently appear in the middle of sentences; conversely, sentences frequently end without full stops. Both writers make frequent use of the ‘slash’, a slightly wavy forward-sloping line (technically known as a ‘virgule’) which appears to function, in modern terms, either as a comma, a semi-colon or a full stop. Quite often, however, it appears directly before or after a full stop and may sometimes be purely decorative. Casebooks Project transcriptions do not attempt to modernise or standardise the original punctuation but present it as it appears, with the ‘virgule’ character rendered as ‘/’.

Dates

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII instituted the so-called Gregorian calendar to replace the Julian calendar that had been used throughout Europe since the time of Julius Caesar. The difference between the two was that the Gregorian calendar observed slightly fewer leap years, with the result that Gregorian dates were, by 1582, ten days ahead of Julian dates, i.e. 1 January 1582 by the Julian calendar was 11 January by the Gregorian. The new calendar (which is now the international standard) was adopted at a range of different dates in different countries. Protestant countries in particular tended to resist what was seen as a ‘Popish’ innovation, even though all serious scholars accepted that it was in fact far more accurate. Britain finally caught up with the rest of Western Europe on 3/14 September 1752, by which time the discrepancy had risen to eleven days.

All dates given in the casebooks are, therefore, according to the Julian calendar.

Many writers of the period who used the Julian calendar regarded the year as beginning on March 25 but Forman and Napier treated it as beginning on January 1.

Times

In addition to the still current ‘ante meridiem’ (am, before noon) and ‘post meridiem’ (pm, after noon), which the astrologers usually abbreviated as ‘An m’, ‘ant m’ or ‘p m’, they often used ‘in meridie’ (‘in m’): literally ‘at noon’ but used by Forman to mean any time between 11am and 1pm. However, he was typically inconsistent about this and sometimes used ‘An m’ and ‘p m’ for times within this range too. Napier almost always used ‘in m’ to mean ‘at noon’ precisely.

There are also occasional examples in both sets of records of ‘nocte’ (‘at night’, i.e. between sunset and sunrise).

Ages

The ages ascribed by Forman and Napier to their clients should be treated with scepticism. They are generally guesses or approximations; in some cases they be mistakes or outright lies on the client’s part. Napier records over ten different dates for his own birth. A given patient will, according to the records, frequently gain or lose two or three years between consultations only a week apart, and where a patient’s date of birth is specified it frequently conflicts with the age ascribed to the patient in the same entry. In general, the older a patient is said to be, the less likely it is that the stated age is accurate.

Furthermore, both practitioners are inconsistent in their recording of ages. Both Forman and Napier sometimes use ‘44’, say, to mean ‘44’ in the modern sense (somewhere between the 44th and 45th birthday), but sometimes to mean ‘in his or her 44th year’, i.e. 43 in modern terms. Thus, even assuming that the given figure is correct, someone described as being 44 in an entry dated 2 June 1600 may have been born at any time between 3 June 1555 (he or she will be 45 tomorrow) and 1 June 1557 (the patient is in his or her 44th year).

The birth dates presented on this site are based on the best available data. Where a precise birth date is specified in the records, this is taken to be more reliable than a date extrapolated from the patient’s stated age at a given time. Where an age is given but no precise date of birth is specified, a date range is calculated taking into account the vagaries described above. In neither case, however, should the figure be taken as at all authoritative unless it is not followed by ‘(est.)’ (i.e. estimated), in which case the date has been drawn from dependable external evidence.

Days

Astrological/alchemical notation included seven symbols for the then-known ‘planets’. Although it was widely, though by no means universally, accepted by the educated that the sun and moon are not in fact planets, they were still treated as such for astrological purposes. These symbols were also used for seven metals and the seven days of the week, each of which was believed to be under the influence of a corresponding ‘planet’, as follows:

Glyph	Planet	Metal	Day
	Sun	gold	Sunday
	Moon	silver	Monday
	Mars	iron	Tuesday
	Mercury	mercury	Wednesday
	Jupiter	tin	Thursday
	Venus	copper	Friday
	Saturn	lead	Saturday

In the question sections of the casebooks (i.e. the sections transcribed in this project), these symbols are almost always used to mean days of the week, though in other sections they are generally used to designate the ‘planets’. The symbol is sometimes accompanied by the word ‘day’ (or ‘dies’, the Latin for ‘day’), e.g. ‘ dai’ (‘Sunday’) or ‘die ’ (‘die Solis’, i.e. ‘on Sunday’).

In the ‘normalised’ view of the texts, these glyphs are explicated (e.g. ‘’ is presented as ‘Sunday’, ‘Sun’ or ‘gold’ as appropriate), but in the ‘diplomatic’ view they are displayed as they appear in the original, with explanatory mouseovers.

Kinship relations

Caution is advisable when interpreting early modern usage of terms such as mother, father, brother, sister, son and daughter. Though normally used in their modern sense, these could also mean ‘mother-in-law’, ‘brother-in-law’ etc., or ‘stepmother’, ‘stepbrother’ etc. ‘Mother’, ‘father’, ‘son’ and ‘daughter’ could also be used to refer to godparents or godchildren. There are also instances of ‘Mother’ being used as a respectful term of address for an elderly woman of relatively low social status. ‘Cousin’ was used extremely loosely, as explained in the glossary.

Terms denoting marital status, such as ‘bachelor’, ‘maid’ (unmarried woman), ‘widow’ etc., are sometimes used by both Forman and Napier to refer to the status someone had when he or she married his or her current spouse (whence some apparent anomalies such as a ‘bachelor’ being married to a ‘widow’). In other cases, they refer to the person’s current status. It is not always clear which usage has been adopted in a given case.

Forman’s Latin

Like most educated Europeans of their time, Forman and Napier switched easily between their native language and Latin, often changing language in mid-sentence. However, while Napier was virtually bilingual, Forman’s Latin was, to put it kindly, idiosyncratic. It is clear from the number of Latin sources he consulted that he understood the language well, but his own use of it frequently flies in the face of all generally accepted rules of grammar and employs vocabulary that is not to be found in any dictionary of either Classical or medieval Latin (or at least not in the sense in which he uses it). This frequently causes considerable difficulty in discerning and translating Forman’s meaning (for instance, it is often unclear what is the subject and what the object of a given clause, and even if it is clear which verb he is using it is often not at all clear which tense he intends). Casebooks Project transcriptions do not attempt to ‘correct’ Forman’s Latin but present it as he wrote it: readers competent in Latin should be aware that apparent ‘mistakes’ are Forman’s, and not (or at least not normally) transcription errors.

Types of entry

Forman and Napier deployed a range of techniques for reading the heavens, which can be grouped under the following headings. The search function provides (under Case Details) the option of limiting searches to one type of entry or more, though this will primarily be of use only to people interested in the technical details of astrology at the period. The types are listed in order of priority (that is, the most frequently deployed appear first).

Horary consultation: an investigation of the stars at the time the question was asked (or, if it was not asked in person, the time at which the astrologer received it). The overwhelming majority of Forman’s and Napier’s records fall into this category.

Nativity: a specialised form of ‘interrogation’ in which a chart is cast for the date and time of the subject’s birth, usually with a view to foretelling his or her life to come but sometimes for more specific questions (especially concerning marriage prospects or medical problems).

Election: a question cast for a time in the future, to determine whether or not this would be propitious for a given undertaking.

Interrogation: a chart cast retrospectively to determine the future outcome of a past event.

Diary: records of events in the practitioner’s personal life, or events he has witnessed, accompanied by an astrological chart and/or analysis presumably intended to determine the cause, significance or outcome of such events.

Revolutions: an enquiry relating to the supposed revolutions of the heavens about the earth and consequently cyclical pattern of worldly affairs, generally used by the astrologers in drawing up prognostications for themselves.

Decumbiture: a question cast for the time at which the patient fell ill or took to his or her bed.