In an Anglo-Norman prose lapidary from the second
half of the thirteenth century – a study of the medical ‘powers’ of different
stones and minerals, claiming to derive its knowledge from a letter which the mysterious Arabian king Evax wrote to Emperor
Tiberius – we find the following
recommendation:
“La rousse [celidoine] est bone a houme qui chiet de passion
et a home lunage” Lapid 149.xxvi.7
(“The red [chelidonius] (=a small stone taken from the gizzard of a
swallow) is good for someone who suffers epilepsy and for a ‘lunatic’ person”)
Leaving aside the
question of how effective the use of a piece of red chelidonius would have been
in these matters, we would like to concentrate on the word lunage. The adjective derives from lune (Latin luna: ‘moon’), followed by the (normally
substantival) suffix -age, and is the
Anglo-Norman equivalent to Latin lunaticus.
This particular word formation is no longer extant in Modern French and is not
found in English. Its primary (and literal) sense is ‘(under the influence) of
the moon’ or ‘affected by the moon’, but
while in continental medieval French the word can also mean ‘lit by the light of the moon’ (DMF lunage 2), in Anglo-Norman
it is only found in reference to a mental and/or physical disorder. A second
attestation of the word can be found in an earlier Anglo-Norman lapidary, dating
from the beginning of the twelfth century. Here it is advised to place a jet stone
on burning coals, and to have the emanating smoke float over a person:
“se hom veot serf achater, Si le puet ben espermenter Se il est lunages
u guttus U se il est palazinus: [...]” Lapid 240.1133
(“if somebody wants to buy a servant, he can very well test whether that
person is ‘lunatic’ or gouty or whether he has palsy [...]”)
If suffering from any of the above, the lapidary
claims, the person within this cloud of smoke will have a fit.
As the etymology suggests, the influence of the
moon is essential to the understanding of this word. In medieval times the different
phases of the moon were believed to have numerous effects: not only insanity as
a disease of the mind (as discussed in the works of Aristotle and Pliny the
Elder, as well as in the fourth- and fifth-century works of Julius Firmicius
Maternus and Pseudo-Manetho), but also fevers, rheumatism and epilepsy (as observed,
for example, in the Vulgate, Saint Matthew, 17-15-18, where lunaticus is used to refer to an
epileptic boy cured by Jesus).[1]
(The phases of the moon, as described in Isidore of Seville's Etymologies, BL, Royal 6 C.i, fol. 30r)
The two Anglo-Norman examples taken from the
lapidaries seem to suggest that the ‘lunacy’ or ‘state of frenzy’ in question
was more of a physical than a mental nature, and that it is epileptic fits (as
brought on by the moon) that these stones protect against. Evidently, from a
medieval perspective, the distinction between the two cannot have been as exact
as it is in modern science – the word is used to describe the condition of people
who are in a state of fitfulness, believed to be a direct result of the effects
of the moon.
Anglo-Norman also has the word lunatic as a second adjectival form of lune – also derived from Latin lunaticus,
but believed to be a later re-borrowing than lunage (see FEW 15,456a). The
word is also frequently attested in Continental Middle French as well as Middle
English and has persisted in the modern languages. Interestingly, this is the
word found more frequently in Anglo-Norman legal texts, for example in the
late-thirteenth-century legal treatise Mirror
of Justices:
“cist n’est mie covenable [...] par ceo q'il est dedenz age ou pur ceo
q'il est lunatic ou frenetic” Mir Just 117
(“this one is not fit [=as a juror] [...] because he is in age, or
because he is ‘lunatic’ or frantic”)
and in the Yearbooks of Edward II:
“la ou un enfaunt dedenz age est folenatre, le roi avera la garde tote
sa vie etc. Mes s'il soit lunatick, il n'avera point” YBB Ed
II ii 151
(“if an underage child is born a fool, the king shall have the wardship
all his life etc. But if he is ‘lunatic’, this is not the case”)
In both instances, the sense of the word seems to
be closer to the modern sense, with a person being barred from certain rights
or entitlements for reasons of being ‘lunatic’, i.e. presumably prone to fits
of insanity. In a legal sense, the word became synonymous with ‘mentally
unsound’ and continues to be used in English law to refer to a state of
intermittent insanity (OED).
(Bible historiale, BL Royal 15 D III, fol. 262)
Used as a substantive, the word lunatic in Anglo-Norman demonstrates a
wider range of senses once more. In Britton’s judicial compilation of the
late-thirteenth century, we find another example, again in a legal context
(where the word is often used together with frenetic), of the sense ‘temporarily mentally unsound’:
“Et ausi porrount lunatics et frenetics doner et aliener, mes nient en
lour rage” BRITT i 223
(“Likewise, ‘lunatics’ and frenzied people may give and alien (i.e.
transfer possession), but not during their state of madness”)
A citation from Jean de Mandeville’s Livre des Merveilles du Monde,
reminiscent of the above lapidary examples, ascribes an ability to diamonds to
cure ‘lunatics’ and, which it seems to consider a related activity, to exorcise
the devil:
“ly diamant [...] fait homme plus fort et plus ferme encountre les
enemys, et garit les lunatiques et ceux qe le diable porsuit et travaille” Mandeville 308
(var.)
(“the diamond
makes a person stronger and more steadfast against enemies, and cures
‘lunatics’ and those that the devil chases and harasses”)
Returning
to medical texts, in the Euperiston, an
Anglo-Norman medical text of the thirteenth century, the word is used alongside
words referring to those who are epileptic or possessed of the devil:
“E sachét ke l'epilemptic e lunatic e demoniac sont ausi cum semblables,
sicum Constantin dit” A-N Med ii 143.37
(“And let it be known that the epileptic and the lunatic and the person
possessed of the devil are also similar, as Constantin says”)
and
seems to refer to somebody who suffers from fits and paroxysms.
(illustration to Psalm 52: King David in prayer and the fool, BL, Harley 2897, fol. 42v)
Curiously,
Anglo-Norman has three more synonyms to refer to the ‘lunatic’, i.e. the person
suffering from ‘lunacy’, that are not found on the Continent and were not borrowed
into English either.
The
term lunager is found in another
lapidary (an alphabetical lapidary attributed to Philippe de Thaon from the
beginning of the twelfth century), again in a passage describing the healing
qualities of chelidonius:
“Chelidonius [...] A langoros done sancté, A lunager e forsené” Lapid 220.490
(“Chelidonius [...] gives health to one who languishes in disease, and
to the ‘lunatic’ and the madman”)
Whereas in the earlier examples, the power of
Chelidonius seems to have been more as preventing the fits of epilepsy, here
the ‘lunatic’ is mentioned alongside the forsené
(the ‘madman’).
The second synonym, also unique to Anglo-Norman, is
lunerasce. In a thirteenth-century
account of pilgrimages to Jerusalem, the Saracens are described as
“sunt foles cumme lunerasces a deceivre chascun” London to
Jerusalem 139
(“they are mad like ‘lunatics’ in that they betray each other”)
Unless the word is to be interpreted as a corrupt
misreading of ‘luve[s] [i]rascés’ (i.e. ‘angry wolves’), the ‘lunatic’ here
once more refers to a ‘madman’ rather than someone suffering from epilepsy.
Thirdly, the abovementioned passage in Mandeville
describing the powers of diamond, appears in a late-fourteenth-century
manuscript with the variant reading les
lunetus (instead of les lunatiques).
Once more, the term lunetus is attested
only in Anglo-Norman: instead of the etymological -ic suffix, it uses -us.
(Christ heals a lunatic boy, Gospel of St. Luke, The
Hague, MMW, 10 B 23, fol. 500r)
Finally,
the term used to refer to the condition of being a ‘lunatic’ is surprisingly rare
in Anglo-Norman. In another (and earlier) variant manuscript of the same
Mandeville passage, the diamond is not said to cure les lunetus / les lunatiques,
but it garit de luneties (i.e. ‘cures
of lunacy’). Clearly lunetie must be
the same word as Latin lunatia
(DMLBS 1660c) and Modern English lunacy. It is,
however, unique to this single Anglo-Norman attestation: it is not found in
Continental French and appears both in Latin and in English only from the mid-
to late-sixteenth century onwards.
A
second, slightly problematic, term is lunaison,
which has a primary meaning of ‘lunation’ or (according to the OED) ‘the time
from one new moon to the next’ as well as ‘the time of full moon’. This is also
the main sense in Anglo-Norman, but in the case of two attestations it may be
possible to interpret the word as ‘lunacy’. In
yet another lapidary (from the second half of the thirteenth century) and once
more describing the powers of Chelidonius, it reads:
“garist ceus ki sunt malades par luneson et les
langerus et les devez” Lapid 152.ii.4
(“it cures those who are ill because of
lunation/lunacy as well as those who languish and the insane”)
It is, however, not clear whether the
word is used here to refer to the condition one suffers (i.e. ‘lunacy’, a
moon-induced madness) or the cause of the disease (i.e. ‘lunation’, the phases
of the moon).
The second occurrence is in Hue de
Rotelande’s Protheselaus, a late
twelfth-century romance:
“En fol parler mult se delite; Alques fu melancolien, Il ne se set celer
pur ren, Ainz dit ço que a buche li vent, Par luneisons issi le tent. Adés fu
ben sa luneison” Proth ANTS 1292
(“He takes great pleasure in foolish talk; He was somewhat melancholic
and could not keep to himself at all: he
immediately expressed the thoughts that lay on his tongue. He was governed by
the phases of the moon, and suddenly his ‘lunacy’ began”)
The word is used twice in the same sentence, albeit
with varying meanings, and, as the text editor confirms, the second time it
seems to refer to the condition of mental disorder under the influence of the
moon rather than the phases of the moon themselves. Still, the example is far
from straightforward.
(GDW)
[1] For further
historical information on this subject, see M.A. Riva, L. Tremolizzo, M. Spicci, C. Ferrarese, G. De Vito,
G.C. Cesana, and V.A. Sironi, V. A. (January 2011). ‘The Disease of the Moon:
The Linguistic and Pathological Evolution of the English Term “Lunatic”’, Journal of the History of the
Neurosciences 20:1 (2011), 65-73.
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