Anglo-Norman words

Do you ever wish you had a way to see into the future, to see how events might play out? The editors at the AND would certainly love to have this ability! As evidenced by a numerous medieval writings, the desire to predict or foretell the future, or predire in Anglo-Norman, has been a longstanding wish of many. Two of the most recent additions to the Dictionary library are Tony Hunt’s Writing the Future: Prognostics Text of Medieval England ( Textes littéraires du Moyen Âge 24, Paris, 2013 ) and Stefano Rapisarda ’s Manuali medievali di chiromanzia ( Biblioteca Medievale 95, Rome, 2005 ). Both of these books contain editions of Anglo-Norman texts which could be used to tell the future – texts to interpret the lines on hands, the meaning of dreams, the zodiac, the moon, the stars... [1] Palmistry, BL Additional 11639, f. 115 Lunarie , a term attested in another prognostic text edited by T. Hunt [2] , refers to a ‘lunary’, a text that provides a collection of predictions...

Prophecies and divinations were very much a part of the medieval spiritual landscape and the Christmas miracle, and the coming of Christ the Messiah, was one of the most important events in Christian theology foretold in several passages of the Old Testament. [1] Prophecy, however, even if considered as the only legitimate channel for predicting the future as decreed by the Church, was not the only means for foretelling things to come. This is reflected in the variety of Anglo-Norman vocabulary we have for describing not only the acts of divination, e.g. devination , geomancie , garmenterie , but the practitioners themselves, such as devineur and nigromancien , using various and often, to the modern eye, dubious methods to predict the future. But whereas the headwords such as prophete , devineur and nigromancien come with a string of related words in the AND , some of which are still in use today in modern English and French [2] , albeit in different form, fitonesse stands out as...