THE MAN OF THE SIGNS NE of the notable things about the Farmer's Almanack is that, from the very beginning, it has ex ON cluded from its pages the picturesque image known as the Man of the Signs, or the Moon's Man. The figure of a man, surrounded by the twelve Signs of the Zodiac, each referred to some part of his body by means of a connecting line or a pointing dagger, is still seen in some almanacs and was once regarded as indispensable. The Anatomy, as it was often called, was a graphic representation, intelligible alike to the educated and to those who could not read, of a vitally important principle in medicine and surgery. Each sign of the zodiac "governed" an organ or part of the body, and, in selecting a day to treat any ailment, or to let blood, it was necessary to know whether the moon was or was not in that sign. In the language of the Kalender of Shepherdes, as published by Pynson in 1506, "a man ought not to make incysyon ne touche with yren yo membre gouerned of any sygne the day that the mone is in it for fere of to grete effusyon of blode that myght happen, ne in lykewyse also when the sonne is in it, for the daunger & peryll that myght ensue." Pynson's Kalender of Shepherdes is something more than its name implies. It is a rather large compendium, affording not only all manner of astronomical and astrological lore, but information on health, religion, physiognomy, and pastoral life. It was originally written in French, and the oldest known edition (though not, apparently, the first) appeared at Paris in 1493. It was im mensely popular. There were no less than twenty other editions in French before 1600, not to speak of those printed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There were two distinct translations into English, and numerous editions. The work, then, was authoritative, and we may accept its precepts without hesitation as giving a correct idea of what men believed. The Kalender of Shepherdes is not content with one illustration of the dominion of the planets. Besides that just mentioned there are two more, another body and a skeleton. The body is intended to exhibit the position of the veins, and is accompanied by directions for bleeding. The skeleton is encircled by the planets, each with a label and a line or ribbon attaching it to the central figure. Thus over the man's head is the Sun, with a label "Sol the heart" and a ribbon attaching the sun to that place in the skeleton where the heart would be. The sun, we are to understand, "hath myght and domynacyon" over the heart. Most almanacs, however, are satisfied with a single figure that of the man surrounded by the zodiacal beasts -the Homo Signorum or "Man of the Signs." Who invented the figure is a question. The conjecture of Halliwell 2 that it originated with Petrus de Dacia, a Danish astronomer and mathematician who was Rector of the University of Paris in 1326, is apparently without foundation; Peter compiled tables for determining the moon's place, but there is no evidence that he was an artist. The Moon's Man is common in manuscript calendars of the fourteenth century, and may be considerably older. There 3 1 See the edition by H. Oskar Sommer, London, 1892, Critical Introduction. 2 Essay on Early Almanacs, in Companion to the British Almanac for 1839, p. 56. 3 See G. Eneström, Swedish Academy, Stockholm, Öfversigt af Förhandlingar, 1885, No. 3, pp. 15 ff., No. 8, pp. 65 ff; 1885, No. 5, pp. 57 ff. is a succinct statement of the doctrine of which the Homo Signorum is merely a pictorial representation in the famous astronomical poem of Manilius, which dates from the beginning of the Christian era, and the Roman poet was of course merely borrowing from earlier Greek sources. Accipe divisas hominis per sidera partes, Arbitrium est, Piscesque pedum sibi iura reposcunt.1 These verses are translated in hexameters which have escaped the notice of all students of English metre, in "A New Almanacke and Prognostication, for the yeare of our Lord God 1628. By Daniel Browne, willer 2 to the Mathematickes, and teacher of Arithmeticke, and Geometry: " Head and face Aries, necke and throate Taurus vpholdeth, Through Ptolemy, the Alexandrian astronomer of the second century after Christ, the doctrine came down to the middle ages and so to modern times. Thus we find 1 Marcus Manilius, Astronomica, ii, 453 ff. 2 Misprint for well-willer. it in Chaucer's treatise on the Astrolabe, which he wrote as an elementary text-book of astronomy for his little son Lowys (or Lewis): "Everich of thise twelve signes hath respect to a certein parcelle of the body of a man, and hath it in governance; as Aries hath thyn heved, and Taurus thy nekke and thy throte, Gemini thyn armholes and thyn armes, and so forth."1 Chaucer says nothing of the Anatomy, the Man of the Signs, but it was well known in his day, and it is not unlikely that he would have described it fully if he had not left his book unfinished. As time went on, the theory of a close relation between man's body and the signs of the zodiac fell into disrepute, and the Anatomy became a laughing stock. In 1609 Thomas Dekker, the dramatist and pamphleteer, published a burlesque called The Ravens Almanacke, to which, according to custom, he prefixed the figure of the Homo Signorum, with the usual title "The Dominion of the Moone in Mans body." This is his humorous comment: "At the beginning of euerie Almanacke, it is the fashion to haue the body of a man drawne as you see, and not onely baited, but bitten and shot at by wilde beasts and monsters." The image, he says, is called "the Man of the Moone, or the Moones Man, or the Man to whom the Moone is mistris."2 Dekker's jest, oddly enough, was revived by Josh Billings, who can hardly have been aware of its previous vogue, in his comic publication the Old Farmer's Allminax, which appeared for the first time in 1870: SIGHNS OV THE ZODIAK. The undersighned iz an Amerikan brave, in hiz grate tragick akt ov being attaked bi the twelve constellashuns. best man win.) 1 Part i, § 21; Skeat's Oxford Edition, III, 187. -(May the 2 The Non-Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. Grosart, IV, 179–80. Then follows the figure, with an indescribably droll parody on the regular directions for its use: KEY TEW THE ABUV PERFORMANCE. Tew kno exakly whare the sighn iz, multiply the day ov the month bi the sighn, then find a dividend that will go into a divider four times without enny remains, subtrakt this from the sighn, add the fust quoshunt tew the last divider, then multiply the whole ov the man's boddy bi all the sighns, and the result will be jist what yu are looking after. In 1657 Bishop Bramhall makes an ingenious application of the Anatomy in his controversy with Hobbes the philosopher. He is arguing for free will and objects to Hobbes's theory of necessity on the ground that it lowers the dignity of human nature: T. H. maketh him [man] to be in the disposition of the second causes: sometimes as a sword in a man's hand, a mere passive instrument; sometimes like "a top, that is lashed" hither and thither "by boys"; sometimes like "a football," which is kicked hither and thither by every one that comes nigh it. Surely this is not that man that was created by God after His own image, to be the governor of the world, and lord and master of the creatures. This is some man that he hath borrowed out of the beginning of an almanac, who is placed immovable in the midst of the twelve signs, as so many second causes. If he offer to stir, Aries is over his head ready to push him, and Taurus to gore him in the neck, and Leo to tear out his heart, and Sagittarius to shoot an arrow in his thighs.1 The almanac-makers of the seventeenth century were sorely perplexed about the "misshaped anatomy," as the 1 Castigations of Mr. Hobbes his last Animadversions, Works, Oxford, 1844, IV, 417. |