A Newly Identified Copy of a Prognostication by John of Legnano

Abstract

At some time between 1375 and 1378 the Bologna jurist John of Legnano composed a judgement on the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in October 1365. One of a number of contemporary authors offering a horoscope and interpretation of this celestial event, Legnano was credited by later fourteenth- and fifteenth-century observers with correctly predicting the outbreak of the Great Schism by means of his chart. Until now, scholars have been aware of two manuscript copies of Legnano's conjunction treatise: a Latin version now in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS lat. 2599; and an Italian translation in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale MS II, IV.313.The present paper identifies and publishes a third, partial copy, in a manuscript compilation in British Library MS Arundel 88.1 briefly survey the manuscript context of these three redactions in order to demonstrate the various ways in which Legnano's text could be read in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Most likely composed just prior to the outbreak of the Great Schism, his prognostication blends the astrological, eschatological and political interests which obsessed the noted law professor even before the circumstances of the Schism gave them increased urgency. A staunch defender of papal over imperial rights, Legnano avidly followed the vicissitudes of politics in the empire as well as in northern Italy; both his astrological analysis and the prophetic texts he quotes in his judgement focus on the fates of the empire, of various Italian cities and of the papacy. The British Library version of Legnano's text helps to reveal an evolving reception of this work and to demonstrate that, while the treatise certainly could be read for clues as to the church's fate during the Schism years, later readers were much more interested in Legnano's political predictions.