Late Medieval Astrology

The guild book's images were intended to work in conjunction with the manuscript's texts, beginning on fol. 54v, in order to present an explanation of astrological theory and its application to medical practice. Although there is a clear relationship between the texts and images of the guild book, the two are less successfully integrated than in a volume like Sloane MS 1088. Here, written material and visual devices such as lunar and planetary tables and a diagram named the ‘rota celi’ are intermingled, allowing for an explanatory text to be placed directly alongside the visual device to which it refers. The physical separation of the guild book's visual scheme from its texts highlights Egerton 2572's function as a manuscript for display. Nevertheless, the texts either complement the images or supply additional information which would have been core to the Guild's medical activities.

Hilary Carey has persuasively argued that in late medieval England the popular use of astrology spread from an elite class downwards. Whilst for centuries there had been those who looked to the heavens for information, it is suggested that from the reign of Henry VI onwards, astrologers enjoyed increasing patronage from English royalty. From here it entered a middle-class sphere, as demonstrated by references in the Paston letters and the notes of clients recorded in the manuscript of John Crophill. Thus the guild book represents knowledge that had become part of everyday life for many people. Indeed, the content of the German Volkskalendar shows that the widespread popularity of compilations of texts such as those found in Egerton 2572 was not limited to England. As Lauren Kassel has observed, astrology ‘provided a social and cosmological framework in a world where people experienced much anxiety and little medical efficiency’. The York Guild would, therefore, have understood the desirability of demonstrating a grasp of astrological concepts in 1486. Comparison with other manuscripts demonstrates that Egerton 2572 was emblematic of the types of material circulating in 1486. Such knowledge would have been just as relevant in the late sixteenth century when the guild book was revised.

The medieval core of Egerton 2572 was a representation of the understanding of astrology which underpinned the medical activities of the Guild's members. The medieval mind placed the Earth at the centre of the universe.