A Guide to Early Medieval Dream Interpretation

(+Latin and Old English worksheets!)

Before Jung there was Artemidorus, before the Dream Dictionary for Dummies, there was the Somniale Danielis. This month we’re dreaming with antique philosophers, patristic authors, and early Medieval monastic copyists.

---

In a mid twentieth-century book on Jungian dream interpretation, the author contrasts Freudian, Adlerian, and Jungian analytical frameworks, noting that, of the three, ‘only [the school of psychological theory] of the late Dr. Carl Gustave Jung…has developed techniques of dream interpretation primarily intended for non-neurotic, normal persons [emphasis mine].”¹ After spending many hours poring over the range of classical, early Christian, and Medieval dream literature, this statement seems typical of our modern and narrower interpretations of normality and neurosis. After all, don’t we need some frenzy to grasp the full range of antique dream states?

Humans have been dreaming for as long as they’ve been sentient, though the function of dreams eludes modern science. As one scholar put it, many neurocognitive theories have “given up the hope of identifying any useful function for dreaming…They cannot provide us with an answer to the question ‘Why do we dream?’”²

If we are willing to abandon the restrictions that positivism places on acceptable explanations, then the heavy-hitters of the classical world could certainly answer this question.

Encountering the gods, the dead, and ourselves.

The introduction to Martin Hammond’s modern translation of Artemidorus’s The Interpretation of Dreams begs to be quoted. In it, Hammond opens with Alexander the Great’s famous dream about a satyr—a dream that Sigmund Freud called “the most beautiful…to survive from antiquity.”³ Months into the prolonged siege of Tyre, Alexander witnessed a satyr playing on his shield. Consulting his court diviner, the dream was interpreted as a symbol of Alexander’s eventual victory: the Greek word for satyr (satyros) closely resembled the word for Tyre (Tyros). The fate of the city was clear.

In antiquity, dreams were not symbols of modern-day wish-fulfillment; rather, they were often regarded as portents indicating some real-world event about to take place. The trick was determining which dreams were legitimately communicated from the gods or the dead, and those that originated from the lower mental faculties.

Diodorus of Sicily’s The Library of History is replete with prophetic dreams, like Sabaco’s rule of Egypt ending after a nocturnal vision and Theseus’s abandonment of Ariadne after Dionysius made a sleep-time appearence.⁴ In De Divinatione, the character of Cicero tells his brother Quintus that oracles appear in dreams and that Antiphon had rules for dream interpretation.⁵ Socrates reportedly predicted his own death after seeing a beautiful woman in a dream who called to him and recited Homeric verses.⁶

Artimedorus provides one of the earliest extant frameworks for dream interpretation, though these would unlikely be adopted by modern dreamers. According to Artimedorus, there are distinctions between what we see in sleep—between the enhypnion which disappear when we wake, like apparitions, and the oneiros which predict our futures.⁷ The mechanisms by which the latter occur are complex, though, ultimately, the mind plays a role in “[foretlling] things that will come to pass…by means of specific natural images.”⁸

Artimedorus’s handbook goes on to explain dream images, much like our modern dream dictionaries. However, it is worthwhile noting how the significance of a dream object differs depending on the individual. Dreaming about a baby being born is auspicious for a poor man, but inauspicious for a rich man: the former will come into some wealth, the latter will lose control over his estate. For athletes this dream is particularly distressing: “babies do not walk or run, and cannot defeat anyone, when they cannot even walk!”⁹

But who is responsible for dreams? In Homeric mythology, the gods take the lion’s share of the role, sometimes appearing to us when we sleep. Our dead ancestors make appearances, too, but in the Iliad and the Odyssey, the dreams are phantasmic, supernatural visions that bring messages. In Hippocratic and Galenic medicine, dreams are crucial diagnostic tools, and were one to consult Lucretius—an influential figure for early Medieval authors—one would certainly see dreams as extensions of who we are: “Pleaders…plead their case and collate laws, generals…contend and engage [in] battle” and horses and dogs dream of winning races and chasing hounds and it is in dreams that “mighty motions accomplish mighty feats,” allowing us to emerge victorious in dreamscapes.¹⁰

Going Medieval

The Bible is replete with dreams and dreamers. Medieval hagiographers described visions that came to saints and sinners. Even Augustine believed that God communicated with his mother through a dream: the Lord’s “ears had heard hear heart.”¹¹ One of the most famous pre-Conquest English dreamers was Cædmon, whose sleep-time unfolding yielded the gift of song.

Early Medieval understandings of dreaming owe much to Christian Neoplatonist writers, like Calcidius and Macrobius. In Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, we are told that there are five dream types, some harking back to Artemidorus and the Homeric tradition. There is the enigmatic dream (oneiros, somnium), the prophetic (horama, visio), the oracular (chrematismos, oraculum), the nightmare (enypnion, insomnium), and the apparition (phantasma, visum).¹² Macrobius dismissed the last two as “not worth interpreting since they have no prophetic significance,” while nightmares were regarded as “deceitful,” as Virgil himself indicated, attributing them to “departed spirits.”¹³

The outcome of dreams were particularly consequential in this scheme. Oracular dreams saw “a parent, or a pious or revered man, or a priest, or even a god” visit the dreamer, but a dream could not be considered prophetic unless it came true.¹⁴ As Allison Penden suggested:

“Macrobius’ concern is to establish the validity and authority of the dream as an articulation of super-terrestrial communication; it is an extension of his famous defence of fabula as a vehicle of philosophic truth. The immortality of the soul, the reward of blessedness in store for the virtuous, man’s place in the divinely ordered universe, were matters too momentous and profound for naked presentation. They required the envelopment of myth and the bidding of a dream.”¹⁵

However, the connection between dreaming and the divinely ordered universe did not prevent Christian authorities from expressing concerns. The co-option of dreams by demonic spirits seemed a very real possibility, leading to various prohibitions. Jesse Keskiaho’s research into early Medieval normative dream sources identified the acts of the Council of Ancyra (ca. 314) as specifically prescribing penance for anyone observing dreams within a divinatory context, placing these individuals alongside augurs and other diviners who plied their craft “in the manner of the pagans.”¹⁶ As Keskiaho goes on to show, Christian attitudes towards dreaming were carefully negotiated. Not unlike Macrobious’s note that some dreams are false, the key was understanding which were true. After all, who could really argue with a nocturnal visitation from St. Benedict directing abbots and priors in the building of a new church?¹⁷

The Somniale Danielis

By now, thumbing our well-worn digital copies of Isidore’s Etymologiae, we find the etymological origins of various biblical names, including that of Daniel, who features prominently in one genre of Medieval dream literature. Isidore wrote:

“Daniel [means] ‘judgement of God’, either because in his judgment of the elders he delivered a judgment based on divinely inspired consideration when he freed Susanna from destruction by uncovering their falsity, or because, discerning with shrewd intelligence, he disclosed visions and dreams in which the future was revealed by certain details and riddles.”

That a sizable corpus of Medieval dreambooks came to take on the name of this prophet may be no accident. As Isidore noted, it was he who disclosed visions and dreams and revealed aspects of the future.

Among the various sub-genres of early Medieval English prognostic literature one finds alphabetical listings of dream significations. Two of the oldest extant English “dreambooks” may be found in London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius A iii and Cotton MS Titus D xxvi + xxvii. Both these manuscripts date back to the eleventh century and contain eclectic material compilations. Prognostic texts, including dreambooks, are represented alongside computus material, prayers, natural philosophical texts, and even a copy of the Regularis Concordia.

Although scholars have traced dreambooks back several millennia to ancient Mesopotamia,¹⁸ the sources for those appearing in the early Middle Ages may be more difficult to establish. Lorenzo DiTommaso has counted over 150 extant Latin and vernacular copies of the Somniale Danielis, while dream lunaries, sometimes called Lunationes Danielis, survive in nearly 200 manuscripts.¹⁹

In some Somniale Danielis texts, a short prologue precedes the dream material. Although neither MS Tiberius A iii nor MS Titus D xxvi + xxvii contain it, it nevertheless sheds light on how this text may have been regarded by its monastic copyists:

“Incipit Somniale Danielis prophetae, quod vidit in Babilonia in diebus Nabuchodonosor regis. Quando petebatur a principibus civitatis et ab omni populo ut eis somnia quae videbant judicaret, tunc Daniel propheta haec omnia scriptsit, et eis ad legendum tradidit, dicens: ‘Ego sum Daniel propheta, unus de filiis Israel, qui captivi ducti sumus de Hierusalem, civitate sancta. Haec omnia a Deo facta sunt, nihil tamen per memetipsum dixi vel sustuli, sed ea a Domino accepi.” Quicumque legerint, Danielem intellegant.”

“Here begins the Somniale Danielis of the prophet, what he saw in Babylon, in the days of King Nebuchadnezzar. When he was asked by the leaders of the city and from all the people that he might judge for them the dreams which they saw, the prophet Daniel then wrote all this, and handed it down to them for reading, saying: “I am the prophet Daniel, one of the sons of Israel, who were led captive from Jerusalem, in the holy city. All this [that is written in the Somniale Danielis] was made by God; indeed, I have said or taken nothing by myself, but I received them from the Lord.” Whoever shall read this, shall understand Daniel.”²⁰

From this paragraph alone we may speculate the particular import placed on the dream content that follows, handed down, ultimately, by God. Indeed, the seeming “Christianization” of these and other prognostic genres throughout the Middle Ages no doubt went far in terms of negotiating their acceptance within normative Christian practices.

In its various extant forms, the Somniale Danielis organizes its predictive material according to the letters that correspond to the subject of the prediction. The organization of the dream material according to the first letter of the subject has led László-Sándor Chardonnes and others to use the term “Alphabet Dreambook” as an alternative appellation for this type of prognostic genre.²¹ For example, “B”-letter dreams could include beards (barba in Latin, beardas in Old English), wild animals (bestiae, wildedeora), baths (balneum, bæþ), or oxen (boves, oxan). Having dreams about any of these items could signify everything from imminent danger to anxiety to a crooked business dealing.

By contrast, the Luationes Danielis organize predictions about a dream coming true according to the days of the lunar month. Resembling the format of other lunary genres, such as those on bloodletting, illness, or birth, these indicate something about the predictive likelihood of a dream dreamt on a particular day. Dreams may come true within timeframes also noted—regularly phrases like, “infra <insert number> dies” appear—but here echoes of spurious dreams may also be found, particularly when dreams dreamt are described as vanum (vain, empty or untrustworthy). One can imagine utilizing the two Daniel genres in tandem: one to ascertain what the dream could represent and the other to conclude whether or not it may come to pass and when.

The Etymology of Dreaming

It is worthwhile noting the language employed in the dreambook and other sources. In her doctoral dissertation on dreams in Old English literature, Antonina Jane Harbus identified three primary terms for a dream in Old English: swefn, gesihþ and mæting.²²

Mæting almost without exception refers to dreams. The strong feminine noun gesiþ, typically translated as “see” in the ocular sense, can take on the notion of a vision, often divine in nature; it most closely correlates to the Latin term visio and, in the context of the Somniale Danielis, it can appear more often in the third-person singular form the Old English verb gesehen (to see).²³ Swefn, the strong neuter noun for “dream” or “sleep” is the most typical gloss for the Latin somnium. Although Harbus’s study found that all Old English dictionaries offered “sleep” as the primary meaning for swefn, in this month’s worksheets, it may be more appropriate to choose “dream” for any appearance of swefn.²⁴

For those working with Latin, we can see the contextual distinctions that occur between somnium as “sleep” or “dream.” In Alcuin of York’s dialogue, Pippini Regalis et Nobilissimi Iuvenis Disputatio cum Albino Scholastico, when the character of Pippin asks, “Quid est somnus?”, and Alcuin answers, “Mortis imago,” we are more apt to take somnium as “sleep.” Preceding clues contrasting it with vigilia (wakefulness) are also helpful markers. In this month’s text, we have no such contrast and are well-advised to interpret somnium as “dream,” rather than “sleep.”

1. Maria F. Mahoney, The Meaning in Dreams and Dreaming: The Jungian Viewpoint (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel, 1966), p. 9.

2. Antti Revonsuo, “The Reinterpretation of Dreams: An Evolutionary Hypothesis of the Function of Dreaming,” Behavioural and Brain Sciences 23 (2000), pp. 793-1121 (p. 793).

3. Mark Hammond, “Introduction,” in Artemidorus, The Interpretation of Dreams, ed. and trans. by Mark Hammond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), p. xi.

4. Diodorus of Sicily, The Library of History, ed. and trans. by C.H. Oldfather (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939), 1, I.65.1-7, pp. 224-225; 4, V.51.3, pp. 240-241.

5. Cicero, De Divinatione, in Cicero: De Senectute, De Amicitia, De Divinatione, trans. by William Armistead Falconer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923), I.xx.39, p. 269.

6. Cicero, De Divinatione, I.XXV.52, p. 281.

7. Artemidorus, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 5.

8. Artemidorus, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 6.

9. Artemidorus, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 16.

10. Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, ed. and trans. by W.H.D. Rouse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), IV.962-1011, pp. 351-355.

11. St. Augustine, Confessions, trans. by F.J. Steed (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1959 [1943]), III.xi, p. 55.

12. Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, ed. and trans. by William Harris Stahl (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), pp. 87-88.

13. Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, pp. 88-89.

14. Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, p. 89.

15. Allison M. Penden, “Macrobius and Medieval Dream Literature,” Medium Ævum 54.1 (1985), pp. 59-73 (p. 60).

16. Jese Keskiaho, “Paying Attention to Dreams in Early Medieval Normative Sources (400-900): Countering Non-Christian Practices or Negotiating Christian Dreaming?”, Early Medieval Europe 28.1 (2020), pp. 3-25 (p. 7).

17. St. Gregory the Great, Fathers of the Church: Saint Gregory the Great Dialogues, trans. by Odo John Zimmerman (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1959), 39, p. 90.

18. László-Sándor Chardonnes, Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, 900-1100: Study and Texts (Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 294.

19. Lorenzo DiTommaso, “Greek, Latin, and Hebrew Manuscripts of the Somniale Danielis and Luationes Danielis in the Vatican Library,” Manuscripta: A Journal for Manuscript Research 47-48 (2003-2004), pp. 1-43 (p. 2).

20. Quoted in DiTomasso, “Greek, Latin, and Hebrew Manuscripts,” p. 7. (My translation.)

21. Chardonnes, Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, p. 291.

22. Antonina Jane Harbus, Dreams in Old English Literature (Published doctoral thesis, University of Toronto, 1994), p. 36.

23. Harbus, Dreams in Old English Literature, p. 36.

24. Harbus, Dreams in Old English Literature, p. 36.

Download the Worksheets here: