Holland's Influence on English Language and Literature

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Chapter XV On Prognostications or Prophetic Almanacs

During the last part of the fifteenth, and the whole sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the literature of Prognostications or prophetic almanacs was quite prominent and popular. They form one of the superstitious extravagances and abuses which accompanied the great religious movement of the Reformation, but which had their origin more in the revival of the heathen traditions of ancient history, which was fostered by the humanistic movement of the Renaissance. Martin Luther brought these astronomic predictions to ridicule in his ‘Table-talk’; King Henry III of France prohibited, in 1579, the making of political predictions in almanacs; in England satires were written against them, for instance, one in 1544 entitled ‘A Mery Prognostication’ written in ridicule of those false prognostications against which Henry the Eighth considered it necessary or advisable to level a proclamation. Another satire of the same kind from the year 1623 has been republished by James O. Halliwell, London, 1860. The first almanac printed in England is from the year 1497, being the Calender of Shepardis. But before this time, and also in later years, they were introduced in England from the continent, and especially from the Netherlands. In the year 1491, Gaspar Laet, physician at Antwerp, published a prognostication written in Latin, and dedicated to William Schevez, archbishop of St. Andrews. In the year 1515 the same Gaspar Laet published a

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‘Prognostication for the year 1516’ with this addition: ‘this prognostication of Master Jasper Laet of Borchloon, doctour of astrologie, of the year 1516, is translated into English by Nicholas Longwater.’ Several years later, in 1534, a prognostication of the same Flemish author was published in English as ‘Prognostication by Gaspar Late of Antwerpe, calked (calculated) upon the meridyan of the same citie for the year of our Lorde God.’¹

Although this popular literature of the Prognostications is not of such great importance, it shows again, like the story of Caxton, that at that time the civilization and the literature of The Netherlands exerted its influence on England.

1 W. de Hoog, Studien, II, 26.