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The De tonitruis (or De tonitruis libellus ad Herefridum) attributed to Bede is a short text containing a prologue and four chapters dealing with the meaning of thunder heard (I) in each of the four cardinal directions, (II) in each of the twelve months of the year, (III) on each of the seven days of the week, and (IV) at certain hours of the day and of the night. The text was first published among Bede's works by Noviomagus in Cologne in 1537 and was subsequently reprinted in all editions of the complete works of Bede, including Migne's Patrología Latina.' Charles W. Jones, who was the first to discuss the De tonitruis in detail,2 convincingly dismissed the attribution to Bede and identified what he thought to be the only extant MS (and also the exemplar used by Noviomagus): Cologne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesanund Dombibliothek, 102, fols. 49r-52v, copied in Cologne in the first half of the eleventh century.3
In the prologue, the author says that he translated the tract into Latin at the request of his master, a certain "father Herenfridus" (pater Herenfridus). Jones proposed to identify this Herenfridus with Herefridus, the bishop of Auxerre who died in 909 and who is known to have received letters from students in reply to his questions. While the connection between Herefridus of Auxerre and our text must remain conjectural, the Cologne MS guarantees that the translation existed by the first half of the eleventh century. This fact alone is remarkable, for it makes the De tonitruis one of the earliest medieval Latin texts - and perhaps the earliest - openly and entirely devoted to divination, a subject that had been, throughout the early Middle Ages, repeatedly condemned by ecclesiastical authorities as part of the magical arts.4 The author was fully aware of the danger of dealing with such sulfurous matter, as he makes plain in the prologue, where he denounces in advance his detractors and other "envious people" who would allege that he was inspired in his task by a "demonic spirit" or by a "wicked investigation of the magical art."
Up to now, our knowledge of the De tonitruis has been based solely upon the printed version and the Cologne MS. However, both these copies are truncated. Chapter...