JISCMail - MEDIEVAL-RELIGION Archives

On Wed, Sep 11, 2019 at 8:29 PM Otfried Lieberknecht < [log in to unmask]> wrote:

medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear Roberto,
Thank you very much for your interesting comments! And in particular for pointing me to Chaucer’s ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale’ (ca. 1390): you are right, this is clearly a medieval case of ‘chiding Friday’ as a day of particular misfortune, attributing it to the goddess Venus and evidencing it with the death of Richard Lionheart (which I take to have occurred on a Tuesday). Two more pieces of medieval evidence (La Grande Chronique de Saint Denis, ed. Paulin Paris, Les Grandes Chroniques de France, t. V, Paris 1837, p. 378: in 1339, the French king is asked by his grand seigneurs to postpone a battle for four reasons, “la premiere si estoit car il estoit vendredi”; and a prohibition of duels and ordeals on Fridays in the Ancienne Coutume de Normandie, where I have not yet been able to trace it) are mentioned by Berthelot’s Grande Encyclopédie quoted below.
Your piece from Notes & Queries in 1873 is interesting too, but not an early piece of evidence for the connection we are interested in. Your comments have prompted me to do a bit more research especially on French materials which I seem to have neglected in the past.
The co-presence of both beliefs (of the number of 13 at dinner, and of Friday as portents of misfortune) can be found found as early as 1732 in Louis de Boissy’s comedy ‘La Critique’, performed on 9 February at the Théatre Italien and printed in the same year by Pierre Prault: in the first scenes serving as a prologue, Clitandre (figuring the author) explains to have rushed away from a diner because there had been 13 at table being served 13 plates: “Ajoûtez qu’aujourd’hui c’est le treize du mois”, his interlocutor Damon observes, transferring the fatality of the number of guests to the date of the day. Later on, Clitandre receives a letter informing him that he has lost a process on a Friday (perhaps on the same day as the dinner of 13, but this connection is not clear), and he cries out: “Du malheur qui m’arrive, ah! jes suis peu surpris, / Rien ne me réüssit jamais les Vendredis”. About a hundred years later, the coincidence of both portents, i.e. a portentous diner of 13 taking place on a portentous Friday (but not on a Friday the 13th!), is the general setting of ‘Treize à table’, a comédie-vaudeville en un acte written by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and a certain Lenglier, performed on 14 September 1840 ath the Théâtre du Palais-Royal and printed by Victorine de Lacombe without a date (but probably in the same year).
In the 19th century, both beliefs are frequently mentioned together and in this case often explained to have a common religious background in the passion of Christ: the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday was a supper of 13 persons one of which was doomed to die, and Holy Friday was the day on which he actually died. Jacques Barthélemy Salgues, Des erreurs et préjugés répandus dans la société, Paris: F. Buisson, 1810, pp. 416-421 (‘Du vendredi, du nombre XIII, et de quelques autres bagatelles’, published in similar form also in Le Journal des Dames et des Modes, XIVe année, n° 44, 10 August 1810, pp. 350-352 ), explains the fear of “treize à table” and the fear of Friday as a “mauvais jour” in this way. Charles Nodier, 'M. de La Mettrie, ou les superstitions', in: Revue de Paris, seconde édition, 3e année, tome 7e, Bruxelles: N. Dumont, 1831, pp. 227-251, ascribes to La Mettrie (1709-1751) the persuasion to avoid enterprises on Fridays as an act of compassion with the passion of Christ (p. 236s.), and similarly an “antipathie pour le nombre treize”, founded in this case not only on religious but also and especially on on probabilistic evaluations of this number (p. 238s.). And the French equivalent of Notes and Queries, L’Intermédiaire des chercheurs et curieux, in 1875 includes two answers of this kind to a query about the origins of 13 as an unlucky number, see n° 174, c. 472 (“Cette assimilation du nombre treize e du vendredi semble confirmer qu’il y a là un souvenir de la Passion”), and n° 181, c. 688 (calling this derivation of both ideas an “opinion généralment reçue”).
It can be presumed that associations of this kind have led to the opinion that Friday 13th was a particularly troublesome date, an idea for which I can now present three new pieces of evidence. The earliest one, 60 years earlier than Lawson’s novel ‘Friday the 13th', is Gustave Albitte-Lubize, Les Miséres d’un timbalier, vaudeville en un acte (Théâtre du Palais-Royal, 11 July 1836), printed with separate pagination in Le Magazin Théâtral, 3e année, tome 3e, Paris: Marchant, 1836. At the end of this piece, Léonard, the protagonist whose life has taken an unexpected lucky turn, points out that his life may nevertheless appear to have been doomed from the beginning because it was “un treize, un vendredi” when he was left as a foundling in front of Notre Dame:
“Je crains que mon sort en ces lieux / Désormais n’exite l’envie; / Mais je crois que ma biographie / Fera taire les envieux. / Sans médécin ni sage-femme, / Ce fut un treize, un vendredi, / Que, sous le parvis de Notre-Dame, / Je fus laissé fort peu garni.”
Three years later, in 1839, Théophile d’Avannes in his collection of letters ‘Esquisses sur Navarre’ includes a letter dated 13 April 1838 where he not only mentions together in one sentence the superstious belief in “l’influence néfaste du nombre treize” and the “terreurs que le vendredi fait naître”, as superstitions not really shared by his correspondent Mme la Comtesse de ***, but also mockingly points out his letter to be “écrite un vendredi, 13 du mois, ... la treizième de mon ouvrage” (p. 177). And the 31st and ultimate volume of André Berthelot’s Grande Encyclopédie, published without a date not before 1903 and not after 1904, in its article “Vendredi” not only explains the fear of Friday as an unlucky day as a “superstition ... sans doute en souvenir de la Passion”, but also mentions “vendredi treize” as held to be a day “à double titre ... à redouter” (p. 799b):
“Si le vendredi, par surcroît, tombe un treize du mois – le nombre treize étant si redouté que, dans le numérotage de plusieurs de nos rues, le treize a été omis – ce vendredi treize passe à double titre pour un jour à redouter.”
Kind regards, O.
On 11 September 2019 at 09:04 Roberto Labanti < [log in to unmask]> wrote:

medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear Otfried, dear Tom, dear all

On Wed, Sep 11, 2019 at 12:17 AM Otfried Lieberknecht <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

My interest in this subject was raised in 2007, when I still edited articles of the German Wikipedia and decided to clean up the historical information of the article “Schwarzer Freitag” because somebody had tried to introduce there the widely popular ‘Templar’ theory brought up also on our list by Richard Legault.
For my part, instead, the interest for unlucky numbers was raised in 2004, on Italian Usenet newsgroup it.cultura.classica, when there was a discussion on the VIXI theory about the unlucky 17 in Italy. A couple of years ago I summarized what I had reconstructed in the following years in this article (alas in Italian), for _Query online_:

https://www.queryonline.it/2017/11/17/17-la-disgrazia/

I thought, sooner or later, to take care of Friday and Friday 13th too. So very well this discussion :) Below, only a few marginalia on Otfried's comments:
I am not aware of medieval evidence for the notion of Friday, even if not yet called ‘black’, as an unlucky day.
British folklorist Steve Roud, in his _The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland_ (2003), which adopts an historical approach, sv _Friday: unlucky_ pointed out that "There is little doubt that this belief [i.e. of unlucky Friday] has simple Christian roots. The medieval Catholic church promoted Friday across Europe as a day of penance and abstinence in commemoration of Christ’s death on the day. [...]. The unluckiness of Fridays is well documented since the late fourteenth century, when Chaucer wrote ‘And on a Friday fell all this mischance’ in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale (c.1390). For its part, Snopes adds that "but references to Friday as a day connected with ill luck generally start to show up in Western literature around the mid-17th century" [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/friday-the-13th/]
The understanding of thirteen as an unlucky number may be of earlier, late medieval or early modern origins, possibly derived from the number of the participants of the last supper on Holy Thursday, but the fusion of both ideas into the notion of “Friday the 13th” as an unlucky day is not attested before the 20th century: the earliest known witness is the American stock investor Thomas W. Lawson with his novel “Friday the 13th”, published first from december 1906 on as a serial novel in five subsequent numbers of the news bulletin “Everybody’s Business” (a bulletin distributed only to subscribers) and reprinted then as a book by Doubleday, Page & Comapny at New York in 1907.
Once again Roud, sv _Friday 13th_: ""[...] It is quite certain that the fear of Friday 13th is a combination of the pre-existing thirteen at table and unlucky Friday, and that this hybrid belief was created in late Victorian times. The first concrete reference to Friday 13th is from 1913:

I have met a ‘coach’ of fine mental capacities, which had been carefully cultivated, who dreaded the evil luck of Friday the 13th.
Unlocated N&Q (1913)

But what may be a point in the development of Friday 13th is provided by a piece from Notes & Queries in 1873:

Thirteen at Dinner: I apprehend that there is no doubt that this notion has reference to the Last Supper, at which thirteen were present. Some, I believe, have carried it to the extent of disliking that number at all times; but the commoner form limits it to Friday. Not that there is any ground of fact for this, for the Last Supper was on the fifth, not the sixth, day of the week. Sailors are held somewhat superstitious and I know an eminent naval officer who, though I do not know that he acted on it earlier in his life, actually would walk out of the room when the conjunction happened on a Friday, after the death of his wife and daughter, both of which events were preceded by the said conjunction.
Unlocated N&Q (1873)

It is not quite clear which particular ‘conjunction’ this writer means, but it seems to be thirteen at table and Friday rather than the date. It does show, however, that Fridays and thirteens were beginning to be connected in the 1870s.
The idea that Friday 13th is an ancient superstition is so ingrained that the assertion that it is no older than Victorian times is frequently met with disbelief, even anger, but the evidence is overwhelming. [...]"

Actually, I have at leaast one American example of the last decade of XIX century which could be another point of development, but it doesnt't change what has been described by Roud in his dictionary and by Otfried here.

Best,
Roberto

********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: subscribe medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: unsubscribe medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/medieval-religion

Dr. Otfried Lieberknecht
D-48157 Münster
Dorbaumstr. 86
Tel. +49 (0) 1573 79 79 329
[log in to unmask]
http://www.lieberknecht.de
********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: subscribe medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: unsubscribe medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/medieval-religion