Defining the Sortes Sanctorum

Gibbon, Du Cange, and Early Christian Lot Divination

Bibliographic Data

ID23150617
AuthorsWilliam E Klingshirn (corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume10
Issue1
Pages77-130
Publication date2002-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of early Christian studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1067-6341 • E-ISSN: 1086-3184
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/earl.2002.0011
OpenAlexW1996549266
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited9

First mentioned in a fifth-century Gallic church council, the term sortes sanctorum ("lots of the saints") recurs throughout the Latin middle ages. Following Charles Du Cange's Glossarium . . . Latinitatis (1678), scholars have usually defined it either as a synonym for divinatory consultation of the Bible (sortes biblicae) or as a blanket label for all early Christian lot divination. This article argues instead that Sortes Sanctorum was the title of a divinatory text found in numerous manuscripts (incipit: "Post solem surgunt stellae"), which also appears under the title Sortes Apostolorum. The original setting of this text, its subsequent history and condemnation, and changing interpretations of its titles are then traced from the end of antiquity to the present, with special attention to Edward Gibbon's transmission of Du Cange's definition. Among other consequences, the rejection of this definition removes most of the evidence for the early church's condemnation of the sortes biblicae.

Art · Art history · Chapel · Divination · Humanities · Literature · Classics · Historical and Literary Studies · History · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

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