Simon Forman

Lauren Kassell reveals how the casebooks, diaries and diagrams ofthe late-16th-centuryastrologer Simon Forman, currently the subject of a digital project, provide a uniqueperspective on a period when the study ofthe stars began to embrace modern science.

The Astrologer'sTables

Simon Forman

On a September evening 400 years ago, JeanForman, the wife of the astrologer, Simon,teased him over supper. Could he tellwhich of them would die first, she asked,

mocking his art and his age. He was 58, she 30 yearshis junior. His reply was simple. She would bury himwithin a week. This was a Thursday. On Fridaynothing happened. On Saturday nothing happened.By Wednesday the astrologer's skill was happily inquestion. But on Thursday, as Forman set off by boatfrom J.ambeth to the City - presumably to visitclients, attend to business or see friends - he fell down,shouted 'An impost, an impost' and died.

Some years later Jean told this story to WilliamLilly ( 1602-81 ), then England's most famousastrologer. Lilly had tracked down Forman's widow inpursuit ofthe deceased astrologer's papers and heincluded the story of Forman's death in the account ofhis own life that he wrote in 1668 for his friend EliasAshmole, the great antiquary and founder oftheAshmolean Museum in Oxford. Lilly's autobiographyset out a genealogy of English astrologers culminatingwith himself Lilly praised Forman as 'judicious andfortunate' in horary questions and stressed that [diag-nosing] sickness was his'masterpiece' [meaning hisspecialism [. But he also insinuated that the Eliza-bethan practitioner was an old-fashioned magician, incontrast to himself, whose numerous prognosticationsduring the Civil Wars and Protectorate combinedpolitics and prophecy, improved the astrologicalliteracy of the nation and advanced the art. Forman'sdeath, then, marks not the end of an era whenastrologers thrived, but the beginning of a period of amore systematic and public pursuit ofthe science ofthe stars.

A strology was a serious business. The roots of.Zi-learned astrology lay in ancient texts. In secondcentury Egypt Ptolemy set out the sophisticated math-ematical model ofthe geocentric cosmos thatprevailed until C^opernican cosmology was adopted inthe 16th and 17th centuries. Ptolemy also outlined theprinciples of astrology, the study ofthe influences ofthe stars and planets on the natural world, the fate ofnations and the lives of men and women. In the 12thcentury Latin translations of Arabic astrological booksbegan to circulate in Europe. Astrology was typicallytaught as part ofthe medical curriculum at universi-ties. With the Protestant Reformation theologiansincreasingly complained that astrology was overlydeterministic. This, combined with the rise ofCopernicanism, prompted efforts to reform astrologyin line with empirical observations ofthe motions ofthe stars and their effects on life on earth.

Throughout Renaissance Europe astrologerstaught at universities and practised in royal courts andfor private clients. They published almanacs and prog-nostications, bolstering their incomes and advertisingtheir expertise to potential patrons. Theologians ques-tioned whether astrology was compatible withconcepts of free will and divine providence. Poets andplaywrights used astrological language to conveycorrespondences behveen the human body and the

Right: an engraving ofSimon Forman, from anoriginal c.1590.

Opposite: an astrologicalchart from a 1660 editionof The Celestial Atlas, orthe Harmony of theUniverse originallydevised by NicolausCopernicus (1473-1543).

terrestrial and celestial realms, often expressed interms of an analogy between the microcosm and themacrocosm.

Learned astrology was based on the motions oftheknown 'planets' - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter,Saturn, the sun and the moon - in relation to the 12signs ofthe zodiac. Most astrologers did not look tothe skies. They used an ephemeris, a table of planetarymotions, to calculate the positions ofthe planets.These were plotted on a horoscope, a diagram of theheavens divided into 12 parts, each known as a 'house'and corresponding to one ofthe signs ofthe zodiac.Once the astrologer had drawn a horoscope he couldjudge past or future events from the locations of theplanets within the houses and their relationships (e.g.conjunction, opposition) to one another.

Astrological judgements came in four main types.A 'revolution' was a general prediction, calculatedannually, which forecast the fete ofthe nation in termsof weather, plague, war or famine. A 'nativity' was amap ofthe position ofthe planets at the time of aperson's birth. These were often calculated retrospec-tively, based on the major events, known as 'accidents',in a person's life. A third sort of judgement was knownas an 'election' or 'favourable hour'. This determinedthe best time to do something (embarking on ajourney, getting married, letting blood, making anamulet), usually calculated by assessing the position ofthe stars at a person's birth and projecting theirmotions forward in time. Finally an 'interrogation', or'horary' question, was based on the moment at whicha person asked a question. A 'decumbiture' is a refine-ment of this based on the time that an ill person tookto bed. General prognostications were considerednatural astrology and were in principle intellectuallycredible. Nativities, elections and interrogations wereconsidered judicial. Because they related to the fate ofindividuals, this was the aspect of astrology that

www.historytoday.com September 2011 | HistoryToiiiiy 19

Simon Forman

Above: William Lilly's 1651 prediction of a great fire of London (the twins, Gemini, werethe zodiacal sign associated with the capital). Below: an embroidery of an astrologerprognosticating the birth of a child to Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria, c. 1625.

theologians and natural philosophers debated,Eorman, as Lilly noted, was a master of horaryastrology.

When Eorman died that Thursday in September1611 his study was filled with books and papers.Perhaps a wall-mounted shelf held his workinglibrary, a motley collection of texts ranging frommedieval astronomical and alchemical manuscripts,bound in vellum, inscribed and stained by previousowners, to recent printed works such as a volume byRoger Bacon on the prolongation of life printed inOxford in 1590 and a second-hand copy of the 1567Paris edition of Henricus Cornelius Agrippa's magicalmanual. De occulta philosophia. An ephemeris prob-ably sat on the desk and perhaps also a recent almanacor satirical pamphlet. Heaps of paper, folded intonotebooks, covered in Eorman's scrawl, filled theroom. Some of these contained the dozens of alchem-ical and magical works that Eorman copied, acommon means ot acquiring esoteric or out-of-printtexts in this period. Others contained Eorman'sreading notes, records of his astrological practice andoriginal writings. These included manuals on medi-cine, astrology and geomancy, plague tracts, alchem-ical commonplace books, various musings abouthistorical, prophetic. Biblical and literary themes and aseries of autobiographical works. Pots of brown andred ink, a clock, jais of strong waters and a commis-sioned portrait ot the astrologer in his purple robesfurnished the room. This was the habitat ofthe self-styled astrologer-physician of Lambeth,

Eorman fashioned himself as a modern magus,driven by a passion for learning and chosen by God toovercome adversity and ultimately to acquire knowl-edge of health and disease, life and death and thesecrets of creation. His autobiographical writingschart his early life. He was born in Quidhampton, asmall hamlet on the outskirts of Salisbury, in 1552, Heattended a grammar school in Salisbury and, whileapprenticed to a hosier and grocer, he secretly studiedin the evenings. He made it to Oxford for a year and ahalf as a poor scholar and attended the schoolattached to Magdalen College, His studies, hecomplained, were disrupted by the frequent trips tohunt rabbits and to court women ofthe younggentlemen scholars he served, 1 hrough the 1570s and1580s Forman worked as a teacher and studiedastronomy, medicine and magic. Caught repeatedlywith magical books and antagonistic to the authori-ties, he served a series of prison sentences. He alsobegan to establish himself as a medical practitioner.After an especially unsettled period in the late 1580s,during which he pursued the philosophers' stone invain, was taken captive by pirates, imprisoned by theBishop of Salisbury, accumulatecJ debt and sufteredvenereal disease, he settled in London in 1592 andestablished a thriving astrological practice. At thispoint his autobiographical writings tail off and, toseek more information, we have to refer to his diaries,casebooks and astrological manuals.

Through the 1590s Eorman was consulted morethan 2,000 times a year, mostly on questions about

History7i)

Simon Forman

health. His success attracted the attention of theCollege of Physicians of London, which regulated thepractice of medicine in the capital. In 1599 they finedhim for practising physic without a licence but hecontinued with his work. I hey imprisoned him andhe sought the protection of noble patrons. Theyharried him and he moved out of their reach toLambeth. In 1601 the college complained that Eormanwas the most obnoxious ofthe 'unlearned andunlawful practitioners, lurking in many corners ot theCity' beyond the college's jurisdiction. The antagon-ism continued and Forman's paranoia grew. Heworried that the physicians were trying to murderhim. In 1603, in an effort to establish the legitimacy ofhis credentials as an astrologer-physician, he spent afew months at Jesus (College, (^imbridge and secured adoctorate in physic and astronomy and a licence topractise medicine. Lhe physicians remained unim-pressed and the feud was never resolved.

What made Forman's approach to astrology soappealing to his clients and so opprobrious tolearned physicians? Part of the answer lies in thepolitics of medicine in Elizabethan and earlyJacobean London.

The College of Physicians of London was foundedin 1514 (it received a Royal Charter in 1674). Its

A surgeon and member ofBarber-Surgeons'Company, John Banister,delivers a lecture andperforms a dissection in1581. Forman wasdismissed as a quack bymany affiliated medics.

powers waxed and waned over the coming centuries,depending on support from the C rown and courts. Itissued licences to practise physic, inspected the waresof apothecaries and heard cases of malpractice. Physicwas defined as medicine that concerns the internalworkings ofthe body. It was rooted in the teachings ofGalen, adapted and augmented as it was transmittedthrough the Arab world and into the universities ofmedieval and Renaissance Furope. The four humours- blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile - hadelemental properties (hot, cold, moist, dry) and animhalance resulted in illness. Physicians advised theirclients about how to maintain health through atten-tion to diet, sleep and exercise and prescribed reme-dies to maintain the correct balance or to moderate adisruption. As directed, barber-surgeons performedblood-letting and apothecaries filled prescriptions torsubstances to evacuate the hody through vomits,purges or sweats. Physicians and a minority ofsurgeons learned their art at the universities. Apothe-caries and most surgeons trained through apprentice-ships. These occupations were regulated throughurban guilds.

This was a hierarchy of knowledge and status.Physicians were the medical elite, though they repre-sent only a fraction of the medical practitioners inearly modern London. Between 1580 and 1600 there

www.historytoday.com September 2011 | History Today 21

Simon Fonnan

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Pages from Forman'sbooks of judgements.Left: a table'to knowewhat place ofthe bodyevery plannet dothcause distempratur ordiseases & what partthey rule'.Below: calculations forone of Forman's clients,Martha Shackleton,April 6th, 1601.

were 50 licen.sed physicians in London. During thisperiod the college identified 150 people practisingphysic in the city without due authority, some ofwhom were licensed but most of whom represent alarger body of irregular practitioners, many holdingmultiple occupations. These people ranged fromhighly educated men with medical degrees fromforeign universities to people (mostly men, the occa-sional woman) who were schooled through experi-ence alone. These practitioners came to the atten-tion ofthe college through informants, duringdisputes over contracts or in cases of malpractice.From the perspective ofthe college. Forman was aquack. They examined him and found that he hadlittle Latin learning and his knowledge of astrologywas risible. Other practitioners defied the college'sauthority but Forman alone professed thesupremacy of his astrological methods and attractedsuch an extensive clientele.

Forman actively challenged the established hier-archy in the name of astrology, promoting a model ofmedicine in which a single practitioner managed hispatients' health by reading the stars to judge the causeofthe disease, advising on regimen, performingblood-letting and minor surgery as necessary andprescribing his own distillations and drugs. Not onlydid the astrologer provide a complete service in tunewith the cosmos, he alone could judge whether adisease was natural, demonic or divine. He alonecould fashion amulets and potions charged withoccult forces.

Forman's papers provide a unique perspective on amoment when the definitions of orthodox medicineand the authority to practise it were contested. Theyare also especially rich with details ofthe dynamicsbetween the practitioner and his clients. Because hewas an astrologer and because he needed to recordsystematic information and map the celestial motions.Forman recorded his consultations. His casebooks (amodern term; he called them books of judgements)record thousands of meetings with clients and hismanuals of astrological medicine instruct us in hismethods. Someone consulting him at his house wouldfind him in his study, sitting in front of his desk with alarge notebook open in front of him and a pen in hishand. The astrologer usually wrote down the client'sname, age, whether they appeared in person or hadsent a letter or messenger, the moment at which theconsultation began or the message arrived and thequestion posed. Ninety per cent of Forman's casesrelated to health, usually 'what is my disease' or 'am Ipregnant'. This information provided a heading foreach consultation.

Beneath it Forman drew a horoscope, mapping theposition ofthe stars within the 12 celestial houses atthe moment when the question was asked. To estab-lish these positions Forman consulted an ephemeris.He then read this figure according to a series of rulesabout the positions ofthe planets within the houses.Thousands of stellar configurations were possible andthe compendious rules of astrology were lodged inhandbooks - such as Forman's guides to astrology, theLatin works which were his model, or, later, Lilly's

22 HistoryTodoy | September 2011 www.historytoday.com

Simon Forman

Clirisliui Astrology (1647). Beneath thechart the astrologer recorded his judge-ment about the cause ofthe disease,the identity ofthe thief fidelity ofthe.spouse, fortune ofthe merchant,soldier or cleric and so on. Insome cases he also recordedfurther information stated by theclient, a prediction, remedy,reci)mmended course of actionor payment.

Six volumes of Forman's case-books survive, containingl(),()()0 consultations between1596 and 1601 plus a brief run in1603. Together with the records ofForman's protege, Richard Napier(1559-1634), a clergyman in Bucking-hamshire who had studied the art of astrologywith him in the late 1590s and kept records ofhisastrological practice until his death in 1634, thesentimber among the most extensive sets of survivingrecords of medical practice before 1800. Forman'sclients included courtiers and their mistresses,merchants' wives and their servants, clergymenseeking preferment, actors suffering delusions andordinary people worrying about their health andseeking lost and .stolen property. Forman's casebookscame to embody the two-fold nature ofhis reputation

Frances Howard by IsaacOliver (c.1600), whoallegedly sought Forman'sassistance in plotting themurder of Overbury, whohad opposed her marriageto the Earl of Somerset.

Some considered him an excellent astrologer;others perpetuated his identity as a quack by

focusing on his magical aspirations,alleged demonic allegiances and lurid

details ofhis sexual prowess.Forman's skill was legendary. This

is why, decades after the astrologer'sdeath, Lilly sought papers in whichForman had documented the.secrets ofhis art. Most of these hadpassed to Napier, who in turnbequeathed them to his great-nephew, fi-om whom Ashmole

bought them to add to his collectionof astrological, alchemical, magical

and heraldic books and manuscripts.Ashmole sorted and indexed Forman's

papers and had them bound in the thickcalfskin volumes, which strain the brass

cla.sps, which their readers must gently unfa.sten.When Ashmole died in 1692 he had ensured thatForman's papers were preserved with the rest ofhiscollection of manu.scripts, books and rarities in thenewly founded Ashmolean Museum. The AshmoleCollection, now hou.sed in the Bodleian Library, holdsthe majority of Forman's papers. A few items are in theSloane Collection at the British Library, the oddvolume has strayed further afield and some are lost. (Irecently discovered an unidentified work by Formanin the Ashmole C^ollection itself)

NOVELLO

THE BEST OFRRITI

Simon Forman

rhe dark side of Forman's reputation also persistedthrough the 17th century and beyond. Four years afterhis death Forman was implicated in the trials ofFrances Howard, Countess of Somerset, and herservant Anne Turner for the murder of Sir ThomasOverbury, spawning a rash of gossip and pamphlets.The women had consulted Forman and the courtconsidered evidence that implicated Forman andportrayed him as an agent ofthe devil. This included aletter from Howard to Forman requesting magicalpotions to alienate her then husband, RobertDevereux, 3rd Earl of Essex and attract the love ofJames I's favourite, Robert, Earl of Somerset, whomshe hoped (and did go on) to marry; obscene waximages tor use in love magic; and a book, perhaps acasebook, in which ladies at court had signed theirnames, engaging the services ofthe astrologer andperhaps also entering into a pact with the devil. FromJacobean plays to 19th-century novels. Formanbecame the stock cunning man of old whose work wassinister and foolish in equal measure.

Victorian bibliophilia exposed Forman to furtherscandals. When cataloguing the Ashmole Collection,William Black directed Shakespearean scholars toForman's papers. Notes headed The Bocke of Plaiesrecord rare eyewitness accounts ofthe performancesoi Macbeth, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale at the(lobe in April and May 1611. Forman also saw a playcalled Richard II, though this seems not to be the workby Shakespeare ofthat name. The manuscript wasprinted by John Payne Collier in 1836. Collier's other'discoveries' have been exposed as forgeries and ques-tions about the authenticity ofthe Forman recordwere raised by Shakespeareans in the 1930s. Literaryscholars remain divided about the authenticity of TheBocke of Plaies, though the content and format ofthemanuscript is typical ofthe astrologer's writings in hisfinal years.

The literary scholar James Halliwell prepared anedition of Forman's autobiographical writings in the184()s but the text was deemed too unsavoury forpublication and prurient readers needed to wait morethan a century for the historian A.L. Rowse to useForman's papers to identif)' Emelia Lanier- whoconsulted the astrologer a number of times andbecame friendly with him - as Shakespeare's allegedDark Lady and to christen Forman the ElizabethanPepys. Forman, like Pepys, would have been insignifi-cant to the historical record if he had not exercised anexcessive compulsion to write things down. And, likePepys', Forman's papers are more than source materialfor the historical voyeur. His autobiographical workshave informed social histories of family and youth;references to his medical writings adorn histories ofmedicine; his copies of alchemical and magical textsfeature in histories ofthe occult; his casebooks docu-ment the popularity of astrology in early modernEngland; and, following Rowse, they've been pillaged,especially by literary scholars, for details ofthe lives ofnotable Elizabethans.

Forman's casebooks are legendary for the raregems that reward the scholar who braves page afterpage of Forman's crabbed hand. But to treat these

24 History7i)()y | September 2011 www.historytoday.com

Simon Forman

A mid-17th-centurysatire depicting theastrologer Jack Adams(1625-?), the'CunningMan of ClerkenwellGreen'.

An illustration to a 1620pamphlet, Astrologaster,or, the Figurecaster;Rather the Arraignmentof Artless Astrologers andFortune tellers that cheatmany ignorant peopleunder the pretence ofthings to come.

Lauren Kassell is directorof The Casebooks Project:A Digital Edition of SimonForman and RichardNapier's Medical Records,1596-1634 (www,magicandmedicine,hps,cam,ac,uk),funded by the WellcomeTrust and due to becompleted in 2014,It runs in parallel withGeneration to Reproduction(www,reproduction,group,cam,ac,uk/), whichreassesses the history ofreproduction from antiq-uity to the present day.

records as biographical repositories is to misunder-stand their complexity and to underestimate theirvalue, A project to produce a digital edition ofForman's casebooks is underway. This projectmarries the history of medicine and digital humani-ties. Through searching and sorting facilities it willmake Forman's casebooks accessible as never before.It will also coach its users in the nature of theserecords. Each encounter between the astrologer andhis client was inscribed within an astrologicalcosmology. When the astrologer recorded that awoman had a toothache it is as likely that he knewthis from the position ofthe stars as from thewoman's indication of pain. To begin to disentanglethe astrologer's judgements and the client's experi-ences, we need to learn to understand the science ofthe stars. Astrology, moreover, factored in thedynamic between the astrologer and his clients.Through the language ofthe stars they negotiatedthe causes of disease. This is one ofthe reasons whyForman worked with a pen in hand. Record-keepingwas both practical and performative. Healing was aprocess in which practitioners and patients collabo-rated in constructing narratives about the causes ofdisease, the dispersal of corrupting influences in thebody and the restitution of health. Seldom are suchmedical transactions limited to a circumscribedexchange between a client and his patient. Theedition will trace the links between people, allowingscholars to explore the ways in which matters ofhealth and questions about fortune more generallywere socially constituted.

Perhaps the greatest virtue of Forman's casebooksis not what they can tell us about the experiences ofany individual or his or her family, friends, a,ssociatesand enemies, but the perspective this edition willafford on cohorts ofthe astrologer's clients and thequestions they asked. So far the most striking data toemerge fi^om the edition relates to gender andfertility. Why did 50 per cent more women than menask the astrologer about their health? WTiat does itmean that six per cent of these women asked if theywere pregnant? Is it possible that for people living inLondon 400 years ago Simon Forman provided theservices of a gynaecologist, fertility counsellor andsex therapist?

Lauren Kassell is 5enior Lecturer in the Department of Historyand Philosophy of Science and Fellow of Pembroke College,University of Cambridge,

Further reading Lauren Kassell, Medicine and Magic InElizabethan London: Simon Forman, Astrologer, Alchemist,and Physician (2005, Oxford University Press); MichaelMacDonald, Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healingin 17th-CenturyEngland098}, Cambridge University Press);Charles Nlcholl, The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street (2007,Penguin); Margaret Pelling, Medical Conflicts in Early ModernLondon: Patronage, Physicians, and Irregular Practitioners1550-1640 (2003, Oxford University Press); A,L, Rowse,Simon Forman: Sex and Society in Shakespeare's Age (1974,Weidenfeld & Nicolson); BarbaraTraister, TheNotoriousAstrological Physician of London: Works and Days of SimonForman (2001, University of Chicago Press),

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