Note 2782 — Chapter XXIX · LATIN ASTROLOGY AND DIVINATION: ESPECIALLY IN THE NINTH, TENTH, AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES

Bateson, Medieval England, 1904, p. 72; I have in the main followed the fuller account in DNB “Gerard,” from which the previous quotation is taken. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, III, 118 (ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, RS, vol. 52, 1870) does not say definitely that the book found under Gerard’s pillow was Firmicus. Also he says nothing of boys stoning the bier or of Gerard’s enemies interpreting his death as a divine judgment, and in his autograph copy of the Gesta Pontificum he afterwards erased the statements that rumor accused Gerard of many crimes and lusts, and that he was said to practice sorcery because he read Julius Firmicus on the sly before the midday hours, and that people say that a book of curious arts was found beneath his pillow when he died. This, the late medieval chroniclers say, was Firmicus: see Ranulf Higden, ed. Lumby, VII, 420, and Knyghton, ed. Twysden, X, SS., 2375.