Royal Holloway, University of London

Graduate Student, History

Thesis Title: The 'Sphere of Life and Death' in England, 1100-1500

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The 'Sphere of Life and Death' is an occult divinatory device - an onomancy - extant in hundreds of English manuscripts from the later Middle Ages. It was used to predict the outcome of an illness by adding up the numbers correlating to the letters of an individual's first name and adding various lunar and planetary data, before dividing the sum to find a remainder which would indicate life or death.

My thesis is structured around the different manuscript contexts that the 'Sphere' is found in - with learned medical texts, with illicit tracts of magic and divination, with other circular diagrams, etc. - and argues that its versatility and usefulness contributed to its survival in so many manuscripts.

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