The Medieval Moon: A History of Haunting and Blessing, Ayoush Lazikani, Yale University Press, £20

In the mid-13th century, a Japanese noblewoman embarked on the long journey from Kyoto to Kamakura. Abutsu (c. 1225-83) was a troubled woman: a difficult break-up had forced her to take refuge in a nunnery, and she had experienced extreme poverty as a single mother. But then, she wrote, ‘I decided to forget my countless fears, abandon all thought of myself, and go forth abruptly, enticed by the waning Moon.’ Throughout her journey on the road, it remained a companionable presence, marking time and inspiring her to poetry; often, she admitted, ‘I have gazed simply at the Moon all night long.’

Though Abutsu’s connection to the Moon was unusually intense, she was far from alone in her fascination with our nearest astronomical neighbour. Ayoush Lazikani’s richly-documented study The Medieval Moon provides plentiful evidence that our ancestors were both drawn to and unsettled by this celestial object. For some, it was a friendly figure: the Chinese poet Su Tung-P’o (1037-1101) declared that, since he had the Moon, wine and flowers, he needed no-one else to drink with him. 

Others found the Moon a more troubling presence, cold and inconstant. Some thought they could see mysterious creatures on its dappled face: the Korean poet Yun Seon-do (1587-1671) wrote of ‘A jade hare on the Moon [which] pounds out the medicine.’ And, on several terrifying occasions in the late 1170s, the Moon briefly seemed to wriggle and writhe. The monk Gervase of Canterbury, who witnessed this strange phenomenon (which was probably caused by atmospheric turbulence), thought that it looked like ‘a stricken snake… twisted up as though in anxiety’.  

Such fearsome illusions were, fortunately, extremely rare; in contrast, sightings of the man in the Moon were extremely common, though not everyone could see him. The 14th-century mathematician Albert of Saxony complained that, however hard he tried, he saw only black spots. But popular belief in his existence was reinforced by stories of a man who had been exiled to space, either because he had stolen something (maybe cabbages, maybe sheep), or because he had placed thorns on the path to stop people going to church. 

Some people seem to have been disturbed by this unfortunate being and his cold, lonely life; in the Middle English poem ‘The Man in the Moon’ (c. 1300), the speaker laments that ‘The Man hears me not, though I cry out to him.’ Others were intrigued by the possibility that there was life out there, and dreamed of space travel. According to legend, the Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712-56) was sent to the Moon by the goddess Chang’e, while Ludovico Ariosto’s The Frenzy of Orlando  (1532) imagined the knight Astolfo’s journey to the Moon to recover his cousin’s lost wits. There he discovered an impressive civilisation (‘Cities and castles on the Moon abound/ The size of houses with amazement fills’), as well as vast amounts of earthly detritus; in one of these huge piles of broken promises, lovers’ sighs, and tears, he found Orlando’s lost reason, safely stored as liquid in a corked flask. 

Medieval writers also imagined what might happen if Moon-dwellers came to Earth. Some of these fantasies were rather sinister: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1136) included stories of incubus demons who frequently travelled back and forth between Earth and the Moon, when they were not busy having sex with human women. But others, such as The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, are rather moving. In this tenth-century Japanese story, an elderly couple find and raise a tiny child. She grows up to be a beautiful young woman, loving and popular; even the Emperor becomes her friend. But things are not as they seem, for Kaguya-hime is a Moon-princess, and soon her people arrive to rescue her from this ‘filthy place’. Carrying her off in a silk-canopied chariot, they drape her in a feather robe which makes her forget her earthly friends, so that she cannot remember those who grieve for her. 

As this varied selection of stories suggests, Lazikani’s approach is a sweeping one: her aim is to offer a ‘multi-glance’ (that is, ‘a look across many regions, traditions and cultures’), to which end she has identified Moon-literature from across the world, dating from as early as the seventh and as late as the 17th century. In practice, the limitations of the sources mean that much of the world is merely glimpsed; large areas remain entirely dark to us, and only England is fully illuminated. At times, though Lazikani hopes that The Medieval Moon will appeal to those unfamiliar with the medieval world, the book’s structure feels overly academic.

Nevertheless, it offers intriguing comparative insights; we learn, for example, that the Moon was a popular image in many religions, albeit one that was used in contradictory ways. Christian theologians liked to explain that, just as the Moon reflects the light of the Sun, so the Church reflects the light of God. Pope Innocent III came up with an alternative metaphor: for him, the Pope was the Sun, and the Holy Roman Emperor a mere moon reflecting the glorious papal light. Similarly, in Ancrene Wisse (a 13th-century handbook for female recluses) the Moon serves as a symbol of female foolishness – yet it was also associated with the Virgin Mary, who was often shown standing on the full moon, a symbol of the Immaculate Conception.      

Lunar imagery was equally prevalent in non-Christian traditions, with Sufi mystics using the Moon to represent Allah; for the Andalusian poet Ibn ‘Arabī (1165-1240), his divine beloved was ‘majestic, a full Moon risen within me, a Moon that never sets’. Mīrābāī (1500-46), an Indian princess who left her husband to devote herself to Krishna, expressed her devotion to this Hindu god in similarly evocative terms. Life without him would, she claimed, be like ‘a night without the Moon’; in other verses she compared herself to a lotus flower opening in the moonlight, and a bird enraptured at the sign of the Moon.  

As an English lecturer at Oxford University, Lazikani is primarily concerned with lunar imaginings, but she also writes engagingly of the complicated (and surprisingly coherent) scientific ideas which underpinned them. Though medieval people wrongly believed the Moon was a planet, they understood that its light came from the Sun, used astrolabes and volvelles to track its movements, and were able to predict both eclipses and its impact on the tides. They were also intrigued by the ways in which the Moon (as the closest celestial object to the Earth, and thus the one which exercised the strongest influence over it) might have an impact on real human lives.

This influence was clearest in relation to human health, both physical and mental: the mad were widely described as ‘lunatic, that is mad at certain times of the moon’, and some authorities even suggested that a lunar eclipse in March 1345 was to blame for the Black Death. Consequently, physicians consulted lunar tables before preparing drugs or administering treatments; in Baghdad, the physician Bukhtíshū ibn Jibríl (d. 870) would only administer enemas when the Moon was descending. Six centuries later, the English surgeon John of Arderne (a skilful and forward-thinking practitioner, who also advocated for anaesthesia, pain relief, and clean hands) recommended that ‘a surgeon ought not cut or burn any member of a person’s body, nor do phlebotomy, while the Moon is in a sign governing or betokening that member’. 

Indeed, some people arranged their entire lives by the movements of the Moon, with lunar prognostication used to predict everything from the fate of a newborn baby to the best time to plant crops. One Old English text even identified suitable activities for each day of the Moon’s cycle, claiming that the twelfth night was best for sea travel and taking a wife, while on the fifth night a man could steal without getting caught. 

Of course, a cynic might suggest that there was a more straightforward explanation for the thief’s good luck. Medieval literature was full of shenanigans on moonless nights, and of sinners thwarted by an unusually bright moon – as in Dafydd ap Gwilym’s poem Y lleuad (‘The Moon’), in which a man curses the Moon because its bright light thwarts his plan to visit his mistress. Such literary japes remind the modern reader how much things have changed. In our highly electrified world, we are no longer dependent on the Moon as a source of light. And yet, reading this sensitive study, it is hard not to feel a deep sense of connection with those long-ago skygazers. This celestial sphere has lost none of its mystery and allure.