2024 will have war, floods and sore throats, medieval guide predicts

Be prepared for a rather bad 2024, as a medieval guide for predicting the year suggests that people will have to deal with illnesses and a lack of food.

The Zibaldone da Canal was written sometime during the 14th century by a Venetian merchant. It is a notebook containing all sorts of subjects, including the best Mediterranean ports to do business in, mathematical practice questions, and proverbs he thought were good to remember.

The writer includes one section – ‘Here begin the events from one year to another, and how they may be foretold’ – which explains what the year will be like depending on which day of the week January 1st falls under. Here is the prediction when it happens on a Monday:

If the first of January comes on a Monday, the winter will be ordinary, and the spring and summer will be temperate, and there will be a great flood, and great illness, and there will be little honey and wine and grain, and there will be great cold and ice and there will be a great mortality from iron, and many people will die of sore throats.

Although the prediction is short, it reveals much about weather, food and threats to life, all of which would be of concern to a medieval person. The phrase “mortality from iron” may be a reference to war, the iron representing the swords and arrows that would cause much suffering.

This is one of the more gloomy predictions from this guide, but none of the years get particularly positive forecasts. Here is how 2023 was supposed to unfold since it started on a Sunday:

If the first of January comes on a Sunday, the winter will be warm, and the spring will be damp, and the summer and autumn will be windy. There will be an abundance of sheep, and honey, and little wine, and few beans. Many young people will die, and there will be many thefts, and any news will be of princes and of kings.

Here is how the Zibaldone da Canal predicts other years:

If the first of January comes on a Tuesday, the winter will be long, and spring and summer damp, and there will be much rain, and much snow, and the autumn will be dry, and there will be little grain, and there will be mortality among pigs and sheep, and mortality of women, and many ships will be lost, and there will be an abundance of honey, and a scarcity of flax, and there will be a great plague, and much fruit, and much oil, and there will be great disturbances among the Romans.

If the first of January comes on a Wednesday, there will be little grain, and an abundance of wine and of honey, and the winter will be warm, and spring will be damp, and the autumn will be temperate. There will be an abundance of oil and everything, and there will be dysentery and great mortality of people, and in various places there will be great famine, and much news to tell.

If the first of January comes on a Thursday, grain will be cheap, and flax and meat will be scarce. There will be many apples, and little honey. The winter will be temperate, and the spring will be windy, and the autumn, good. There will be mortality among pigs, and many eggs, and much oil and little beans, and much wine.

 If the first of January comes on a Friday, the winter will be temperate, and the summer and autumn, dry. Grain will be cheap. There will be eye diseases, and many infants will die, and there will be movement of knights, and there will be much oil in some places.

If the first of January comes on a comes on a Saturday, the winter will be windy, and the spring long, and the summer will be unpleasant and stormy, and the autumn, dry. There will be little grain, and much illness from tertian fever, and mortality among old people, and abundance of fennel and wine, and great tribulations for Christians.

You can find read the entire notebook in Merchant Culture in Fourteenth-Century Venice: The Zibaldone da Canal, edited and translated by John Dotson (Birmingham: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1994)