Medieval Debates on Foreknowledge: Future Contingents, Prophecy, and Divination

This volume offers a comprehensive examination of medieval conceptions of foreknowledge—understood both as divine prescience and as the human capacity to anticipate future events—across a range of intellectual traditions. It investigates key themes such as future contingents, prophetic discourse (both divinely inspired and natural), divinatory dreams, eschatology, scientific prognostication (in astrology and medicine), and conjectural disciplines such as geomancy, physiognomy, meteorology, and magic. Through historical reconstructions and doctrinal analyses, the contributions illuminate the theoretical frameworks and distinctive positions advanced by medieval authors within diverse cultural and scholarly contexts. Building on an extensive body of prior research, the volume documents the multiplicity of medieval strategies for engaging with the future, thereby challenging the historiographical assumption that the notion of an open and indeterminate future emerged only in the Modern period.