Elaborate Calendars in Medieval Books of Hours
Claudia Haines : 2018 Archival Scholar, University of Pittsburgh
Through the 2018 Archival Scholars Research Award, I have had the opportunity to do research with the Frick Fine Arts Library’s medieval manuscript facsimile collection, as well as with an authentic book of hours from ca. 1490 held in Special Collections at Hillman Library. Books of hours were hugely popular religious books containing prayers, psalms, hymns, and often elaborate illustrations, and during the Middle Ages they were often counted among people’s most prized possessions. One feature in particular I have noticed in nearly every book of hours I have studied is the calendar.
End of April / beginning of May (Book of hours: for liturgical use in Paris., University of Pittsburgh Special Collections)
In books of hours, calendars served the primary function of highlighting important saint’s days and other church holidays. The saints highlighted were typically those most revered in the region in which the book was used - in the book of hours I’m studying in the most depth, the vast majority of the saints listed are from France, more specifically Paris, which suggests that the book was first made and used there. Particularly important holidays were typically written in red, a practice which has led to the modern phrase “red-letter day.”
February - French saints listed here include Bridget (1st), Theodoire (7th), Iulien (12th), and Lucien (15th) (Book of hours: for liturgical use in Paris., University of Pittsburgh Special Collections)
Because of their elaborate illustration, books of hours were expensive, which meant that their calendars had to be re-used year after year. Consequently, medieval people determined the date using a system that would definitely be unfamiliar to modern people. This system was largely adopted from the Ancient Roman calendrical system, which assigned three fixed points in each month - Kalends (the first day of the month), Ides (the middle of the month), and Nones (the ninth day before the Ides). Each date was counted backwards from the closest of these points.
Each day was also assigned a letter between A and G, as well as a particular Roman Numeral. The letters were used to determine day of the week, and the numbers to determine the phases of the moon. Each new year was assigned a different combination of letters and numbers, which allowed the same calendar to be used in multiple different years. Because of this variation, simply determining the date each day required a lot of work on the part of the medieval reader!
Page from a Book of Hours: Calendar, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Artstor Database
As I mentioned, the calendars in books of hours were typically accompanied by beautiful illustrations. Certain imagery was common in calendars - each month was accompanied by a picture of the zodiac sign relevant to that month, as well as a depiction of the work or activity that people would have done most frequently during that time of year. In this image, taken from the February section of the calendar in the French book of hours I’ve been studying, the illustrator included images of two people warming their feet by a fire, as well as the zodiac sign Pisces.
Left to right: Grape-stomping (Sept.), Pisces (Feb.), Harvesting (July), Scorpio (Oct.) (Book of hours: for liturgical use in Paris., University of Pittsburgh Special Collections)
Given these features and images, the books of hours that have survived from the Middle Ages have the potential to tell modern scholars a great deal about the motivations, interests, and lives of their owners. You can learn more about medieval calendars here, here, and here. Â
Explore the digitized version of the book of hours I’ve been studying this semester here
http://www.medievalbooksofhours.com/tutorial/book-3/page-5
http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/whyread/calendar2.htm
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/medieval-world/medieval-europe/v/medieval-calendar
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