Blue Glass Backing with a Silver Finish

You may have noticed that Veronica’s Veil is up to 75 Fans on the Facebook Page! So to say thanks and to help bring more people into the circle of fans, we’re giving away the Wings pendant to one lucky fan when we reach 100 Fans on Facebook!

How does it work? Well, when we reach 100 Facebook fans, the giveaway ends and the winner will be chosen via Random Number Generator. Entry into the contest is easy — and fun! — and is detailed below.

How easy is it to win? you can get as many as into the drawing by doing one of the following; you can end up with a total of 13 entries into the contest!

× Leave a comment on this blog telling us what your favorite Veronica’s Veil product is for 1 entry.

× Are you a fan of Veronica’s Veil on Facebook? That’s good for 1 entry.

× Update your Facebook status to something about Veronica’s Veil or the giveaway, and leave a comment here for 1 entry.

× Tweet about Veronica’s Veil! You can create a unique tweet, or you can use the one we made: “Win a #handmade pendant from @VeronicasVeil in the Facebook fan #giveaway! http://bit.ly/dmXqZk” Copy/Paste your tweet here in the comments for 1 entry.

× Got a blog? If you write a blog entry about Veronica’s Veil, one of the products, or about the giveaway, leave a link here in the comments for 2 entries.

× Alternatively, if you want to post the Veronica’s Veil button on your website or blog, you can get the code on the sidebar. Leave the link in the comments for 2 entries.

× Getting ready to purchase something from Veronica’s Veil? If you buy between now and when we reach 100 Fans, leave a comment and let us know what you bought for 5 entries.

Remember, you have to be a fan on the Facebook page! It’s how we’ll be contacting the winner. =D

This contest is on-going until Veronica’s Veil reaches 100 fans on the Facebook page! If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

We know. That’s why you can now follow Veronica’s Veil on Twitter: @VeronicasVeil! There’s going to be some exciting stuff going on here, so keep your eyes peeled!

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask! Also, any thoughts on the new navigation? Love it, hate it, have a suggestion? It’s what the comments were made for! =D

“Medieval time was Roman time. It followed the reformed but still imperfect system instituted by Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.) By the thirteenth century, it was noticeably out of sync with reality: by the late Middle Ages, full moons were not appearing until ten days after the Calendars said they were supposed to. Easter was moving into summer. Pope Gregory XIII (papacy, 1572-85) reformed the Julian
calendar and, adding ten days (October 4in 1582 was followed by October 15)and other fine tunings, instituted in 1583 the Gregorian calendar we use today. And this is why, if I run the calendar in my computer backward, it stops in that year”.

The following is a news article from the Leavenworth Times for the 15th of June 2010. It talks a bit about my work.

Read about this at Carnegie Arts Center News

With each month there was usually a picture of a domestic scene that showed some kind of work usually performed during that particular month. For example, on the pages for September you might find people pressing grapes for wine making, or in November feeding acorns to the hogs. In many cases you will also see a duo of small vignettes, one of which will be the seasonal task and the other picture is of the zodiac sign for that month.

Going back to part II, I had referred to the repeating letters A through G as the Dominical Letters. These Letters would help one to find all the Sundays throughout the year and consequently all the days, but as noted before, every year the Sunday letter would move backwards and on leap years it would move twice, the second time being on the 25th of February. To find the Dominical Letter for any year from 1 to 1582 take the year and add a quarter to itself (ignore the remainder); divide the sum by seven; subtract the remainder by three or, if that produces zero or a negative number, subtract from ten. The resulting number corresponds to the Dominical Letter (1=A, 2=B, 3=C, etc.) Here is an example for the year 1534.

1534 + (1534 / 4) = 1534 + 383 =1917
1917 / 7 = 273, remainder 6
10 – 6 = 4
4 = Dominical Letter D
All Sundays for 1534 will fall on the Letter D.

I also referred to some random looking numbers off to the far left on the picture below in part II as the Golden Numbers which were used to find the appearances of the new moons and counting ahead fourteen days the full moons throughout the year. To find the Golden Number take the year and add one; divide by nineteen; the remainder is the Golden Number (if the remainder is zero then the Golden Number is nineteen). Here is an example for the the year 1534.

1534 + 1 = 1535
1535 / 19 = 80, remainder 15
xv = Golden Number for the year 1534.

Reference: Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art, by Roger S. Wieck.

From Christus Rex

To start with we are going to look at the second column from the left.  This column begins with the letter ‘A,’ goes through to ‘G,’ and then continues to repeat itself.  These are the Dominical Letters, being seven letters, they help one to find all the Sundays and of course the rest of the days of the week.  Every year, the letter for Sunday (and consequently the rest of the days) would move backwards.  On leap years the letter would change twice, the first being on the first of January, and the second time being on the 25th of February.

The two columns to the right of the Dominical Letters are actually read together.  These two columns are a holdover from the ancient Roman calendrical system.  In this system there were only three fixed days in each month.  The first day of the month was kalends (which is where we get our word calendar), then Nones which fell on the fifth or seventh day of each month, and last was the Ides which fell on the thirteenth or fifteenth day of each month.  All the days that fell in between were counted backwards from these fixed points.  For example, Saint Valentine’s Day would not be the fourteenth of February but the sixteenth day before the kalends of March.  Now in a lot of calendars the days of kalends, nones, and ides would have been written out but the days leading up to them would have been abbreviated, kl for kalends, N for nones and Id for ides.  That being said, in the month of February, Saint Valentine’s Day would be written xvi kl.

Finally, we are going to look at the first column from the left.  In this column we will find the Roman numerals I to XIX but they are not in consecutive order and there are gaps in between a lot of the numbers.  These numbers are called Golden Numbers and they indicate when the new moons would occur and then counting up fourteen days would give the day for the full moons throughout the year.  This was particularly important because this would help determine the day on which Easter would fall, which was the most important holy day of the year to the medieval Christian.

Because this section ran a little longer than I anticipated I am going to write about the illustrations that accompanied each month in Part III.

The medieval calendar has the same use today as it did way back then but today we usually refer to a day by a number and a month for example the 2nd of May or the 14th of August.  With the medieval calendar the days were referred to by a Saint’s feast day or other holy days/events for example if someone were to refer to Christmas, Saint Valentine’s, Saint Patrick’s, or Halloween you would automatically know that person was talking about December 25th, February 14th, March 17th, and October 31st.  In the middle ages most days were listed by a Saint’s feast day which is traditionally the day they were martyred or another way to look at it their “birthday” into heaven.  Other days were of events such as the Visitation of the Archangel Gabriel to Mary (July 2) or Epiphany which is when the three wise men arrived baring gifts for the Christ child (January 6).

Most of the days would have been written in a black or a dark brown but the more important days would have been written in red, hence a red-letter day, or sometimes in blue.  There are some calendars which have a three tiered system.  The most holy days of the year were in burnished gold; the next tier of importance would have been written in red and the least important days in black.  There is an exception to the triple tiered calendar and that is some of the deluxe French manuscripts from the late fourteenth century and early fifteenth century.  These were highly decorated calendars where they would alternate the feast days in red and blue ink and the holy days were in burnished gold.  Then there is the very rare calendar which might alternate those days in gold and silver.

In Part II, I will talk about what some of the pictures and images used in calendars mean and what the three or four columns of what looks to be random letters and numbers to the left of the days listed mean.  Hopefully I can get some pictures up to make it easy to visualize.

Most of the information above and what will be in Part II came from the book Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art by Roger S. Wieck who is Curator of Medieval and Renassance Manuscripts at The Peirpont Morgan Library, New York.   I found the book to be very good and easy to read if you are interested in further reading.

This information and more information on the history of some of the scripts that I will be covering come from a book called MEDIEVAL CALLIGRAPHY: Its History and Technique by Marc Drogin.

I guess the reason I bring this up is  I wrote in my last post many people are intimidated about trying calligraphy.  Like I stated before if you really like the way it looks, try it!  The first day might be a little slow but the second day, third day, fourth day, it will get easier and you will become much more comfortable with.  After you become proficient with one script or even if you just become half way decent with it try another script and later go back to the first one you tried and see how much better you have become.  You might surprise yourself!