The Medieval Calendar Part III

Sorry it has been a while since I last wrote. Getting ready for summer is busy, busy, busy. Like I said last time, in this third part I am going to talk about the kinds of illustrative works that accompany each month of the medieval calendar.

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.

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