The calendar was at the beginning of the book and typically is among the most lavishly illustrated. Here, it receives the most use over time and would have been easier to find. Its purpose was to document the dates for celebrating the feast days of the Church, major and universal saints, and local saints. Also, the calendar will contain Church festivals and the consecration dates of local churches. Red, blue or gold are used to indicate these special dates within the calendar.

The calendar adopted a sequence for decoration, with themes illustrating each month. Labor themes were predominant, while social activities cropped up as well. While the activities shared commonalities with the months, there were some geographic variants. Due to climatic differences, English depictions are usually a month behind those of France; whereas, Italian scenes pre-date the French by one month (Murray, 335). Another common component of the calendar is the zodiac, especially through the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries (Carr-Gomm, 232). Each month usually depicts the sign and its symbol, as well as the corresponding mythological deity or creature. (For further elaboration, see Appendix One, as well as Appendix Three, Figures 1 through 12.) After the appropriate zodiac images, the calendar dates are then shown.

The days in the medieval lunar calendar are not numbered consecutively, but according to the Roman notation of Kalends, Nones and Ides. Kalends represented the first day of the month. Ides was the 13th and Nones was the 5th, except in March, May, July and October when they were the 15th and 7th respectively (Henisch, 216-217). The abbreviation for Kalends, KL, is emblazoned at the beginning of the month, at the head of the column on the left margin for date indicators. These markers indicate several things: the Golden Numbers (L-XIX) used for calculating the Pascal Moon to determine the date for Easter; the abbreviations for Kalends, Ides (ID), and Nones (N); and the days of the week (i.e. Monday, Tuesday) marked by the lower case hebdomadal letters “a” to “g”. The hebdomadal letter does not always represent the same weekday every year.

Henisch states that one must know what day January 1st fell on and the place of Sunday within the first week of the year. This date was readily known due to the celebrations associated with Christmas Day and the fact that January 1st followed 7 days later. Consequently, if Sunday fell on January 1st, ‘a’ will represent Sunday for the remainder of the year. Similarly, if Sunday first fell on January 7th, then the letter that represents Sunday (known as the dominical number) would be ‘g’ (218-219). The format for determining which days are which is somewhat complex, as indicated below by Cole:

“Most notably, the days are designated by letters rather than numbers and the names of the days of the week. To find which letter is Sunday for the year 1480, for example, multiply by 5/4 (=1850) and then divide it by 7 (=264, remainder 2). If the remainder is greater than 2, subtract it from 10; otherwise subtract it from 3 (3-2=1). The resulting number corresponds to the Dominical Letter for the year (1=A, 2=B, etc.). Thus for 1480, the dominical letter is A, and each A in the calendar marks a Sunday (although since 1480 was a leap year, Sundays in January and February were marked by a B).” (http://www.grainger.uiuc.edu/rbx/hoursdb/calendar.htm)
 

As previously stated, the computations of the calendar where complex and probably beyond the mathematical ability of the common man, especially when factoring in leap years (Henisch, 220). For further information, I recommend reading “Appendix C: Astronomical and Calendrical Data in the Tres Riches Heures, Notes by O. Neugebauer” (421-432) within French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Limbourgs and Their Contemporaries by Millard Meiss. You’ll gain a deeper appreciation for the complexity involved, whether or not it makes any sense to you.

The calendar was an important component that would be used for the life of the book. The same twelve months would be used over and over, until the book fell out of use. People simply did not have a new calendar commissioned every year. As such, the calendar evolved from a purely practical tool to an eye-catching, yet highly functional piece of art.
 
 

The Calendar Text

January January