TIME TO DISCUSS CALENDARS

A recent project was to make a medieval calendar (based in general on the Julius Work Calendar). Certainly not an exact replica, but close enough to the original to confuse anyone on the street today. While I had a passing familiarity with medieval calendars, I had to do a lot more research to obtain what I needed!

People of the Middle Ages experienced calendars very differently than we do today. They were religious guides, and they were not used by lay people. Especially important dates or feasts were written in red, thus the term “Red Letter Day.”

Four columns were commonly found on most calendars, but more columns were used from calendar to calendar. One containing roman numerals was used to determine the phases of the moon, Easter and associated holidays. Another repeated the letters A thru G which were used to determine the day of the week A stood for Sunday, B for Monday and so on. Instead of dividing the month into weeks as we do, the month was divided into three unequal segments called Kalens, Nones and Ides.
A-First Column

In period calendars, the first column contained the Golden Numbers. These were the phases of the Moon from what remained as a lunar calendar, to help determine Easter, using other charts to help determine this.

B-Second Column

Actually, there were sometimes many more columns, denoting referenced to various tables that helped to calculate Easter and other ecclesiastical matters.

C-Third Column

This column was the day of the week. Sundays were important and so were red.

D-Fourth Column

These indicated what “week” was portrayed. Instead of dividing the month into four weeks, the month was divided into three segments, and Kalends, Nones and Ides were used to show the reader where he was in time.

These are the days of the month. Months had the same number of days as in our current system, but they were not numbered sequentially from 1 to 28, 29, 30 or 31. Instead, they counted backwards to indicate the names before the next nones, ides or kalends. Kalends was the first day of the month; nones fell either on the sixth day, and ides came eight days after nones.

E-Fifth Column

Saints and festivals commemorated on this day. So-called Floating Feasts, based on the lunar rather than the solar calendar have not been included in thecalendar but may be, like the days of the week, insered by you if so desired.