As mentioned, most of the usual updates are going through Twitter, @cokldb, but Chigi D.V.71  from the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana  is far to complex to explain in 280 characters.  First some numbers, this is the 18th MS from the BAV, and it was made in Toulouse, though liturgical Use of Rome, circa 1335-42.   After the January and February calendar pages there are Latin passages, written in red, on calculating the date of Easter.

The calendar is unusually large in several measures.  Each entry takes 2 ruled lines, with the dominical letter, golden number and roman number on the first line and the roman part stretched across both, sometimes even three.  The stretched Roman part is not unusual, but the double-line entry is unique.  This layout means that each month takes 2 full folios, 4 sides, leading to a calendar 24 pages long.  The decoration is rather sparse, but standard mid 14th Century, with a border and a few leaves on the first face of the month and nothing on the other three.  This layout allowed the scribe to load the calendar with saints, there are approximately 480 distinct feasts, with 9 dates carrying three.  August 22 has four distinct feasts: the Octave of the Assumption(469), and three distinct martyrs, Thimothy(478), Hippolytus(471), and Symphorian(477).  For context, a fully populated calendar has between 365 and 380 saints, and the previous MS with the densest calendar hit 401.  Not surprisingly, this calendar has a number of hapax saints, 30 new saints and 48 unidentified ones.

The calendar decorations are less unusual, rod borders with sparse foliage, some of in intruding into the text block.  There is no KL to start the page, in its place there's a small miniature of the labor of the month, backed with burnished gold.  To ornament the dominical "A" there's some small amount of red or blue penwork.

Note that this MS makes approximately 250 devotional calendars added to the DB since December 2015.

(DB Id: 381)

With the addition of Vatican Reg.lat.165, we have verified that 4 saints in a single date now loads and processes correctly.  Taking a step backwards, this is a Use of Rome hours with a Calendar from Aquilla (probably) that may have been owned by Queen Christina of Sweden.  The calendar is either unfinished or the scribe was confused, each entry is missing the initial letter, eg. "pyphania do" for Jan-6, missing the initial "E".  For testing, though, August 22 (see f.6v below) is the critical date, having entries for Sts. Hyppolitus (471), Timothy (478) and Symphorian (477), and the Octave of the Assumption (469).  This was entered into the new 4-saint Excel template  and it loaded and displayed cleanly!

(DB Id: 149)

A bunch of changes have been underway in the background.  First a big procedural one - I'm going to be trying to post shorter pieces about newly added MS to twitter: @cokldb.  I've added about 10 MS recently, and many of those are mentioned there.  When I have a longer discussion, I may still post here.

In the backend, we now support up to 4 different saints per date!  This required changes in a bunch of places, and may not be perfect, but seems to work.  There are not many books in the DB with more than 2 per date, about 30 entries have 3 saints and 3 have 4.  This is one of the places that need work, I scanned the existing entries for ones marked as "three saints" or "four saints" but if I was inconsistant, I may not have found all of them.  The loader/excel template was also updated to handle 4 entries and 4 colors.

The current work, yet undeployed, is to get some statistical graphs into the date detail pages.  Ideally a pie chart of "blank vs populated" and then a breakdown of saints in the populated ones.  The data is in place, what is taking work is a good display

This addition has been a long time coming, and might be the last addition that adds a new type of content for a long time.  There is now a system for storing images and associating them with the saint data.  It consists of a series of AWS resources, principly an s3 bucket to store and serve images, and a lambda function to do automatic resizing, and a new table to store metadata.  A column was then added to the `saints` table to link to the `image` table.  All of this is accessed through a new class `Saint::Image`, which is created and stored as part of a `Saint` class.

To the browser, the change is only evident on the saint to manuscript popup or the saint detail page. The popup uses the small image, with description as a hover field, and the detail page uses the larger image. Examples of both are below

From the collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia, currently being digitized as part of the BiblioPhilly project, comes Lewis E 90. This manuscript was written in Rouen for the Use of Coutances, about 200 km west on the Normandy coast, at the end of the 15th C. It is not a very attractive MS, the calendar borders are rough and generic, the miniatures functional, and the scribal hand irregular.

The calendar, however, is interesting for its accuracy and specificity. Out of 192 entries on 188 dates, all saints were identifiable from other sources and only 2 were off their proper date. Both of these, St. Wandregisil (1734) and St. Justus (3332) were displaced one day by a more important saint, Mary Magdalene (1730) and Luke the Evangelist (3333), respecively.

There are many rare observences recorded on the calendar, including several specific to Rouen. Five Rouennais bishops are named, along with two translations of relics to the city: St. Romain, for the Cathedral, on June 17 (2041) and an unammed saint on December 3 (4369).

(DB Id: 313)

Two more from the Biblioteca Nacional de Espana.

Res/149, the Hours of Guillaume Rollin, was made in Valenciennes around 1460-70. The calendar is rather plain, with nothing but some penwork around the KL for decoration. It is, however, very accurate. Of 185 entries, only three are on the wrong date. Of the entries, there are no unique ones, but having Cornelius and Cyprianus (3696) on September 14th, in addition to the Exaltation of the Cross (3693), is an less common pairing.

(DB Id: 291)

Vitr/25/5, the Book of Hours Voustre Demeure, was made in Ghent circa 1472. As opposed to Res/149, above, the calendar here is nearly complete and heavily decorated. Each of the pages has illusionistic borders populated with insect, plants, and bugs. At the bottom of the versos, where the months start, there is a vignette of the labor of the month. On the rectos there is a scene with the zodiac in the sky over a seasonal landscape.

The entries in the calendar are less careful. It seems that the intent was to have a complete calendar, but in many months the insertion of the word “Nonas” (Mar., Apr., July, Oct., Nov., or Dec.) or “Idus” (Aug.) has filled the line and no saint exists for that day. There are only two actually empty dates, Oct. 26 and Dec. 14. As is common in complete calendars there are a fair number of unidentified saints and 30 on incorrect dates. One of the errors is St. Columba (4146), listed on Dec. 19. Though her feast should be on the 17th, there is one other manuscript in the DB, Walters W.195, with the same shifted saint. These are both Flemish MS from the late 15th century, and though there is no other known connection, this may indicate one.

(DB Id: 292)

A slew of Spanish Hours are coming in the near future, thanks to the detailed catalogue information in Josefina Planas’. Horae: el poder de la imagen : libros de hores en bibliotecas españolas. (Madrid: Orbis Mediaevalis, 2016). These are mostly not actually Spanish-made manuscripts, sadly, but a broad spectrum of French, Flemish, and Italian MS that are presently held in Spanish collections.

The first of these to be added is from the Biblioteca Nacional de Espagna, Vitr 23 10. This 13th C Parisian book is known as the Clinton Book of Hours, from the 15th C british owners. This manuscript starts with a long pictoral sequence, depicting two scenes of St. Edward the Confessor and then the life/death/resurrection of Jesus, leading to the calendar starting on f.29v.

The calendar itself is not graded, it uses gold and blue ink without obvious pattern. There is a tendency for lone important feasts to be gold, but when entries cluster they fall to simple alternation. Outside the main entries there are some of the Zodiac signs, 5 months, and many of the other informational notes (dates for easter and Rogation Keys). There are also several obituaries for members of the Clinton family in a later hand, in brown ink. The main entries are rather sparse, 142 dates populated, and most are the basic Parisian saints. With the exception of a row shift at the beginning of October(see f.37v below), the entries are accurate with only one incorrect entry elsewhere.

(DB Id: 279)

From the Bibliothèque nationale de France comes Latin 1173, the Hours of Charles d’Angoulême, made in France in the Late 15th C. Charles was the father of King François I(r. 1515-1547), and is identified by his arms on f.53r. The Hours are Use of Paris, but the calendar has not been localized.

Most of the literature on this MS is not focused on the text at all, but either the miniatures. Many of these are originals by Robinet Testard, but several are actually prints by Israel van Meckenem (signed IM), which have been colored and embellished by Testard. The calendar is populated with quite distinct illustrations. The labors of the month are unusual and 9 of the KL initials are formed by humans, often in brown/blue clothing, contorted and posing with strange beasts. May (f.3r below) is a representative example, with the woman seemingly unconcerned by the dragon attacking her to form the arms of the “K”. What seems to be the labor is, in fact, two “wild men” jousting

In the content of the calendar there are both some unusual saints listed as well as an interesting bit of scribal error. The calendar starts out mostly full, 27 in Jan, but immediately starts to open up, with only 12 in February. In January some of the entries are quite rare, eg. the heretofore unique 40 Martyrs (4294) on Jan 9.

The calendar starts out triple-graded, blue/red/black, and is carefully graded, several multiple-saint entries are graded distinctly for each saint. In November, however, the scribe seems to forget that he’s triple-grading, and starts to use red and blue in simple alternation when there are high-ranks. This was less definitive in early November, All Saints (2850) in blue vs. All Souls (2993) in red, but becomes more evident as the month proceeds. In December it is unavoidable with strict alternation of red/blue in the Christmas (814) through Holy Innocents (823) block. Were this still triple graded, Christmas, in red, would be outranked by the Holy Innocents and even St. Barbara (853), both in blue.

(DB Id: 278)

Catching up on some backlogged additions to the database.

First is up is Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 1171. This Hours Henri IV is unusual for the golden parchment used throughout the manuscript, every page of text is a matte gold, perhaps shell gold. The miniatures are done in a semi-gresaille style, with touches of gold and purple, and brown wash.

The calendar is complete and has an interesting scribal trick to handle the color of the entries. The feasts alternate red and blank ink evenly, with high-importance feasts identified by a larger, white, capitol letter to start them. This solves for the desire to keep the perfectly regular color pattern without loosing the indication of important feasts, cf. DB Id 266. There is some ambiguity in the Vigils, which are indicated with a white paraf mark before the word. I am treating these as “high” importance, but the paraf could indicate a medium range. Since these only appear on the Vigils, and appear on all of those, there is little additional data to use.

The calendar entries are in French and there are a surprisingly large number of unidentified saints, including some with unique names, Saint Feulgent on March 18 as an example (see f.2r below)

(DB Id. 162)

Utopia Cod.111 is one of the many Parisian Hours, but with an unusual pedigree. King Charles VIII was a voracious bibliophile, and so was often gifted manuscripts by those wishing to curry favor. One of these is Cod.111, given by the parisian bookseller Anthoine Vérard about 1488, is an exquisite manuscript and the eponymous work of it’s illuminator, the Master of Charles VIII. It it completely illuminated, with every page having, at minimum, a vegetal border with Old Testament scenes inset in the outer margin. Throughout are full page miniatures. Many are the usual Life of Mary sequence, but some are more inventive, such as an opening depicting the Genealogy of Christ, from Adam through the Jesse on 14v and Jesse through Mary to Christ on 15r.

The calendar is equally lavish in decoration, with 2-columns of feasts set within a architectural border populated with the sign of the zodiac, the labor of the month and various Saints. The scribal work was not well coordinated with the illumanation, with multiple instances of the capitol “s” in a column where the feast is not for a Saint. This lack of communication continues in the month names, each of which is missing the first letter.

The entries are in the common Parisian color scheme, red/blue for common and gold for high-importance feasts. The entries are almost all identifiable, but riddled with errors, usually coming in blocks. For example for the thirteen entries in November 7-19, ten are on the wrong date. Interestingly in that block, the Feast of St Martin of Tours 2872 is on the wrong date but the Octave 2971 is correct. It seems like this block was shifted around to permit two saints with the same date to be included, but in an overly complex scheme (see f.7r below)

(Db ID: 259)