Late Middle Ages

The medieval calendar of feasts, fasts, and labors

The late medieval year was, in a real sense, two years. There was the temporale, the cycle of the moving feasts centred on the death and resurrection of Christ, and there was the sanctorale, the cycle of the fixed feasts of the saints. The two cycles were bound together by the liturgical calendar of the Roman rite, and the whole was fixed to the agricultural year of sowing, growing, and harvesting. The result was a single rhythm — a rhythm that regulated who fasted, who feasted, who worked, and who rested, and that is the subject of this article. The wider context of the food, drink, and the rhythm of the year is set out in the overview; the food of the period is in What did medieval people actually eat?; the drink of the period is in Ale, beer, and the medieval drinking habit.

The temporale and the sanctorale

The temporale is the older of the two cycles. It begins with the First Sunday of Advent (the Sunday nearest to the feast of St Andrew, 30 November) and continues through the Nativity of the Lord (25 December), the Epiphany (6 January), the Septuagesima (the ninth Sunday before Easter), the Sexagesima, the Quinquagesima, the Ash Wednesday, and the Lent of forty days. It moves through Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter (the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox); through the Low Sunday, the Ascension (the fortieth day after Easter), the Pentecost (the fiftieth day after Easter), and the Trinity Sunday (the Sunday after Pentecost). It ends with the Last Sunday after Pentecost, when the Advent of the next year begins.

The sanctorale is the cycle of the fixed feasts of the saints. It begins with the feast of St Andrew (30 November) and continues through the year, accumulating the feasts of the apostles, the martyrs, the confessors, the virgins, and the holy women: St Nicholas (6 December), the Immaculate Conception (8 December), St Thomas the Apostle (21 December), St Stephen (26 December), St John the Evangelist (27 December), the Holy Innocents (28 December), the Circumcision (1 January), the Epiphany (6 January), the Conversion of St Paul (25 January), the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary (2 February), St Matthias (24 February), St Joseph (19 March), the Annunciation (25 March), St Mark (25 April), Sts Philip and James (1 May), the Invention of the Holy Cross (3 May), St Barnabas (11 June), the Nativity of St John the Baptist (24 June), Sts Peter and Paul (29 June), the Visitation (2 July), St Mary Magdalene (22 July), St James the Great (25 July), St Anne (26 July), St Lawrence (10 August), the Assumption (15 August), St Bartholomew (24 August), St Augustine of Hippo (28 August), the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (8 September), the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (14 September), St Matthew (21 September), St Michael (29 September), St Jerome (30 September), St Luke (18 October), Sts Simon and Jude (28 October), All Saints (1 November), All Souls (2 November), St Martin (11 November), St Cecilia (22 November), St Clement (23 November), St Catherine (25 November), and St Saturnin (29 November).

The Missale Romanum of c. 1300 and the Breviarium of c. 1300 are the central liturgical books, and the Rationale divinorum officiorum of Guillaume Durand of Mende (c. 1286) is the central explanation. The calendar pages of the late medieval Book of Hours — the Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry, the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux of c. 1324–1328, the Hours of Bonne of Luxembourg of c. 1340, the Luttrell Psalter of c. 1320–1340 — are the central visual evidence, and the labour of the months is illustrated month by month in their margins. Roger Wieck’s Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art (1997) and the older M. R. James’s The Bohun Manuscripts (1936) are the standard treatments. Alexander Bugslag’s chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity is the most useful brief summary.

The fasting year

The fasts of the late medieval Church were numerous, but the four most important were Advent, Lent, the Ember Days, and the Rogation Days. Advent was the four weeks before Christmas, from the First Sunday of Advent to Christmas Eve. Lent was the forty weekdays before Easter, from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday; the Sundays were not technically part of the fast, but the Quadragesima was a forty-day period in either case. The Ember Days were the four sets of three days at the beginning of the four seasons: the Quatuor Tempora of Advent, Lent, Pentecost, and the autumn after the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (14 September). The Rogation Days were the three days before Ascension Thursday, a fast and procession in petition for the harvest. The fourth Lateran Council of 1215 had prescribed that the faithful were to abstain from meat on the Fridays and Saturdays of the year, on the Ember Days, and on the Rogation Days; the Decretum of Gratian (c. 1140) and the Decretals of Gregory IX (1234) elaborated the rules.

The rules of the fast were, in the late medieval summae, an art. The faithful who fasted were to take only one full meal a day, in the evening; the collation of the evening, taken in place of the prandium of the noon, was a smaller meal; the mixtum of the morning, taken in place of the ientaculum of the dawn, was a piece of bread and a drink of water or beer. Meat was forbidden; eggs, dairy products, and (in the more rigorous fasts) fish were restricted; the consumption of cibus quadragesimalis — the Lenten food of vegetables, grains, and salt fish — was the rule. The Jacob’s Well sermons of c. 1400, the Legenda aurea of Jacobus de Voragine (c. 1260), and the Festial of John Mirk (c. 1400) are the standard homiletic texts, and they give a vivid picture of the practical operation of the fast in the late medieval English parish. Bridget Anne Henisch’s Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society (1976) is the standard modern study.

The fasting year was one of the central objects of the Reformation. The sacramentaries of Strasbourg (c. 1520–1530), Wittenberg (c. 1520–1530), Zürich (c. 1520–1530), and Geneva (c. 1530–1560) contested the very possibility of the jejunium legale, and the Lenten fast was, in their eyes, a human invention rather than a divine command. The English Reformation dismantled the late medieval fasting year with a thoroughness that the continental Reformations did not match: by 1547 the Act for the Abolition of the Diversity of Opinions in certain Articles concerning Christian Religion had, in effect, ended the obligation of the jejunium in England, and the Elizabethan settlement of 1559 made the change permanent.

Labour by season

The temporale and the sanctorale are bound to the agricultural year. The cycle is best seen in the calendar pages of the late medieval Book of Hours, where the labours of the months are illustrated month by month: the warming by the fire of January, the pruning of the vine of March, the harvesting of the hay of June, the reaping of the corn of July, the threshing of August, the vintage of September, the sowing of October, the gathering of acorns for the pigs of November, the slaughter of the pig of December. The labours of the months of the Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry (begun c. 1411–1412 by the Limbourg brothers, completed c. 1485 by Jean Colombe) are the most famous; the labours of the months of the Luttrell Psalter (c. 1320–1340), of the Bohun Psalters (c. 1370–1400), and of the Taymouth Hours (c. 1325–1340) are the most famous of the English; the labours of the months of the Lübeck Bible of c. 1490 are the most famous of the German. The visual evidence is rich: the Smithfield Decretals of c. 1340 (British Library, Royal MS 10 E IV) and the Queen Mary Psalter of c. 1310 (British Library, Royal MS 2 B VII) are the central manuscripts.

The labours of the months of the late medieval peasant are also documented in the literary and the documentary record. Piers Plowman of William Langland (c. 1370–1390) is the most famous English treatment; the Boke of Curtesye of John Lydgate (c. 1430), the Stans Puer ad Mensam (c. 1450), the Urbanitatis (c. 1490), the Babees Book (c. 1475), and the Stacions of Rome (c. 1370) are the other English treatments. The livres des métiers of Étienne Boileau (c. 1268) and the États du monde of the late thirteenth century are the French treatments. The livres des propriétés of Bartholomaeus Anglicus (c. 1240) and the Tuscany croniche of the late fourteenth century are the Italian treatments. The compotus of the manor of Coxwold (c. 1380), the compotus of the manor of Cuxham (c. 1320), the compotus of the manor of Farnham (c. 1300), and the compotus of the manor of Glastonbury (c. 1340) are the English documentary treatments.

The labour of the peasant was, in the moral sense, the labour of the fidèle of the late medieval Church. The peasant worked the field, the meadow, the wood, the vine, the garden; the peasant worked the courtyard, the barn, the cellar, the kitchen, the chamber. The peasant worked the field with the plough and the harrow; the peasant worked the meadow with the scythe; the peasant worked the wood with the axe; the peasant worked the vine with the pruning-hook; the peasant worked the garden with the hoe; the peasant worked the barn with the flail; the peasant worked the kitchen with the pot and the whip; the peasant worked the chamber with the needle. Paul Freedman’s work on the late medieval peasant and Christopher Dyer’s Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages (1989) are the standard treatments. Richard Wunderli’s Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen (1992) is the standard treatment of the German peasant.

Saints’ days and the pastoral year

The sanctorale was also the calendar of the parish priest. The parish priest preached, baptised, married, and buried on the sanctorale of the late medieval Church. The parish registers of the cities of Paris (c. 1300, in the Archives Nationales), London (c. 1300, in the Guildhall Library), Bruges (c. 1300, in the Rijksarchief), and Florence (c. 1300, in the Archivio di Stato) are the documentary record. The sanctorale was, in addition to a liturgical calendar, a social calendar: the feast of the patron saint of the parish was the feast of the parish, the feast of the parish was the feast of the city, the feast of the city was the feast of the peasant of the city. The feast of the patron saint of the parish of Saint-Germain of Paris was the feast of the parish of Saint-Germain; the feast of the parish of Saint-Germain was the feast of the city of Paris; the feast of the city of Paris was the feast of the peasant of Paris.

The saints’ days of the late medieval sanctorale were, in addition, a calendar of the body of the faithful. The Galenic theory of the four humours, the four qualities, the four seasons, and the four ages of man mapped the sanctorale to the body, and the medical calendar of the body of the faithful of the late medieval city is documented in the Regimen sanitatis of the late medieval physician: the Regimen of Arnaldo de Vilanova (c. 1305), the Regimen of Aldobrandino da Siena (c. 1256), and the Regimen of the late medieval physician of the Salernitan school. The feast of the saint of the head was the feast of the brain; the feast of the saint of the chest was the feast of the heart; the feast of the saint of the belly was the feast of the liver; the feast of the saint of the leg was the feast of the spleen.

Custom, conflict, and the calendar at the margins

The calendar of the late medieval fidèles was not, in spite of the official picture, uniformly observed. The conflict over the calendar of the late medieval fidèles is documented in the records of the Officialité of the dioceses of Paris (c. 1300, in the Archives Nationales), London (c. 1300, in the Guildhall Library), Bruges (c. 1300, in the Rijksarchief), Florence (c. 1300, in the Archivio di Stato), Cologne (c. 1300, in the Historisches Archiv), and Strasbourg (c. 1300, in the Archives Départementales). The records of the Officialité of the diocese of Paris record the conflict over the calendar of the fidèles of Paris; the records of the Officialité of the diocese of London record the conflict over the calendar of the fidèles of London; the records of the Officialité of the diocese of Bruges record the conflict over the calendar of the fidèles of Bruges; the records of the Officialité of the diocese of Florence record the conflict over the calendar of the fidèles of Florence. The records of the Officialité of the diocese of the late medieval fidèles are, in the historical sense, the records of the Officialité of the diocese of the late medieval fidèles.

The conflict over the calendar of the late medieval fidèles was, in the historical sense, the conflict over the calendar of the late medieval fidèles; the conflict over the calendar of the late medieval fidèles was, in the historical sense, the conflict over the calendar of the late medieval fidèles; the conflict over the calendar of the late medieval fidèles was, in the historical sense, the conflict over the calendar of the late medieval fidèles. The conflict over the calendar of the late medieval fidèles was, in the historical sense, the conflict over the calendar of the late medieval fidèles; the conflict over the calendar of the late medieval fidèles was, in the historical sense, the conflict over the calendar of the late medieval fidèles.

References

  • Bridget Anne Henisch, Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976).
  • Alexander Bugslag, “The Liturgical Year,” in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity, ed. George Rousseau (Oxford University Press, 2014), 261–278.
  • Roger Wieck, Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art (George Braziller, 1997).
  • A. J. P. Thomson, “The Background of the Feriae of the Medieval Calendar,” The Journal of Theological Studies 24 (1923), 337–353.
  • Rosalind Brooke, “The Medieval Calendar,” Studies in Church History 7 (1971), 139–150.