The Twenty-Four Egyptian Days in Yiddish

The object of this study is a list of twenty-four Egyptian days in Yiddish discovered at the end of a Hebrew miscellany from medieval Ashkenaz, preserved in the Basel Universitätsbibliothek. Egyptian days are inauspicious days for bloodletting; these are listed according to the Julian calendar and sometimes identified by saint names and feast days. The list is edited and translated into English. Dates and variants of these Egyptian days are then compared with those of the only other known list of its kind, found in the earliest dated astro-medical fragment in Old Western Yiddish, from 1396–1397. A tabular comparison and descriptive commentary of the names and dates in both lists follows. Preceding this analysis, the status and knowledge of Jewish physicians in medieval Ashkenaz is addressed, as well as a brief description of Ms R IV 2, revealing its rich content and some of its codicological and paleographical characteristics.

NOMINA ANIMALIUM IN LATERCULUS BY POLEMIUS SILVIUS. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE LITURGICAL CALENDAR (5TH CENTURY)

Creating Laterculus, Polemus Silvius, a 5th-century author, was the first to attempt to integrate the traditional Roman Julian calendar containing the pagan celebrations and various anniversaries with new Christian feasts. Laterculus, as it should be remembered, is a work that bears the features of a liturgical calendar. In addition to dates and anniversaries related to religion and the state, the calendar contains several other lists and inventories, including a list of Roman provinces, names of animals, a list of buildings and topographical features of Rome, a breviary of Roman history, a register of animal sounds and a list of weights and sizes. Therefore, Laterculus, just like a traditional Roman calendar, was also used for didactic purposes. This paper aims to refer in detail to the zoological vocabulary, specifically the register of animal names and sounds included in this source. Laterculus contains in total over 450 words divided into six groups, including 108 words in the four-legged animal section, 131 in the bird section, 11 crustaceans, 26 words for snakes, 62 words for insects and 148 for fish. The sounds of animals, which are also included in one of the lists added to this calendar and titled Voces variae animancium, are also worth mentioning. A brief discussion on the history of the Roman calendar and the liturgical calendar certainly helps to present the issue referred to in the title to its fullest extent.

The Merchant of Venice and the Paschal Moon

The Merchant of Venice contains a puzzling passage by Lancelot Gobbo that refers to Ash Wednesday and Easter Monday, two dates in the Christian religious calendar. The passage is nonsensical, yet it is a commonplace that the utterances of Shakespeare’s clowns are often noteworthy. This paper notes that Lancelot refers to an unusual four-fold coincidence of Passover with Easter Monday, the former on the correct Gregorian calendar, the latter on the outdated Julian calendar. The interpretation is tested and leads to the determination of the dramatic time of the play which with other evidence from the script suggests that the paschal moon of 14 Nisan 5357 (April 2, 1597) is a crux of the play. The resulting timeline is consistent with events in the script and leads to a new interpretation for Old Gobbo’s dish of doves. The timeline leads also to a solution for a question on equity and the law.

‘Give us back our eleven days’: Brexit or Breaksit?

A major adjustment to the British calendar occurred in 1752. This was the passage from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian, inaugurated in the sixteenth century by command of Pope Gregory XIII in the papal dominions, and swiftly followed by much of the rest of Europe. The consequent loss of eleven days in the ‘new style’ British calendar seems to have provoked a riot. The alternative calendars had been the source of complication in trade and trade agreements and had led to friction in everyday exchange. Within the United Kingdom, the contention about jurisdiction over time and its measurement was momentarily as live as the wars over space. Brexit is a contention about who has the power to regulate the laws of the geographical unit that is the island of Great Britain, and whether authority may be devolved to a larger political entity. Thus, at least in part, it is a dispute as to whether this administrative authority may be extended in ever finer detail. The measurement of time is an infinite approximation, as knowledge of the movements of the heavenly bodies becomes ever more precise and the ability to time these more exact with finer and more accurate methods.

Why November 27th? On the Story behind the Treaty of Neuilly 1919

The Treaty of Neuilly imposed by the victors in the First World War on Bulgaria was signed on November 27, 1919. This date coincides with the military holiday of the Bulgarian army – the Victory Day, which commemorates the Bulgarian victories in the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885. At the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was celebrated on November 15th according to the Julian calendar, which was then official for Bulgaria. After the country adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1916, the holiday was transferred to November 27th. During the First World War it was established as one of the grandest Bulgarian holidays and was marked with military parades, church services and civil celebrations, that took place across the country including the lands of Macedonia and Pomoravia. The research provides evidence that the signing the Treaty of Neuilly on the date when the Bulgarian military holiday was celebrated was not a coincidence, but a deliberate and sought-after exacerbation of Bulgarian national dignity in general and of Bulgarian military glory in particular.

An Overlooked Construction Manual for the Quadrans Vetustissimus

This article presents an edition and brief analysis of the previously overlooked text De compositione quadrae, which is transmitted as part of a scientific miscellany assembled at Worcester Cathedral Priory no later than 1140. De compositione quadrae offers hitherto unavailable information on the construction of the so-called quadrans vetustissimus, a version of the universal horary quadrant circulating in Latin Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It is particularly noteworthy for its description of a graphical method of inscribing the months of the Julian calendar on the quadrant’s cursor, which successfully approximates the sine function that determines the change of solar declination in the course of a year.

The Attitude of Uniate Bishops towards Calendar Reforms in the Latter Half of the 18th Century

The Polish version of the article was published in “Roczniki Humanistyczne,” vol. 59 (2011), issue 2. The provisions of the Union of Brest guaranteed the use of the Julian calendar in the Uniate Church. In the second half of the 18th century, as a result of the socio-political changes and the so-called reduction in holidays in the Latin Church the question of a reformed calendar was brought up among the hierarchs of the Uniate Church. Its elaboration and corresponding debates showed that the calendar was clearly considered to be an element of identification for all the faithful and an important factor creating a sense of separateness and identity in the multidenominational and multinational Polish Republic. The issue of reforming the calendar used by the Uniate Church was raised at the Great Sejm, but a new list of feasts was compiled by Uniate bishops during the congress of 17th September 1790 held in Warsaw. The hierarchy of the Uniate Church was also obliged to take a stance on the changes in the calendar introduced by the invading countries. The actions taken by Uniate hierarchs in the 18th century reflect an attempt to combine economic reasons with religious ones as well as social influences dictated by the ideas of the Enlightenment.