Time telling & dates in the Medieval era
And what the hell is sext, anyway?
I was going to write this post on New Year’s Day, that seemed an appropriate time, (haha), but I didn’t get to it. I guess the time got away from me (it seems like a good time for a few Dad jokes. Sorry. I’ll stop now.)
So there you are, happily reading a history of Richard the Lionheart (our edition of Richard of Devizes), and you stumble on this:
§ 32. The king of France, with his army, departing for Jerusalem before the king of England, put to sea the third of the calends of April. The king of England, about to leave Sicily, caused the fort which he had built to be taken down, and stowed the whole of the materials in his ships to take along with him. Every sort of engine for the attack of fortifications, and every kind of arms which the heart of man could invent, he had all ready in his ships. Robert, son of William Fitz Ralph, was consecrated for the bishopric of Worcester by William de Longchamp, as yet legate, at Canterbury, on the third of the nones of May.
OK, you ask yourself, what is the “third of the calends of April”. Or the “third of the nones of May”? Or, for that matter, when is/are the “Ides of March”? We know we’re supposed to beware the Ides of March, we just don’t know when it is!
Calendars
Calendars, Dates, and Times in the Middle Ages are mostly derived either from Church practices (the Catholic church, mostly), or Roman traditions.
[I am indebted for much of the following to Ian Mortimer’s wonderful The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England, a handy guide for sorting out much of the strangeness that was the Middle Ages.]
The medieval calendar is a strange beast. It’s not always even clear when the year begins. January 1, sure. Sometimes. Other times, it starts on the so-called Lady Day, March 25. This day commemorates the visit of the archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, when he told her she would be mother of Jesus. Lady Day was the first year of the calendar in England from 1155 to 1752, when the Gregorian calendar was adopted. The Exchequer used Michaelmas (September 29) as its start of year (a “fiscal year”?). Michaelmas (‘Michael Mass’) was first celebrated in Rome in honor of Saint Michael the Archangel on the 30th of September in the 5th century).
It gets worse. As Mortimer relates, few people would use the A.D. / B.C. system we know. They would use the “regnal” year, the year of the current king’s reign. The year A.D. 1388 might begin on March 25, but it would have been referred to as “the eleventh year of King Richard II”. Formal histories, such as we have been referring to, written in Latin (mostly) by priests (mostly), would usually refer to years relative to Christ’s birth, sometimes referred to as “the year of grace”, or “the year of our Lord”. So, our friend Roger of Hoveden would write:
In the year of grace 1191, being the second year of the reign of king Richard, the said king Richard, and Philip, king of the Franks, were together at Messina, in Sicily…
and Richard de Templo (our edition) would write:
In the year of the Incarnate Word 1187, when Urban III held the government of the Apostolic See, and Frederic was emperor of Germany; when Isaac was reigning at Constantinople, Philip in France, Henry in England, and William in Sicily….
OK, so back to “calends” and “ides” and “nones”. (You will sometimes see calends spelled ‘kalends’, by the way.)
The Romans used a different calendar than we do. The Julian calendar was introduced in 46 B.C. by Julius Caesar, and would last until 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII introduced the so-called Gregorian calendar we use today. The Julian calendar changed the number of days in each month, and had a leap year every 4 years to attempt to match the solar calendar (our trip around the sun) . The Gregorian calendar was introduced primarily to make the “wall calendar” match the “solar calendar” more closely.
The Julian calendar did however maintain the counting method of Calends, Nones, and Ides. The Calends are at the beginning of the month, the Ides at the middle, and the Nones between them. These are related to the phase of the moon as well, for example the Ides would be the full moon. The word “calends”, from the Latin calare, "proclaim", is of course, where we get our word Calendar.
The days were generally counted before the next key day. So you also need to know how many days are in each month to do this computation. So, for maximal confusion, dates that are the “x of calends of April” don’t occur in April, they occur in March. :)
And, now we can decipher!
“third of the calends of April”: March 30. (counting backwards: 1st of April, 2nd calends of April (March 31), 3rd calends of April (March 30). Easy, right?
“third of the nones of May”: May 5 (nones is May 7, 2nd nones May 6, 3rd nones May 5).
“Ides of March”: Now, this is easy. March 15.
All really easy, right? The only way they could have made this harder was if we had to do the arithmetic using Roman numerals. Amusingly, there is a phrase called the Greek Kalends, which is a metaphor for “never”, as the Greek calendar had no Calends. As in, “I will repay you on the Greek Kalends” (the Romans set the Calends of a month as the day to pay debts, settle bills, and so on).
Lastly, dates may often be related to a holiday, feast day, or similar “known date” - often with a strange or unfamiliar name :).
The feast of the Purification of the Blessed Mary was celebrated on the very Sunday of Septuagesima at Winchester. But the Sunday had nothing belonging to Sunday but its memory at vespers and matins, and the morning mass…
Septuagesima is the ninth Sunday before Easter, marking the beginning of the time for preparing for Lent.
You may also encounter the term “moveable feast”. If you are Catholic this term might be well known to you, otherwise perhaps not. You might encounter this term in a medieval context, or, as I did, when reading Ernest Hemingway’s book of the same name. A moveable feast is one that does not occur on a fixed date. Christmas is always December 25, but the date of Easter varies from year to year.
Times
In contrast, times aren’t that complicated. The first thing to remember is that there are no clocks in Richard’s era. Time was told by the sun, possibly aided with a sundial or hourglass. And times were centered around, or referred to by, the so-called liturgical hours.
Mechanical clocks started becoming common in the 14th century in Europe, but they were large beasts, mostly tower clocks. Clocks did not become small enough to be in general use until the 16th century12.
In the medieval Islamic world, innovative water clocks were coming into use roughly in the time of Richard, including Al-Jazari's castle clock, considered by some as almost an analog computer, or his elephant water clock.
The Liturgical Hours defined a common and consistent time of prayer distributed throughout the day. The timing is based on the sun, and so in different places, or different times of year, the actual “time” will vary depending on circumstances. The times are:
Matins (nighttime, somewhere between 3 a.m. and dawn.)
Lauds (early morning, dawn, perhaps 5 a.m., but depending on the sun)
Prime (first hour of daylight, perhaps 6 a.m., but depending on the sun)
Terce, or Tierce (third hour, 9 a.m.)
Sext (noon)
Nones (ninth hour, 3 p.m.)
Vespers (sunset evening, 6 p.m.)
Compline, or Complin (end of the day, 7 p.m.)
The Matins, Lauds and Vespers are called Major Hours; the minor hours are Tierce, Sext, Nones and Compline. And we can see that medieval sext is less interesting than the modern one.
So now, when we read the history of the mysterious self-ringing bells, a bad omen, at Richard’s coronation:
A circumstance happened on the self-same day of the coronation in Westminster Abbey, a presage of such portentous omen, as then was hardly allowable to be related even in a whisper. At Complin, the first peal that day happened to be rung, neither by any agreement, nor even the ministers of the church themselves being aware of it, till after it was done; for Prime, Tierce, Sext, Nones, and the solemn service of Vespers and two Masses were celebrated without any ringing of peals.
we know this happened at the end of the day.
Hours would be counted from sunrise, not midnight as we would do. So when we read
They accordingly began at the ninth hour to pay in part the bezants which they had promised;
we should think 3 p.m., not 9 a.m.
And with that, I think it’s time for a drink of some sort. That was hard work :)
https://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/itineraries/multimedia/MechanicalClocks.html#:~:text=The%20mechanical%20clock%2C%20which%20derived,in%20widespread%20use%20across%20Europe.
https://www.medievalchronicles.com/medieval-history/medieval-inventions-list/mechanical-clock/