Again, occasionally a Church Kalendar exhibits features which may
be attributed to merely accidental circumstances. Relics of some
saint belonging to another and distant region may happen to have
been presented to some church; and thereupon his name is inserted
in its Kalendars. It is thus, with much probability, that Mr Warren
accounts for the appearance of the names of one northern bishop and
two northern abbots—Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne,—Benedict, first
abbot, and Ceolfrith, second abbot of Wearmouth—in the Kalendar of the
Leofric Missal. In William of Malmesbury, we read that in A.D. 703
relics of these saints were brought to Glastonbury. And in the case of
two of these, Aidan (Aug. 31) and Ceolfrith (Sept. 25), the Leofric
Kalendar adds to each name the word, ‘in Glaestonia.’ Other evidence
makes it all but certain that Glastonbury and its history affected the
Leofric Kalendar. At Cologne, which claims to possess the heads of the
Three Kings, one cannot wonder that their Translation (July 23) is a
‘summum festum.’ In the Kalendars of the Orthodox Church of the East
the deposition of relics is frequently the occasion of the annual
commemoration of the event, and the insertion of a festival in the
Menology. In all countries translations of the bodies of saints are found
entered; and when the dates of such translations are known from history,
we are at once enabled to say of any particular manuscript service-book
that the Kalendar, in which some particular translation is marked _prima
manu_, was written after the known date. On the other side, when we find
any important festival absent, or, as is frequently the case, inserted in
a later handwriting, the strong presumption is raised that the original
Kalendar belongs to a time before the establishment of the festival.
Thus, the absence of the Conception of St Mary (Dec. 8) from a Kalendar
suggests that it is earlier than the last quarter of the eleventh
century; while the appearance of Corpus Christi goes to determine a
Kalendar to be later than A.D. 1260.
From what has been said, it will seen that, even apart from the style
of the handwriting, the formation of the various letters, the manner of
punctuation, and other palaeographical indications, the mere contents of
a Kalendar will often help the student to make a good conjecture as to
both the place of the origin of a manuscript and the time when it was
penned.
[Illustration: Kalendar of Durham Psalter (September)
Jesus College, Cambridge (MS. Q. B. 6). Cent. xii.]
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