Almanacs, Stars and Calendars

Home , Aprilis, Epact, Februarius, Maius, Martius (month), Quintilis

Mario M. Aliphat F.

In memory of David H. Kelley ∵

The almanacs or the ancient “circle of the months” texts—like the Arabic al manaj—are annual calendars in which the year is divided into months, weeks and days, and include astronomical, meteorological and agricultural chronicles and ephemerides, as well as dates of religious celebrations. A precursor of the Hispanic almanacs is the famous tenth-century Calendar of Córdoba, a work in which a Muslim physician Arib ibn Sa’id and the Mozarabic bishop, Rece- mundo de Elvira, established a calendar translated into Latin; it was mainly an agricultural timetable but also with a religious calendar or list of saints’ days, as well as the kalends, nones and ides for each month, following the ancient Roman calendrical tradition. The Roman calendar originally consisted of ten months: Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis (July), Sextilis (August), Septembris, Octobris, Novem- bris and Decembris, intercalating an extra month, called Mercedinus, which was added to the calendar every other year. This calendar had 304 days in total, and 22 more days by intercalating the month of Mercedinus. In order to establish the “real” year, the months of Januarius and Februarius were added, and one extra day was placed in February every four years. This creates a 12-month calendar and a leap year with one day added every four years in February, bringing the total to the 365 days of the solar year and thus avoiding the difference of the year’s seasons in respect to the civil calendar. These modifications established the Julian calendar by the year 45BC. The Roman calendar did not have weeks or names for days (Monday, Tues- day, etc.). It only had three main markers: the kalends, the nones and the ides. The kalends named the first day of the month, for example January 1 would be called, in Latin, A k. IAN, which means: day A of the kalends of January, where it is important to note that the Latin word kalends (which passed from Greek into Latin) is transformed into the root of the word “calendar” used in Romance and other European languages. The nones are the fifth or seventh day, and the ides the thirteenth or fifteenth—one has simply to recall the assassination of

table 1 Characteristics of the almanacs in some Reportorios de los tiempos

Reportorio Number Golden Epact Dominical Lunar Kalends Saints’ Holy days/ number letters letters reference days Days of month Obligation

Li – × – × × – × – Zamorano × – × × – × × × Cháves × × – × – × × ×

Julius Caesar on HEIDVS [MAR], on the ides of March or March 15, 44BC. The kalends, nones and ides were “numbered” back to forward, and the first place of the kalends was the one from the following month (around 19 days were “counted” for kalends, 8 for ides and 4 for nones, for a month of January with 31 days) (Cháves 1580: 179). The days in the Roman calendars were identified by eight letters of the alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, presenting a continuous series of days from begin- ning to end, the first letter of the series was marked red. The series of letters, in their shortened form, were used to name religious celebrations, fairs, market days, days for civic acts like citizen meetings, votes, etc., and the kalends, nones and ides mentioned above. The Roman calendars or fasti were represented graphically in a table, in columns of twelve months with the days of the month represented by consec- utive letters, (from A to H), and the names of the kalends, nones, and ides as abbreviations for the days’ markers (civil, legal and religious). At the end, at the bottom, was the sum of the days of the month. For example: XXIX for January, XXVIII for February, etc. In Repertorios de los Tiempos or complex calendars printed in Spain in the sixteenth century such as those produced by Andrés de Li, Zamorano and Cháves, the months of the almanac are displayed as a running list with the days of the month. Both show the calendar of saints’ days for each day, and they also include references to the kalends (nones and ides) of the Roman calendar and the dominical letters. The Holy Days of Obligation are marked with a cross. In Andrés de Li’s calendar, it is interesting to note the presence of the so-called lunar letters, the golden number and the absence of any reference to the Roman kalends, numbers of the month, epact, Holy Days of Obligation etc., which the others had in common (see Table 1).