6 - Immovable Feasts Marked in Anglo-Saxon Calendars

Summary

Many Anglo-Saxon calendars mark important immovable feasts by the sign of the cross, the letter F, by capital and/or coloured letters, or by a metrical entry. The following table lists which calendars mark which feasts in which manners. The number in the leftmost column corresponds to the classification number of the extant Anglo-Saxon calendars indicated in Appendix 5 above. I exclude calendars 1, 14 and 15, since they do not mark any feast, while I also exclude calendars 2, 3, 10 and 26, since they are highly fragmentary (for details, see Appendix 5 above). I shall use the following symbols, letters and their combinations to indicate the manners of marking in each calendar:

† marking by the sign of the cross

†c marking by the sign of the cross and coloured letters

†C marking by the sign of the cross and capital letters

†cC marking by the sign of the cross and coloured capital letters

c marking by coloured letters

C marking by capital letters

F marking by the letter F

FC marking by the letter F and capital letters

FcC marking by the letter F and coloured capital letters

M marking by a metrical entry

At the bottom of each page, there are three rows indicating whether or not each feast is mentioned in the prose Menologium (PM), the verse Menologium (VM) and the ‘Metrical Calendar of York’ (MCY), the oldest and shortest of Latin metrical calendars. The feasts in square brackets are not marked in any calendar but are included in the table because they are mentioned either in the prose and the verse Menologium or in the MCY. The prose and the verse Menologium, whose entries are very similar, cover most of the feasts frequently marked while excluding all the feasts marked only sparingly with two exceptions (for details, see the Introduction above). On the other hand, MCY, while excluding several feasts very frequently marked, includes many feasts marked only sparingly and also several of those never marked.