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Description: | What if someone put together all the bits and pieces of written material that they enjoyed and needed for frequent use? The result might be something like this manuscript, perhaps a medieval version of the web-surfer's 'favourites' list. Mostly in Latin and French--with one famous Middle English exception--it has songs, satire and poems for entertainment, along with medical information, a calendar of religious feasts and devotional music. Believed to have been at Reading Abbey in the middle ages, it probably was made at a workshop in Oxford and may have been commissioned by the notorious music-loving monk, William of Winchester.
The manuscript includes a calendar with details such as number of hours of daylight and darkness and information on the lunar cycle which indicate that it was made for use in by a monk or member of a religious community. The owner would have relied on it as a diary, to tell him what saint's day or feast day was coming up. This page has January and February. Important feast days are written in red ('red-letter days'), such as the Feast of the Circumcision (1 January) and Epiphany (Twelfth Night). | License: | http://www.bl.uk/services/copy/permission.html | Rights holder: | British Library | Source: | Collect Britain | Identifier: | http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/personal... | Language: | en-GB | Go to resource |
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