(04-06-2026, 03:12 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Actually, now that I think about it, surely the professional writers creating these expensive, luxurious books of hours were amongst some of the most highly educated and highly trained people in europe?
No, not necessarily.
They were employees of large workshops. Craftsmen, artisans. Not scholars. They excelled at what they did (writing, painting, creating layouts...) but that does not mean they had education beyond what was necessary for their task and they really understood what they were copying. The language, but not the deeper meaning. We frequently see hilarious blunders in high-profile works like using the wrong stock imagery for a plant. In the end it mattered little because the buyer was no scholar either.
In this context, I'd say it depended on the character of the scribe whether the mindlessly copied what was there, or added his own interpretations and possibly (hyper-)corrections.
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1477AD, Belgium (Huy)
marche,
____ ,
may*,
jung/jūg,
julet/julle,
augoust/
aguste/
auguste/
awoust/
auwouste,
septēbre,
octēbre,
nouembre,
decembre
I'm using and linking this post to the spreadsheet so that these months can actually be found in the future (some are just nestled in the bulk of the text):
March:
marche - f35va (page 43 of viewer)
En auguste q p devāt astoit appelleis sextiles ou septēbre (p(ou)r ce q(ue)) chastoit le VIᵉ moys ap(re)s marche
(in august q p before? was? called sextiles or septēbre (because?) corrected? the 6th month after march)
[
attachment=15972]
August:
julet, auguste, augoust, awoust, septembre, octembre, novembre, decembre can all be located by using Ctrl+F on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Unfortunately, the work is unfinished and only covers from July to the end of November. The calendar at the beginning is completely in Latin. I have scoured almost all of the book in search of a rogue april, but I could not find a single one (there's definitely a chance that there is one though).
Good find! With a fictional half point for April, this would be among the top scoring sequences. I spent some time scanning the MS for an April (there must be one in there, right?) but no success so far.
Good idea to post information about top entries here, keeps people informed as well
In some genuinely breaking news, I have found our first ever example of an 'o'
AND 'L' in a july variant:
Joilet. I came across the following two second hand sources for the same correspondance:
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Both are referring to "BnF Département des manuscrits, Lorraine 184, fol. 4", a letter from 1259 that is unfortunately not digitised. I thought it was a 19th century typo...
...but it isn't. I sent a question to the BnF, explaining the situation and why it's relevant, and asked for potential ways to validate the variant. I can't believe it, but they simply replied to me with an unprompted jpeg image of a part of the actual letter (presumably literally taken ~10 minutes before the email was sent based on the filename).
Here is the important section: mois de Joilet
[
attachment=15979]
Genuinely huge thanks and shoutout to BnF and the librarians at SINDBAD for the help.
(09-06-2026, 05:04 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(there must be one in there, right?)
That is what I thought a good many hours of searching ago...
But I hope it's hiding there somewhere!
Nice! I was about to say that the blue color in the sheet is for this, but you already beat me to it.
There is also "joing" in the same book, also from Lorraine but 1277. It's probably a bit of a stretch to make one entry out of these? Since, where do you draw the line with that.
[Edit: and a load of octembres, of course, but I had already taken their presence for granted here].
Aside: aren't you tired of all these date indications like "lou macredi après les octaves de la Trinetei." Just say the month name ffs
Unless we can be confident that the letters were likely by the same person (Similar to the Caspar Schets letters), it's probably wiser to keep them seperate.
(09-06-2026, 08:58 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Aside: aren't you tired of all these date indications like "lou macredi après les octaves de la Trinetei." Just say the month name ffs
Ahh yes, I love the classic "the day of St Someone, in this current century and this year"
Another of my favourite examples of months being missed out is a really commonly copied work that goes something like:
"
April and june and september and november have 30 days, (and in all the others 
) there are 31. Except for february, which has 28 unless its a leap year."
Edit: I only just realised the exact same nursery rhyme is still taught in english to this day, 500-700 years later. I thought it looked familiar.
Thirty days has September, April, June, and November, All the rest have thirty-one, Save February at twenty-eight, But leap year, coming once in four, February then has one day more.
(09-06-2026, 05:04 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.fictional half point for April,
10 points for wishful thinking
(09-06-2026, 10:20 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Ahh yes, I love the classic "the day of St Someone, in this current century and this year" :)
It's quite interesting how this changed. It's a bit like today, if you'd say "the treaty was signed on Christmas Day of 1996". In a narrative of the events, nobody would find that choice of words unusual. In fact, at least in Western culture, it would be weird if you just say that an event took place on the 25th of December without mentioning Christmas.
So in the same way we have Christmas as a point of reference in the year, they had a lot more of "named" days that people were apparently supposed to know. It must have been more meaningful for them to refer to the Saint's name than just the month and the number. But we'd have a lot more data if they didn't :)
(10-06-2026, 10:23 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So in the same way we have Christmas as a point of reference in the year, they had a lot more of "named" days that people were apparently supposed to know. It must have been more meaningful for them to refer to the Saint's name than just the month and the number. But we'd have a lot more data if they didn't
In Italy the "onomastico" used to be more important than your birthday. That is the day of the saint after whom you were named -- so St. John's day if you are named John, etc. That was usually the day when you had a party etc.
Here in Brazil people still commemorate the days of St. John the Baptist, St. Peter, and St. Paul in June. They started as summer festivals in Portugal, but here they fall in winter. The main items in those commemorations here included the neighborhood gathering around large bonfires in the evening, firecrackers and fireworks, sky lanterns, square dances in stereotypical peasants' costumes (with a "maestro" shouting orders in broken French, like "anarriê" for "en arrière"), and a hot brew of rum, ginger, cloves, and cinnamon. Nothing religious; pure folklore.
All he
I'm playing around with some of the data and made a map for location vs rating. It's a bit
experimental right now.
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The higher scores in NE france are clear to see, and not a surprise at this point. Places like metz and tournai have average ratings of above 6.5. Picardy region, hainaut and ghent all sit above 6 on average.
However, I did not realise that we have literally zero confimed entries from the entirety of SW france. We also seem to lack any from luxembourg, the west of switzerland (other than an erroneous entry that has placed "provence" onto the city of provence) and NW Italy. Do we need to seriously up the search for such examples before drawing conclusions? Maybe from Spanish, Swiss, or Italian libraries, or somewhere else. I don't know why so few have been found from those places as the searches that have been used to find entries have not been region or even library specific.
These could be big blind spots, and it may be that scores will also happen to rise in other areas as you move away from regions dominated by "standard" french.