Quantitative Methods for the Analysis of Medieval Calendars

The article explores the uses of quantitative approaches used in textual scholarship in studying large amounts of medieval hand-written calendars. Calendars are exceedingly numerous among medieval manuscript sources but have been studied surprisingly little in spite of the insights they offer into the values and ideals of the communities using and updating them. Moreover, the study of a large number of calendars helps shape patterns of cultural contacts, for instance. The constant copying and modifying of a medieval calendar is analogous to copying of other manuscripts by hand in the Middle Ages. However, the overall pattern of influences was much more complex than in traditional copying, and new quantitative methods are called for. In this article, we propose three different quantitative methods for the analysis of medieval calendars. They provide a scholar with sound hypotheses on the relationships between a large number of calendars, on the broader context of an individual calendar's contents as well as on the single feasts that can be indicative of the origin of one or several calendars.