The influence of the later Martyrologies upon the mediaeval Kalendars of the West is marked. Bede’s valuable work is the outcome of honest and patient research; many days, however, were left blank—an offence to the professional Martyrologist. It was much enlarged, about one hundred years after his death, by one Florus, who (with some differences of opinion) is generally supposed to have been a sub-deacon of Lyons. Ado, bishop of Vienne, some twenty or thirty years later than Florus, prepared an extensive Martyrology, which, together with the work of Florus, was in turn utilised and abridged about A.D. 875 by Usuard, a priest and Benedictine monk of the monastery of St Germain-des-Prés, then outside the walls of Paris, who undertook his work at the instance of the Emperor Charles the Bald. The book when completed was dedicated to the Emperor; and before long Usuard’s Martyrology came in general to supersede previous attempts of the same kind. Its influence on subsequent mediaeval Kalendars is unmistakeable. Usuard came to be adopted almost universally for use.
In monasteries and cathedral churches it was a common practice to read aloud each day, sometimes in chapter, sometimes in choir, after Prime, the part of the Martyrology which had reference to the commemorations of the day or of the following day, together with notices of obits and anniversaries of members of the ecclesiastical corporation and of benefactors, which on the following day would be observed. Indeed, in later times the name Martyrology is not infrequently applied to the mere lists of such obits and anniversaries. The mediaeval martyrologies are generally Usuard’s, but they have local additions.
The student who desires to know something of other early Martyrologies, such as that which is called the Hieronymian, the Lesser Roman, and the Martyrology of Rabanus, bishop of Mainz, may consult Kellner (pp. 401-410) and Mr Birk’s article, Martyrology, in D. C. A. Since the publication of the latter article the Henry Bradshaw Society has issued, under the competent editorship of Mr Whitley Stokes, the metrical Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee (about A.D. 800) and the metrical Martyrology of Gorman (latter part of the twelfth century), which are of much value in illustrating the hagiology of the Irish Church. The scanty materials for the study of Scottish mediaeval Kalendars (all of them late) have been gathered together by Bishop A. P. Forbes in his Kalendars of Scottish Saints, 1872. The Martiloge in Englysshe printed by Wynkyn de Worde (1526) and reprinted by the Henry Bradshaw Society (1893) is the Martyrology of the Church of Sarum, with many additions.
By the tenth century the general features of Kalendars throughout Europe are substantially identical as regards the greater days of observance. But differences, often of much interest, arise through different churches commemorating saints of local or national celebrity. It often happens that by this means alone we are able to determine, or to conjecture with considerable probability, the place or region where some liturgical manuscript had its origin. When we find in a Kalendar a large proportion of more or less obscure saints belonging to the Rhine valley, we may be confident that the manuscript belongs to that region of Germany. When an English Kalendar contains no notice of St Osmund we may be sure that it did not originate at Salisbury. When we find St Margaret on Nov. 16, St Fillan on Jan. 9, St Triduana on Oct. 8, and St Regulus on March 30, there is an overwhelming probability that the manuscript belongs to Scotland. In the Kalendar of York we find St Aidan (Aug. 31), St Hilda of Whitby (Aug. 25), and St Paulinus, the archbishop (Oct. 10), but these are all wanting to the Sarum Kalendar. St Kunnegund, the German Empress, who died in A.D. 1040, figures largely in German Kalendars. Sometimes we find marked not only her obit, but her canonization, and her translation; and at Bamberg the octave of her translation was observed. Outside Germany she is all but unknown. St Louis is naturally an important personage in French Kalendars; and he appears as far north as the Kalendars of Scandinavia. He never obtained a place in any of the leading ‘uses’ of England. On the other hand, at an earlier date continental influences on ecclesiastical affairs (not unknown before the Conquest) became potent when Norman churchmen poured into this country after A.D. 1066, and obtained places of the highest dignity. It is thus probably that St Batildis, wife of Clovis II (Jan. 30), St Sulpicius, bishop of Bourges (Jan. 17), St Medard, bishop of Noyon, with St Gildard, bishop of Rouen (June 8), and St Andoen, another bishop of Rouen (Aug. 24), obtained days in our English Kalendars. All these are absent from the Anglo-Saxon Kalendars printed by Hampson[134].
Again, occasionally a Church Kalendar exhibits features which may be attributed to merely accidental circumstances. Relics of some saint belonging to another and distant region may happen to have been presented to some church; and thereupon his name is inserted in its Kalendars. It is thus, with much probability, that Mr Warren accounts for the appearance of the names of one northern bishop and two northern abbots—Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne,—Benedict, first abbot, and Ceolfrith, second abbot of Wearmouth—in the Kalendar of the Leofric Missal. In William of Malmesbury, we read that in A.D. 703 relics of these saints were brought to Glastonbury. And in the case of two of these, Aidan (Aug. 31) and Ceolfrith (Sept. 25), the Leofric Kalendar adds to each name the word, ‘in Glaestonia.’ Other evidence makes it all but certain that Glastonbury and its history affected the Leofric Kalendar. At Cologne, which claims to possess the heads of the Three Kings, one cannot wonder that their Translation (July 23) is a ‘summum festum.’ In the Kalendars of the Orthodox Church of the East the deposition of relics is frequently the occasion of the annual commemoration of the event, and the insertion of a festival in the Menology. In all countries translations of the bodies of saints are found entered; and when the dates of such translations are known from history, we are at once enabled to say of any particular manuscript service-book that the Kalendar, in which some particular translation is marked prima manu, was written after the known date. On the other side, when we find any important festival absent, or, as is frequently the case, inserted in a later handwriting, the strong presumption is raised that the original Kalendar belongs to a time before the establishment of the festival. Thus, the absence of the Conception of St Mary (Dec. 8) from a Kalendar suggests that it is earlier than the last quarter of the eleventh century; while the appearance of Corpus Christi goes to determine a Kalendar to be later than A.D. 1260.
From what has been said, it will seen that, even apart from the style of the handwriting, the formation of the various letters, the manner of punctuation, and other palaeographical indications, the mere contents of a Kalendar will often help the student to make a good conjecture as to both the place of the origin of a manuscript and the time when it was penned.
Kalendar of Durham Psalter (September)
Jesus College, Cambridge (MS. Q. B. 6). Cent. xii.