10 July 2007

However, this ‘time object’ has little in common with the unique books of hours of the same period, which were elaborately illuminated by hand. Rather, the small block book (contained in Cod. Guelf. 1189 Helmst.) features simple woodcuts and was intended for mass production and everyday use. Its small format (14–14.5 × 9.5–10.5 cm) and small number of folia (180v–189r) are likewise unassuming in appearance. Nevertheless, the item was a genuine ‘multifunctional tool’, which shows the forms in which time became relevant in real-life everyday contexts in pre-modern northern Europe.

The first thing one notices is the simple depictions of typical seasonal activities, such as the image shown above (harvesting grapes in autumn – also depicted is the zodiacal sign of Scorpio, October, fol. 186v. HAB). The images show people chopping wood in spring, working in the fields, harvesting grapes in autumn and butchering animals in winter. There was a set time for everything, and the varied rhythms of nature determined what could, should or needed to be done at any given time. For example, the calendar shows that animals should be slaughtered in winter, as low temperatures meant that the meat would take longer to spoil.

On paging through the volume, the next thing that draws attention are the zodiacal signs on the individual calendar pages. These signs were important for an entirely different reason, because in pre-modern and early modern times, even medical interventions required the right ‘timing’. For example, bloodletting could not simply be performed on an arbitrary body part at an arbitrary time. Doing it right depended, above all, on the apparent motion of the sun, which was thought to move through the various zodiacal signs over the course of the year. The possible complex interrelationships between the position of the celestial bodies and the human body were a focus of inquiry in universities during the 15th century. Based on this inquiry, the ‘Zodiac Man’ (188v) depicted in the calendar showed users at a glance where bloodletting should be performed at a given time of year. There was also a special bloodletting calendar that allowed the site to be chosen with even greater accuracy (189r).

The calendar also allowed users to easily determine the daylight hours. Special symbols placed in a certain sequence about every three weeks indicated the length of the day when read in a certain manner.

Integrating them in the calendar made sense: in order to plan their working processes, people needed to have an idea of how much working time was available at a certain point in the year. Their own earnings or other people’s wages were one of the crucial concerns that might depend on such calculations. Nor would this kind of measurement of time have been in any way unusual – precise measurement of time in the context of finances, trade and work was widespread in the 15th century. But despite the spread of mechanical striking clocks for telling the time, working hours still depended on the constantly changing length of the day and could change up to eleven times per year in industrial contexts, from seven and a half hours in winter to eleven and a half hours in summer. The hours of daylight given in the calendar range from eight in winter to sixteen in summer.

The most striking aspect of the calendar is the religious dimension. The block book begins with detailed instructions for calculating the dates of Easter and Lent, which anyone who wanted to lead a pious life had to be able to do. The small drawings along the upper edge of the calendar visualise the most important dates in the Christian calendar, showing small figures or the typical attributes associated with the particular saints depicted. Unlike the movable feasts of the Easter cycle, which depended on the movements of the heavenly bodies, the feast days of the many saints were fixed and fell on the same dates each year.

However, calculating the date of Easter was crucial in more than just the religious sphere. Important recurring secular events – such as the payment of rents, leaseholds and pensions or the dates of major markets – often coincided with the high Christian feasts around Easter. The same was true of the immovable feast days of the saints, which served as chronological anchors for coordinating communal life as a whole. In all these respects, it was critically important to know the dates, as penalties could be incurred for overdue payments.

All in all, this complex object points to a deliberate and even abstract engagement with time in the pre-modern era. It shows the regular cycles that affected people’s everyday lives – for example, the (perceived) course of the stars, the sun and the moon; the dates of the liturgical calendar – and the temporalities that were brought to the observer’s awareness through them. What becomes particularly clear is that the pre-modern era was anything but a ‘timeless time’ in which ‘round about’ was always sufficient. Rather, there was a powerful need to know the ‘right time’ – to know when specific events were taking place or ought to take place. In this way, the calendar shows how the interplay of different man-made and natural rhythms lent structure and meaning to pre-modern life.

The ‘Time Objects’ study day took place on 17/18 February 2025 at the Herzog August Bibliothek as a collaborative event between the project ‘The Herzog August Bibliothek in 100 Objects’ and the project ‘Medieval and Early Modern Time Objects in Northern Germany’, sponsored by Einstein Center Chronoi. Learn more ...

References

Champion, Matthew S. The Fullness of Time: Temporalities of the Fifteenth-Century Low Countries. Chicago, 2017.

Le Goff, Jacques. Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago, 1980. Originally published as Pour un autre Moyen Age: Temps, travail et culture en Occident. Paris, 1977.

Stijnman, Ad. ‘Ein unbekanntes Blockbuch in Cod. Guelf. 1189 Helms. der Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel’. Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, 84 (2009), 79–94.

Thompson, Edward P. ‘Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism’. Past & Present, 38/1 (1967), 56–97.