Saints in English Kalendars before A.D. 1100

Medievalists expect volumes in the Bradshaw Society series (now published by Boydell & Brewer) to contain newly edited medieval liturgical texts, such as missals, breviaries, litanies, and so on. The work reviewed here, however, is somewhat unusual in its purpose as a supplement and companion to an existing HBS edition,Francis Wormald's English kalendars before A.D.1100 (HBS 72, London, 1934). Wormald had promised an introduction, notes, and indices to follow in a subsequent volume, which never appeared. Rebecca Rushforth's welcome publication compensates in several ways. The core of the book is a set of twelve "synoptic tables," each table displaying in spreadsheet format the essential contents (not the precise wording) of all the entries for feast days in a given month from twenty-seven surviving calendars and calendar fragments of Anglo-Saxon provenance (Wormald printed only nineteen calendars). The twelve tables are preceded by a valuable introduction to Anglo-Saxon manuscript calendars in general; the Easter tables that often accompany them in the manuscripts; and the criteria for, and pitfalls of, dating and localizing manuscripts by means of saints' feasts and computus chronologies. Rushforth prefaces the tables with descriptions of individual calendars in their manuscript contexts and with up-to-date bibliographies of published scholarship, supplemented by her fresh inspections of many of the manuscripts.

The volume's considerable usefulness as a research tool is further enhanced by its large print format on A4 paper (210 mm x 297 mm) and by the addition of thirteen foldout sheets of A3 paper, containing the synoptic tables proper (between pp. 58 and 59, but not reflected in the LOC catalog citation). The two adjacent A3 sheets devoted to each month can be unfolded side by side to allow uninterrupted perusal of all the entries for the month as found in all twenty-seven manuscripts, arranged in columns across an expanse of 297 x 840 mm (approx. 111/2" x 30"). Anyone who has tried to research the observance of one or more saints' feast days in Anglo-Saxon England by thumbing laboriously through Wormald's nineteen separate calendars will appreciate the marvelous convenience of Rushforth's tables, with all their data on the feast days in Wormald's texts (plus those of eight additional calendars he omitted) and also her exhaustive "Index nominum,"which greatly facilitates the tracking of individual saints among the calendars. The eight calendars omitted by or unknown to Wormald, but incorporated in Rushforth's tables, are from the following manuscripts: London, B.L. Egerton 3314; Munich, Hauptstaatsarchiv Raritäten-Selekt 108; Oxford, Bodleian Library Junius 27 (S.C. 5139); Paris, B.N. lat.7299, 10062, and 10837; Regensburg-Hauzenstein, Gräflich Walderdorffsche Bibliothek (no number); and Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale Y.6 (274).

Inevitably in a complex production of this sort there are slips and inconsistencies: for example, p. 2,"something of which a sense is necessary" must mean "some sense of which is necessary," and the reference in note 10 to "the table on p. 00" should refer to p. 17. Some readers will also find it peculiar that many saints' names in the tables are partially anglicized, preserving the Insular Latin spellings of the originals, but omitting their Latin genitive suffixes: for example, Audomari is rendered "Audomar" (not Omer), Berhtini/Bertini becomes "Berhtin" or "Bertin," and Cuthberhti becomes "Cuthberht." Some other saints' names, however, are completely anglicized in modern spelling: for example, Mauricii/Mauritii becomes "Maurice"; and we also encounter "Andrew," "Gregory," "Luke," "Mary," and "Matthew." However, the Archangel Michael (September 29) is rendered variously as "Michahel," "Micahel," and "Michael" (but "Michael" in column 7 of table IX should be "Michahel"). A serious proofreading problem affects the entries for the Cross feast on September 14, which Rushforth renders in all twenty-seven calendars as "Exultation," rather than the expected "Exaltation." But of the calendars checked in Wormald's edition, only three actually have Exultatio; the rest have, more correctly, Exaltatio.