Calendaria Bambergensia. Bamberger Einblattkalender des 15. bis 19. Jahrhunderts von der Inkunabelzeit bis zur Säkularisation by Josef H. Biller (review)

The Franconian city of Bamberg has a proud history. The cathedral dates from 1002 and the diocese was established in 1007. It was also one of the earliest cities to have a printing press—the 36-line Bible (ISTC ib00527000) may have been produced there around 1460. So there is a rich heritage to celebrate, and it has been a splendid idea for the Bamberg State Library to mark the millennium of the diocese by encouraging publication of this magnificent book: a comprehensive study and richly illustrated catalogue of the library's impressive collection of printed broadside calendars associated with the diocese, the prince-bishops, the cathedral chapter and other institutions in the city from the earliest times down to 1803 when the religious houses of Bavaria were secularized. Researching these calendars has been a preoccupation of Josef Biller since the mid-1970s. Over the years he has published more than twenty studies of calendars from various ecclesiastical jurisdictions, including Augsburg, Eichstätt, Salzburg, Fulda, Kempten, Freising, Würzburg, and others, but this magisterial study of the collection held in Bamberg is a real triumph which will set new standards in the cataloguing and description of such neglected material. Biller describes his study as a Kalendariographie rather than as a bibliography for reasons which he sets out in the introduction. Essentially, the form the calendars took was determined by the body that authorized, commissioned, or designed them. Who the printers were or where they were printed was much less important.

Biller's work fills two heavy, hard-bound volumes running to a total of eight hundred pages. The study is divided into five parts, the first two of which are found in Volume 1. The first part, itself lavishly illustrated, comprises a wide-ranging introduction to the subject. The focus is on broadside wall calendars adorned with the arms of the ecclesiastical, secular, patrician or other authority by which they were issued; they include such bodies as the prince-bishoprics of Mainz, Trier, Cologne, Würzburg, Bamberg, Salzburg, and Freising, other church institutions, sovereign orders such as the Knights of Malta and the Teutonic Knights, municipal authorities such as those of the Free Cities of Augsburg or Frankfurt, Swiss Cantons, and various territorial institutions. Altogether Biller has identified official calendars issued by 115 different bodies located in the Holy Roman Empire, Switzerland, and Hungary. The purpose of such heraldic calendars was not only to provide useful information such as dates of church festivals and astronomical or astrological information but also to display the pomp and power of the body that issued them. Biller goes on to discuss the longevity of such calendars, the many terms that have been used to describe them (such as Stiftskalender, Hohe-Domstifts-Wappenkalender, Ordo divinorum, Heiligenordnung, Calendarium ecclesiasticum, Ephemerides, etc.), how they were produced (typography and woodcut, engraving or etching), print runs, distribution and sale, their structure, content and design, the designers, printers and other craftsmen involved. He also devotes an important section of his introduction to discussing the rarity of these calendars: he singles out the state libraries in Munich, Augsburg, and Bamberg, the Herzogin-Anna-Amalia-Bibliothek at Weimar, the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the British Library (with eleven, dating from 1684, 1697, 1699, 1733, 1747–50, 1778, 1781, and 1786) as having notable holdings, whereas the great libraries in Berlin, Vienna, Frankfurt, and Leipzig hold very few examples, while the few that survive in private collections tend to be inaccessible, and whereas at one time examples would turn up in the book trade (Drugulin at...