Calendars in the Making: The Origins of Calendars from the Roman Empire to the Later Middle Ages

312 Pages·2021·5.902 MB·English

by  Sacha Stern

Calendars in the Making
Time, Astronomy, and Calendars
texts and studies
Editors
Charles Burnett
Sacha Stern
Editorial Board
Dáibhí Ó Cróinín – Benno van Dalen – Gad Freudenthal – Tony Grafton
Leofranc Holford-Strevens – Bernard R. Goldstein – Alexander Jones
Daryn Lehoux – Jörg Rüpke – Julio Samsó – Shlomo Sela – John Steele
volume 10
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/tac
Calendars
in the Making
The Origins of Calendars from the Roman Empire
to the Later Middle Ages
Edited by
Sacha Stern
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Detail from Berlin Staatsbibliothek, or. quart. 211, fol. 1r. Arabic Ephemeris for the
year 1804 CE with dates in the Arabic, Coptic, Syriac, Julian, Persian (Yazdgird), Hebrew, and Jalālī calendars
(Public Domain Mark 1.0; image: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – PK).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Stern, Sacha, editor.
Title: Calendars in the making : the origins of calendars from the Roman
 Empire to the later Middle Ages / edited by Sacha Stern.
Other titles: Origins of calendars from the Roman Empire to the later
 Middle Ages
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2021] | Series: Time, astronomy, and
 calendars, 2211-632X ; volume 10 | Includes bibliographical references
 and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021010841 (print) | LCCN 2021010842 (ebook) | ISBN
 9789004459632 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004459694 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Calendar – Europe – History – To 1500. |
 Calendar – Rome – History.
Classification: LCC CE57 .C35 2021 (print) | LCC CE57 (ebook) | DDC
 529/.3094 – dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010841
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010842
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 2211-632X
ISBN 978-90-04-45963-2 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-45969-4 (e-book)
Copyright 2021 by Sacha Stern. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for
re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com.
This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
Contents
List of Figures vii
Notes on Contributors viii
Abbreviations x
Introduction 1
Sacha Stern
1 The Seven-Day Week in the Roman Empire
Origins, Standardization, and Diffusion 10
Ilaria Bultrighini and Sacha Stern
1 The Jewish Sabbath Week 11
2 The Roman Planetary Week 22
3 The Standardization of the Seven-Day Week: From Ptolemaic Egypt
to the Early Roman Empire 39
4 The Seven-Day Week in the Later Roman Empire and Late Antiquity
(Third–Sixth Century CE): Standardization and Diffusion 47
2 Calendars of the Greek East under Rome
A New Look at the Hemerologia Tables 80
Ilaria Bultrighini
1 Introduction 80
2 The Julian Calendar and Its Diffusion in the Roman East:
The Calendar of Asia 84
3 Equating Calendars in the Roman Empire 89
4 The Hemerologia Manuscripts: Times, Contexts, and Modes of
Composition and Trasmission 97
5 The Hemerologia: Functions and Purposes 99
6 New External Evidence since Kubitschek’s 1915 Study 102
Appendix: List of New Sources 105
3 The Origin(s) of the Medieval Calendar Tradition in the Latin West 129
Immo Warntjes
1 Introduction 129
2 Calendrical Knowledge in Seventh-Century Ireland 138
3 The Zürich (Nivelles) Calendar 148
4 The Computistical Data of the Zürich (Nivelles) Calendar 157
5 Conclusion: Towards a Generic Model 176
vi Contents
4 The Chronology of Early Islam
The Ancient Calendar at Mecca and the Origin of the Islamic
Calendar 188
François de Blois
1 The Institution of the Islamic Calendar 190
2 Intercalation and ‘Postponement’ 191
3 The Reconstruction of the Ancient Arab Calendar 193
4 The nasīʾ Formula 199
5 When Was Intercalation Abandonned? 204
6 Recapitulation 207
5 The Institution of the Jalālī Calendar in 1079 CE and Its Cohabitation
with the Older Persian Calendar 210
Johannes Thomann
1 Introduction 210
2 The Persian Calendar in Achaemenid, Sasanian and Early
Islamic Times 211
3 Attempts to Reform the Persian Calendar before the
Jalalī Reform 212
4 The Reform of Malikshāh 214
5 Documentary Evidence for the Jalālī Calendar 215
6 The Jalālī Calendar in a Broader Context of Time Practices 222
Appendix 1: Arabic Texts 224
Appendix 2: Persian Texts 233
Appendix 3: Turkish Texts 238
6 The 247-Year Jewish Calendar Cycle
Origins, Diffusion, and Diversity 245
Nadia Vidro
1 The 247-Year Calendar Cycle, Its Origins and History 246
2 Attitudes towards the Cycle 250
3 The Format of 247-Year Cycles 252
4 The Production of 247-Year Cycles 256
5 Corrections and Use 261
6 Public Enquiries 265
7 The Status of the 247-Year Cycle in Relation to the
Calculated Calendar 269
8 Conclusions 271
Appendix 1: 247-Year Cycles in Different Geo-Cultural Areas 272
Appendix 2: List of Manuscript Sources 281
Index of Calendars and Related Terms 293
General Index 294
Figures
1.1 Fasti Sabini (CIL IX 4769), with permission of the Center for Epigraphical
and Palaeographical Studies, Ohio State University 28
1.2 Calendar Codex of Filocalus, 354 CE (Ms Vatican Lat. 9135): day of Saturn
(Saturday), with permission of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana 37
1.3 Trajan’s Baths parapegma (IIt XIII 2, 308–9, no. 56), with permission of the
Martin von Wagner Museum of Wuerzburg University 53
1.4 Tombstone of Zacharias, Avdat, Israel, photograph I. Bultrighini 63
2.1 Hemerologion, month of September (Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea
Laurenziana, Ms. Plut. 28.26, fol. 49r), courtesy of MiBACT 81
3.1 Burgerbibliothek Bern, Cod. 108, fol. 1r, with permission of
Burgerbibliothek Bern 133
3.2 Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 321 (647), p. 97, www.e-codices.ch 144
3.3 St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 225, p. 120, www.e-codices.ch 146
3.4–5 Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Ms. Rh. 30, fols. 168r–168v, with permission of the
Zentralbibliothek Zürich 158
5.1 Berlin Staatsbibliothek, or. quart. 211, fol. 1r, Public Domain Mark 1.0 221
6.1 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Laud. Or. 166, fol. 147r, with permission of the
Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford 253
6.2 Cambridge University Library, T-S Misc.25.29v, with permission of the
Syndics of the Cambridge University Library 273
6.3 Cambridge University Library, Ms Add. 642, fol. 186v, with permission of the
Syndics of the Cambridge University Library 276
Notes on Contributors
Ilaria Bultrighini
is Honorary Research Fellow at UCL. She is an ancient historian specializing in
epigraphy and the social, religious, and cultural history of Greek and Roman
Antiquity. After completing her studies in Italy, she held fellowships at the
Harvard University Center for Hellenic Studies, the Deutsches Archäologisches
Institut, and the Einstein Center Chronoi at Freie Universität in Berlin. She
also worked as Research Fellow on major research projects at UCL and the
Institute of Classical Studies (London). Her research interests include the his-
tory of non-urban areas of the Athenian polis, time reckoning, astrology, and
the Greek East under Roman rule.
François de Blois
is a scholar of Semitic and Iranian languages and literatures, and of the history
and religious history of the Near East and Central Asia in pre-modern times.
He studied at Tübingen University, and has taught and researched in London
(mainly SOAS and UCL), Cambridge, Hamburg, and Princeton. He has worked
on the history of calendars and eras of Iran (ancient Iranian, Zoroastrian,
Bactrian) and the Arabian peninsula (ancient South Arabian and Islamic).
His most recent book is Studies in the Chronology of the Bactrian documents
from Northern Afghanistan, co-authored by Nicholas Sims-Williams (Vienna
2018). He is currently completing a new edition and translation of al-Biruni’s
Chronology of Ancient Nations.
Sacha Stern
DPhil. Oxon. 1992, is Professor of Jewish Studies at University College London.
An ancient historian by training, he has published several books on calendars
and time reckoning in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, including Calendar
and Community: A History of the Jewish Calendar (2001), Time and Process in
Ancient Judaism (2003), Calendars in Antiquity (Oxford 2012), and The Jewish
Calendar Controversy of 921/2 (Leiden 2019). Since 2008 he has been Principal
Investigator of five research projects at UCL on calendars in late Antiquity and
the Middle Ages.
Notes on Contributors ix
Johannes Thomann
Ph.D. (1992), researches at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies,
University of Zürich. He specializes in the history of sciences in the premodern
Islamic world, particularly the history of astronomy. In recent years, his main
occupation has been the edition of Arabic astronomical documents, but he
has also published on Arabic and Turkish folk literature. Recent publications
on chronology include ‘Tools of Time’ in A. Pelliteri et al. (ed.), Re-defining a
space of encounter (Leuven 2019), and ‘Ritual Time, Civil Time, and Cosmic
Time’, in KronoScope 20 (2020).
Nadia Vidro
is Senior Research Fellow at UCL. Her main research interests include the
intellectual history of the Jews in the medieval Near East, and Jewish manu-
scripts. Her PhD (University of Cambridge, 2010) was on the history of medie-
val grammatical traditions. In her current research she focuses on the history
of Jewish calendars and the socio-historical implications of calendar diversity.
Her publications on Jewish calendars include ‘The origins of the 247-year cal-
endar cycle’, Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism, 17/1 (2017), and
‘R. Naḥshon Gaon – calendar scholar or pseudo-author?’, Jewish Studies
Quarterly, 26/1 (2019).
Immo Warntjes
is Ussher Assistant Professor in Early Medieval Irish History at Trinity College
Dublin. His research interests include the Easter controversy of the first eight
centuries of Christianity, and the transmission of ideas and scientific thought
in the early medieval Latin West. He is the author of The Munich Computus:
text & translations. Irish computistics between Isidore of Seville and the Venerable
Bede and its reception in Carolingian times (Stuttgart, 2010), and co-editor of a
series of conference proceedings on the science of computus in Late Antiquity
and the early Middle Ages.
Abbreviations
ACO E. Schwartz, J. Straub, and R. Schieffer (eds), Acta conciliorum
oecumenicorum (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1914–1984).
AE L’Année Épigraphique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1888–).
BGU Aegyptische Urkunden aus den Königlichen (later Staatlichen)
Museen zu Berlin, Griechische Urkunden (Berlin: Weidmann,
1895–2014).
CAG Carte Archéologique de la Gaule (Paris: Académie des
inscriptions et belles lettres, 1988–).
CCAG Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum (Brussels:
Lamertin, 12 vols, 1899–1953).
CEL P. Cugusi, Corpus epistularum Latinarum papyris tabulis ostracis
servatarum, 3 vols (Florence: Gonnelli, 1992–2002).
C. Gloss. Biling. J. Kramer (ed.), Glossaria bilinguia in papyris et membranis
reperta (Bonn: Habelt, 1983).
ChLA Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, 49 vols (Basel: Dietikon, 1954–1998).
CIGP P. Kovács, Corpus inscriptionum Graecarum Pannonicarum
(Hungarian Polis Studies 8; Debrecen: University of Debrecen,
2001).
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,
1862–).
CLA E.A. Lowe et al., Codices Latini Antiquiores: a Palaeographical
Guide to Latin Manuscripts Prior to the Ninth Century (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1934).
CPJ V.A. Tcherikover (ed.) Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press: 1957–1964).
CPL R. Cavenaile (ed.), Corpus Papyrorum Latinarum (Wiesbaden:
O. Harrassowitz, 1958).
DNP Der Neue Pauly: Enzyklopaedie der Antike (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler,
1996–).
FIM W. Boppert, Die frühchristlichen Inschriften des
Mittelrheingebietes (Mainz am Rhein: P. v. Zabern, 1971).
FITrier H. Merten, Katalog der frühchristlichen Inschriften des
bischöflichen Dom- und Diözesanmuseums Trier (Trier:
Bischöfliches Dom- und Diözesanmuseum Trier, 1990).