'A very curious Almanack'

One side of the almanac contains signs of the zodiac alternating with illustrations of the corresponding labour of the month. Mostly agricultural, their timing in the year can provide clues to the climate where the manuscript was produced.

In February under the sign of Pisces, this farmer is digging to prepare the ground for his crops. A hard task which would have been made impossible this early in the year in a northern climate where the ground would still be frozen.

This farmer tending to his grape vines in March supports the idea that the almanac is from a temperate climate suited to vineyards. In the middle ages vineyards were found throughout southern England, usually on large, rich manorial or monastic estates.

By September, the grapes are ready to be picked under the watchful sign of Libra. Grapes ripened earlier in the summer in Mediterranean regions.

The agricultural labours therefore support the idea that the almanac represents a farming year in the mild south of England.

The liturgical calendar seems to indicate more particularly that the calendar was made in Kent: 
it includes four Archbishops of Canterbury, including Kent's best known saint, Thomas Becket, who appears twice. Here he features (3rd from top) for his Feast of translation on 7 July

The inclusion of saints with regional significance is an even clearer indication of the almanac's likely origins. Mildred, a Kentish Anglo-Saxon princess, Abbess of Minster-in-Thanet whose relics were enshrined at Canterbury, was particularly venerated in her home county Kent.

Recent non-invasive spectroscopy done by Team Pigment of Durham and Northumbria Universities has revealed that the yellow pigment colouring Leo the lion is orpiment, an arsenic-based colour that fell out of favour with scribes by the 15th century.

The twins of Gemini sport orpiment yellow garments and clubs. Lead-tin yellow, which was brighter and more stable, mostly replaced orpiment by 1400, giving the manuscript a likely date no later than the 14th century.

The liturgical calendar uses a dot, bracket and circle cipher to represent the numbers 1, 5 and 10. The encoded table shows the date of the new moon for four 19-year cycles. This was key for dating moveable feasts like Easter.

This method of dating the new moon was based on classical Greek astronomy and used in other popular calendars from the period, it was not secret. Ciphers were not a secret code but rather a readily decipherable language among the scribes who may have also found it fun!

The entries in medieval calendars were colour-coded. In the finest almanacs, the most important days were distinguished by gold (not used in MS/45). Next, came blue and/or red, then green. The rest was in ordinary black/brown ink. The order reflected the cost of pigments. 

Again based on the 19-year lunar cycle it provides complex data to calculate information year-on-year.

The day of the month is marked by Arabic numerals, a dominical letter and the Julian Calendar (nones, ides and kalends, the last marked with a large distinctive KL) and a 'golden number' for indicating the date of the new moon each year in the cycle.

The new moon dates encoded in the liturgical calendar appear here in normal numerals under the the shapes of a crescent moon. The two columns under ‘sol’ show the position of the sun in  degrees, 0-29, within each sign of the zodiac (degrees black, minutes red).

‘Nox’ indicates the duration of a half night 'Dai' half a day - given in hours (red) and minutes (black) in columns topped by faces. The values  will always total twelve and together allow for the calculation of the time between sunrise and sunset.