This is Leofranc Holford-Strevens's Typepad Profile.
Join Typepad and start following Leofranc Holford-Strevens's activity
Leofranc Holford-Strevens
Oxford
Classical scholar of wide interests
Interests: Classical languages,modern languages,history,literatyre,computistics,musicology
Recent Activity
The ancient Egyptian calendar had twelve months of thirty days each followed by five days 'on the year', which the Greeks called epagomenai, 'brought in'. After a failed experiment in the third century BC at adding a sixth such day every four years, the task was achieved, initially in Alexandria, by Augustus; before then, the old Roman calendar of four 31-day months, seven 29-day months, and a 28-day February whose last four or five days were displaced every few years by a 27-day Interkalaris, had been replaced by Julius Caesar, whose leap-day, ante diem bix sextum Kalendas Martias (added for the first decades are his death every third instead of every fourth year by mistake), to judge by official sources properly followed the normal a.d. VI = 24th but was popularly misunderstood as preceding it, whence the custom of celebrating St Matthias on the 25th in leap year except in Norway and Iceland, which kept hom on the 24th; Pope Alexander III ruled both practices permissible.The Greek church, which had given up Roman reckoning by Kalends, Nones, and Ides, simply numbering the days continuously from 1 to 28, 29, 30, or 31 as the case might be, assigned the 29th to St Cassian, culted only every fourth year (allegedly as punishmen for being the last to show up for assignment of duties); the 29th was also the obvious leap-day in Western civil calendars basd on the forward not the backward count.
The Leaping Saint: 29th February in the Middle Ages
A close up of a volvelle, or wheel-chart, Harley MS 3719, f. 156r Today is a Leap Day. People born on this day are known as ‘leaplings’. This bonus day only comes around every four years to accommodate the fact that the solar year is a pesky 365.2422 days long. Throughout human history there...
I suppose now someone moved or instructed to draw or paint a stereotypical Asian would reproduce something vaguely Chinese-looking, but not I imagine at that time. And a Turk in a turban might have been thought inappropriate after the Ottoman conquests in Europe. Just speculation.
The Case of the Disappearing Ships
In 2013 we were pleased to tell you about a ‘new life’ for one of our Royal manuscripts: a banner-sized detail of a 15th century mappa mundi, which originally greeted visitors to our exhibition Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination, was repurposed to brilliant effect by Turner prize-win...
The Bedford hours are indeed beautiful, but textually the Athelstan Psalter is the most interesting.
Help Us Choose our 2016 Calendar
It has long been a tradition on our blog, hailing back to the distant days of 2011, to highlight pages from a medieval calendar throughout the year. We have been privileged to bring you the Isabella Breviary, the Hours of Joanna of Castile (or if you prefer, the Hours of Joanna the Mad), the Go...
Magna Carta was extorted from the King by disloyal subjects and quashed by the Pope. In an age when the Sovereign was God's captain, steward, deputy-elect (so the Bishop of Carlisle in Richard II) and the Pope's right to interfere in English affairs was denied by all but extremists, what was there to like?
Little Ado About Something Rather Significant: William Shakespeare and Magna Carta
If you were writing a play about the reign of King John, what would be the one scene you could not dispense with? The sealing of Magna Carta at Runnymede, perhaps? Yet, this is exactly the scene that the nation’s greatest playwright William Shakespeare forgot to mention in his play The Life and ...
The papal Bull annulling the Charter.
What's Your Favourite Magna Carta Item?
A group of us were recently discussing what is our favourite item in the British Library's Magna Carta exhibition. Mine changes every day, but I had recently plumped in a Twitter Q&A for the John Wilkes teapot, on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Meanwhile, Alex Lock, our researcher on ...
The first for ['in' is US] 800 years, or the first ever? We were told that they had never been in the same room even when they were being made.
Julian Harrison (British Library) writes: They had never been together before, so this was the first time ever.
Magna Carta Under The Proverbial Microscope
Last Wednesday, a select group of scholars and other interested observers were the first people in 800 years to compare the four surviving 1215 Magna Carta manuscripts side-by-side. This one-off event was held at the British Library, and was part of the Magna Carta unification, sponsored by the ...
Surely 'nigenteoðe healfgear', literally 'nineteenth halfyear' means 'eighteen and a half years'; cf. German 'dritthalb' meaning two and a half; likewise in Greek τρίτον ἡμιτάλαντον, 'third half-talent', means 'two and a half talents'.
RIP Æthelwulf, King of the West Saxons
King Æthelwulf, who died on 13 January 858, has been rather overshadowed by his more famous son, Alfred the Great – but did he lay the foundations for Alfred’s success? Æthelwulf consolidated the West Saxon kingdom, strengthened his family’s rule over Kent and brought Devon and Cornwall under hi...
Leofranc Holford-Strevens is now following The Typepad Team
Jan 13, 2015
Subscribe to Leofranc Holford-Strevens’s Recent Activity