The Calendar of Willibrord, in its earliest version, records the feasts of various saints in November. Written in Latin at Echternach, Frisia (north-east Gaul), 703/710.
Evidence ID
E05861
Type of Evidence
Liturgical texts - Calendars and martyrologies
Late antique original manuscripts - Parchment codex
Major author/Major anonymous work
The Calendar of Willibrord
The Calendar of Willibrord records in November the feasts of the following saints:
*Leo I (bishop of Rome, ob. 461, S00423)
*Martin (ascetic and bishop of Tours, ob. 397, S00050)
*Augustinus and Felicitas (martyrs of Capua, S01993)
*Caecilia (virgin and martyr of Rome, S00146)
*Clement (bishop of Rome, martyr of the Crimea, S00111)
*Chrysogonus (martyr of Aquileia, S00911)
*Andrew (the Apostle, S00288)
Paris, Bibliothéque nationale de France, Lat. 10837, f. 39v
Kalendas nouembris
iiii nonas
iii
ii
nonas
viii
vii
vi
v
iiii natale leonis papae
iii tornis natale sancti martini episcopi
ii
idus
xviii kalendas decembris
xvii
xvi agustini et felicitatis
xv
xiiii
xiii
xii
xi
x natale sanctae caeciliae
viiii sancti clementis rome
viii crisogoni
vii hiems dies xci
vi
v
iiii
iii
ii natale sancti andreae apostoli
'1 November
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10 - Feast of Pope Leo
11 - At Tours, the feast of Saint Martin, bishop
12
13
14
15
16 - Augustine and Felicity
17
18
19
20
21
22 - Feast of Saint Caecilia
23 - Saint Clement of Rome
24 - Chrysogonus
25 - 91 days of winter
26
27
28
29
30 - Feast of Saint Andrew the Apostle'
Text: Wilson 1918, 13 (adapted: Wilson's 'first hand' in roman type, 'second hand' in italics, later annotations omitted).
Translation: B. Savill.
Festivals
Saint’s feast
Non Liturgical ActivityExplicit naming a child, or oneself, after a saint
Source
A liturgical calendar directly associated with Willibrord (archbishop of the Frisians, 695-739; abbot of Echternach, 697/8-739) survives as a contemporary manuscript in Paris, BnF, Lat. 10837, ff. 34v-40, where it immediately follows a version of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum of approximately the same date and provenance. Although it exceeds our database’s cut-off point of AD 700 by some three to ten years, the Calendar of Willibrord is included here since it almost certainly provides a key witness to cultic and liturgical practices in Britain and Ireland at the close of the 7th century – something not afforded by the relatively meagre contemporary Insular evidence.Willibrord was born in Deira, Northumbria (northern Britain) in 657/8, and given as an oblate to the monastery of Ripon in 664. He left Britain for Ireland in 678, possibly under compulsion after the sudden fall from power that same year of his abbot and mentor, Bishop Wilfrid. He lived at the Irish monastery of Rath Melsigi until 690, before travelling to north-east Francia and embarking on his missionary career as 'apostle of the Frisians'. Pope Sergius I ordained Willibrord as archbishop in Rome in 695, and although he appears to have based his see at Utrecht, most sources suggest that his new monastic foundation at Echternach (near the modern-day Germany-Luxembourg border) served as his main ecclesiastical centre.
Echternach’s early scriptorium almost certainly produced the Calendar. A lunar cycle for the years 703-21 appended to the text indicates the widest possible time frame for its original composition, and moreover suggests a date within that cycle’s first few years. Meanwhile, the absence of any entry for Willbrord’s mentor Bishop Wilfrid (ob. 24 April, 710), whom we know was cultivated as a saint almost immediately after his death, strongly suggests against any date later than 710. The Calendar includes no identifiable saints later than Pope Sergius I (ob. 701) and Lambert, bishop of Maastricht and patron saint of Liège (ob. c. 701/5). On palaeographical grounds, we can date the so-called 'first' and 'second' Insular uncial hands of the Calendar, plus two entries in Frankish uncial, to the early 8th century, and we have treated these here as comprising the effectively 'original' form of the Calendar. The manuscript does, however, also include numerous later interpolations and annotations (including an autobiographical entry by Willibrord himself, from 728), which belong to various hands from across the 8th and 9th centuries, and cannot always be dated precisely (Hen 1995). We have, therefore, not included these later entries in our database.
Discussion
Caecilia (Nov. 22) and Clement (Nov. 23): On the right-hand margin of these entries is Willibrord's 'autobiographical' annotation of 728, which recounts his episcopal consecration by Pope Sergius I in 695. To the immediate top-left of the entry for Caecilia, another later annotation records 'the ordination of our lord Clemens' (ordinatio domni nostri clementis), a reference to Willibrord's name in religion, Clemens/Clement. The location of these annotations is not accidental. According to Bede, Willibrord was consecrated by Sergius in the church of Santa Cecilia, Rome, on that saint's feast day (Ecclesiastical History, 5.11), while the significance of Clement of Rome is obvious.See Wilson, 1918, 42-3, for a full commentary.
Bibliography
Edition:The Calendar of St. Willibrord from Paris Lat. 10837: A Facsimile, with Transcription, Introduction and Notes, ed. H.A. Wilson (London, 1918).
Further reading:
Costambeys, M., "Willibrord [St Willibrord] (657/8-739)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/29576
Hen, Y., Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul, AD 481-751 (Leiden, 1995), 102-6.
McKitterick, R., "Frankish Uncial: A New Context for the Work of the Echternach Scriptorium," in: A. Weiler and P. Bange (eds.), Willibrord zijn wereld en zijn werk (Nijmegen, 1990), 374-88; repr. in R. McKitterick, Books, Scribes and Learning in the Frankish Kingdoms, 6th-9th Centuries (Aldershot, 1994), part V.
Netzer, N., "The Early Scriptorium at Echternach: The State of the Question," in: G. Kiesel and J. Schroeder (eds.), Willibrord. Apostel der Niederande, Gründer der Abtei Echternach (Luxembourg, 1990), 127-34.
Images
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Paris, BnF, Lat. 10837, f. 39v (source: gallica.bnf.fr)
Record Created By
Benjamin Savill
Date of Entry
20/07/2018
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00050 | Martin, ascetic and bishop of Tours, ob. 397 | Martinus | Certain | S00111 | Clemens/Clement, bishop of Rome, martyr of the Crimea | Clemens | Certain | S00146 | Caecilia, virgin and martyr of Rome | Caecilia | Certain | S00288 | Andrew, the Apostle | Andreas | Certain | S00423 | Leo, bishop of Rome, ob. 461 | Leo | Certain | S00911 | Chrysogonus, martyr of Aquileia, venerated in Rome | Crisogonus | Certain | S01993 | Augustinus and Felicitas, martyrs of Capua | Agustinus et Felicitas | Certain |
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Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
Benjamin Savill, Cult of Saints, E05861 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E05861