Manuscript: Deutscher Kalender und Praktik auf das Jahr 1466

Würzburg(?), 1466-ca. 1500. Genre: text based on the “ioatromathematische Hausbücher” (medical-mathematical house-book) tradition, which links and systematizes medical and astrological knowledge to create a kind of everyday handbook for medical treatments, especially bloodletting, to be administered by laymen at home. It is based on the medieval idea of the influence of planets on the health and character of human beings. This specimen would be considered a “poor man’s” version, including, e.g., re-used woodcuts rather than hand-colored paintings. Physical description: paper, 26 leaves, 8 in. x 11 ½ in.; bound in worn (1930s?) black buckram boards. Script: written in 3 hands, one of which is Johann Dolcart (or Dohart), identified on 10 verso. Dating evidence: 1466 on “title page”; polemical poem (13 verso) on the Schwaebischer Bund (not founded until 1488); Golden Numbers and Sunday Letters (8 verso) range from 1500-1536. Thus, the manuscript is reasonably dated 1466-1500. Illustrations: small woodcuts (initial D) with names of months pasted into text on calendar pages, executed some time after 1483. Their date corresponds well to text additions by second scribe (active after 1488). Their appearance is similar to others published in the “teutsch kalender” March 1483 by Heinrich Knoblochtzer in Strassburg. Cf., e.g., Das ist der teutsch kalender mit den figure(n), gedruckt zu Ulm in Jahre 1498 von Johannes Schaeffler (Faksimile-Edition, kommentiert von Peter Amelung. Zurich, 1978). Condition: fair; marks and traces of continued use; trimming along borders cuts off some text; insect damage; some evidence of restoration.