How was the current month and day disseminated to the townspeople of Medieval Europe?
score:17
For the most part, church and celestial events.
In particular, midsummer and midwinter and the equinoxes were both easy to detect and were important events, at least in the colder climates of Europe. One problem with this approach was that the Julian calendar, which was used pretty much everywhere during the middle ages, by the 1500s had gotten seriously out of sync with the seasons (by about 15 days).
Church was a natural mechanism for announcing Sundays (or Fridays or Sabbath, depending), and for disseminating news about upcoming holidays.
Also don't underestimate the power of networking. If one village lost track of which day of the week it was (say, due to being preoccupied with a natural disaster), they would re-synchronize easily with nearby villages. Or, if they could not connect to anybody else, then the exact day and month may not have mattered much in the first place.
Incidentally, not all parts of the medieval world necessarily agreed on the month and day in the first place, although that happened mostly after the church replaced the Julian calendar with the Gregorian one. Rome changed in the 1500s, but the rest of Europe changed at various times over the next 400 or so years. Russia didn't change until 1917, and the Orthodox church still hasn't changed (which is why Russian Christmas is on a different day).
Upvote:1
The villagers lived with a set of rights and obligations to their feudal overlords and the church. A dozen geese on Martini, three days of labor maintaining roads in the spring, regular church services, ...
They'd have to track that, even if they didn't use the names of months and numbered days in the month.
Upvote:1
Books of Hours were a popular form of devotion during the Middle Ages. While not exactly a personal planner most did contain a calendar presented in a graphic format. The calendar pages contained labor of the month and illustrations of people enjoying seasonal activities (see people skating on a frozen river in this image.) Many calendar pages also included astrological images which would tie the date to real world stars (sorta).
Calendar pages for January, Hours of Joanna of Castile, Bruges, between 1496 and 1506, Additional 18852, ff. 1v-2
Upvote:2
The date (under the liturgical year) would be announced at each mass in Catholic areas throughout the medieval era in Europe. So everyone would have a good general idea of dates. There is a nice picture of a liturgical calendar (used by priests in the 1200s) here. The Catholic Encyclopedia has a long article on the history of the Christian calendar.
To give an idea about how well the calendar was 'nailed down' even quite early, here is the list of dates (and events) from an English liturgical calendar from the 700s (around AD 702). These dates would all have been announced to the townsfolk.
JANUARY
1 Circumcision
3 St. Genevieve of Paris
6 Epiphany
13 St. Hilary
14 St. Felix of Nola
17 St. Anthony, Hermit
18 St. Peter's Chair at Rome and the Assumption of Holy Mary
20 St. Sebastian
21 St. Agnes (Virgin)
24 St. Babilas, Bishop and Martyr
25 Conversion of St. Paul at Damascus
29 St. Valerius, Bishop, and St. Lucy (Virgin) at Treves
FEBRUARY
1 St. Denis, St. Polycarp and St. Brigid (Virgin)
2 St. Symeon, Patriarch
5 St. Agatha
6 St. Amandus
16 St. Juliana
22 The Chair of Peter at Antioch
MARCH
1 Donatus
7 Perpetua and Felicitas
12 St. Gregory at Rome
17 St. Patrick, Bishop in Ireland
20 St. Cuthbert, Bishop
21 St. Benedict, Abbot
25 The Lord was crucified and St. James the brother of Our Lord
27 The Resurrection of Our Lord
APRIL
4 St. Ambrose
22 Philip, Apostle
MAY
1 St. Philip, Apostle
5 The Ascension of the Lord
7 The Invention of the Holy Cross
11 Pancratius, Martyr
14 Earliest date for Pentecost
31 St. Maximinius at Treves
JUNE
2 Erasmus, Martyr
8 Barnabas, Apostle
9 St. Columkill
22 James the son of Alpheus
24 Nativity of John the Baptist
29 Sts. Peter and Paul at Rome
JULY
15 St. James of Nisibis
26 St. James, Apostle, Brother of John
26 St. Symeon, Monk in Syria
29 St. Lupus
AUGUST
1 The Machabees, seven brothers with their mother
5 St. Oswald, King
6 St. Syxtus, Bishop
10 St. Laurence, Deacon
13 Hippolitus, Martyr
16 (Sic) [erasure] St. Mary
25 St. Bartholomew, Apostle
28 Augustine and Faustinus, Bishops
29 Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist
31 St. Paulinus, Bishop at Trier
SEPTEMBER
7 Sergius, Pope at Rome
9 (Sic) Nativity of St. Mary at Jerusalem
13 Cornelius and Cyprian
15 St. Euphemia, Martyr
19 Januarius. Martyr
21 Matthew, Apostle
22 Passion of St. Maurice
24 Conception of St. John the Baptist
27 Cosmas and Damian at Jerusalem
29 St. Michael, Archangel
OCTOBER
1 Remedius and Germanus
4 Sts. Heuwald and Hewald, Martyrs
14 Paulinus, Bishop in Canterbury
18 Luke, Evangelist
28 Simon and Jude, Apostles
31 St. Quintinus, Martyr
NOVEMBER
10 St. Leo, Pope
11 St. Martin, Bishop at Tours
22 St. Cecilia
23 Clement at Rome
24 Crisogonus
30 St. Andrew, Apostle
DECEMBER
10 St. Eulalia and seventy-five others
20 St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr
21 St. Thomas, Apostle in India
25 Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ
26 St. Stephen, Martyr
27 John, Apostle, and James, his brother
28 The Innocents
31 St. Silvester, Bishop
Upvote:4
It is certainly easy to keep track of the days of the week.
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
And if someone forgot the weekday, he would be reminded when the church bells rang on the next Sunday.
Country people were often serfs who had obligations to work for their lord so many days a week or so many days a month. So naturally they tended to keep track of time so the lord's agents didn't trick them into working for him twice a month.
And there ere feast days. Every day of the year has one or more saint's feast days. And the more important feast days were celebrated with masses and rituals. For example, Candlemas is on February 2.
Many or most towns in medieval western Europe were the seats of bishops of dioceses. So many or most towns in medieval western Europe had Bishop's cathedrals, cathedral schools, bishop's palaces, etc., etc. And there were often one or more monasteries in or near a town.
One task of a medieval bishop was to make sure that church holidays were celebrated at the right time, especially movable feasts like Easter. Elaborate calculations were needed to determine which day Easter should be celebrated each year.
So most bishop's headquarters would have people who kept track of the date.
Many medieval craftsmen and their subordinates would make a lot of identical products and put them up for sale. But some would make a lot of custom products to the order of their customers. Thus they would often need to keep track of getting their orders finished before any deadlines and/or whether they were paid at the agreed date.
Moneylenders and bankers, and the people they made loans to, had to keep track of the date to be sure they paid and/or were paid on time.
Many properties in a town, or rooms in the buildings, would be rented, and the renters and landlords had to keep track of when the rent was due.
So a lot of townspeople had to keep track of the date, and no doubt they found ways to do so.
So perhaps some churches or town halls or moneylender's offices had exterior bulletin boards with the date posted every day for those who could read.
in the later middle ages mechanical clocks were installed in many town hall towers. They often did not have just dials but elaborate mechanical displays. So perhaps they sometimes displayed the date.
Upvote:6
This question is very vague, but I assume you are asking about the Middle Ages in Western Europe, though there is no reason why it should not be about Byzantium, Islam, India, China or any other mediaeval civilisation. But let us stick to Western Europe.
In Western Christendom (and also in Byzantium) the universal system of time-keeping was the Julian calendar. You have asked specifically about “townspeople”. Unlike other respondents to this question, I am not convinced that the majority of the population in mediaeval European towns were illiterate. But literate or not, there is no reason to doubt that they knew what the date was according to the Julian calendar. Merchants (for example) needed to know this. But also in the countryside people needed to know the date so as to plant their crops at the correct time of year. Calendars are very much part of popular culture in all civilisations. And this has nothing to do with newspapers.
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