was decided to cancel 10 days: that October 4, 1582 would
be followed by October 15, 1582. In addition, only cen-
turial years exactly divisible by 400 (1600 and 2000 for
example) would be leap years. The effect would be to
shorten the calendar year to 365.2425 days and so keep
the vernal equinox tied much more closely to March 21.
The architect of the reform was Aloisio Lillo (1510–76), a
physician at Perugia university. Though accepted immedi-
ately by Catholic states, the Gregorian calendar was ig-
nored by most Protestant countries, and it was not until
1752 that Britain belatedly adopted the new system.
Further reading: David Ewing Duncan, The Calendar
(London: Fourth Estate, 1998).
calendar, Church The annual cycle of feasts and fasts
that begins in the Western Church with Advent Sunday. In
both Roman Catholic and reformed Churches there are
two preeminent feasts in the Church calendar to which
most of the rest are related: Christmas, which is based on
the solar calendar, and Easter, determined by the lunar.
Advent and Lent are the seasons of fasting before Christ-
mas and Easter respectively. During the Middle Ages, in
addition to these major events and those linked to them,
the Church observed a large number of other feasts, very
often on saints’ days. These in turn were often linked with
traditional calendar lore, for example in the English say-
ing about the weather on Candlemas Day (the feast of the
Purification of the Virgin Mary; February 2), which is now
adapted to American Groundhog Day: “If Candlemas Day
be sunny and bright, winter will have another flight; if
Candlemas day be cloudy with rain, winter has gone and
will not come again.”
It was a widespread practice to date events by the
nearest festival of the Church: hence, in England, Christ-
mas (December 25), the Annunciation (otherwise called
Lady Day; March 25), the Nativity of St. John the Baptist
(June 24), and Michaelmas (September 29) were the days
designated as quarter days, when charges such as rents fell
due. Some saints’ days were recognized throughout Chris-
tendom; others were purely of local or regional signifi-
cance. To say that an event happened “in vigilia Sanctae
Luciae” (on the vigil of St. Lucy, i.e. St. Lucy’s Eve) would
have been widely understood as referring to December 12.
Both feast days and ordinary Sundays were often referred
to in the Middle Ages by the opening words of the Latin
introit sung at Mass, a practice partially retained by the
Lutheran Church.
The pre-Reformation Church calendar thus impinged
upon ordinary people’s consciousnesses to a far greater ex-
tent than it does in modern times—with some exceptions.
Roman Catholic countries, particularly in southern Eu-
rope, maintain some practices, such as the revelries of
Carnival (literally, “farewell to meat”) in the pre-Lenten
period, that either never really took hold in England or
were condemned by the reformers. In pre-Reformation
times, virtually every day of the year was dedicated to one
or more saints, but in line with their objections to relics
and “superstition,” the reformers jettisoned commemora-
tion of saints’ days from their ecclesiastical year. The
process is exemplified in England, where the pruning of
traditional elements of the Roman Catholic year began in
1536; by the time the BOOK OF COMMON PRAYERappeared
in 1549 only Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun remained of
the feasts, plus a few biblical saints’ days (St. Mary Mag-
dalene, St. John the Baptist, the Apostles, and the Evange-
lists). The Reformation was thus responsible for setting in
train a radical secularization of the calendar.
Further reading: Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the
Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford, U.K.:
Oxford University Press, 1996).Caliari, Paolo See VERONESE, PAOLOCalixtus III, Pope See BORGIA FAMILYcalligraphy The gothic, or black-letter, style of writing
was used throughout western Europe in the later Middle
Ages. There were local variations in the form of the letters,
and Italian writing (littera rotunda) was less angular than
that of northern Europe. In the 14th century, PETRARCH
led the revival of interest in the classical Roman style. He
was the chief of a group of humanists at Florence, who
studied manuscripts of ancient authors and inscriptions
on coins and monuments. The early manuscripts available
to them mostly dated from the 10th and 11th centuries,
with text in Carolingian minuscule script and display lines
in monumental capitals. These became the basis of the Re-
naissance littera antica, which differs little from modern
roman type.
Petrarch was followed by Coluccio SALUTATI, chancel-
lor of Florence, two of whose followers, Poggio BRACCI-
OLINIand Niccolò NICCOLI, developed their styles on
divergent lines. Poggio continued the formal Roman tra-
dition; in 1403 he went to Rome and became secretary to
the pope, and his hand influenced a number of scholars
and artists from Verona and Padua, including Andrea
Mantegna. Niccoli produced a more cursive script, with
taller and narrower letters, differing less from the current
gothic. This was the origin of the italic hand, which was
used for less formal writing and for the more popular,
small-format books. One form of italic, the cancellaresca,
was developed for more rapid writing in government of-
fices and for commercial and private use.
From the mid-16th century the italic style spread over
the rest of western Europe, aided by popular copybooks,
of which that by the papal scribe Lodovico degli Arrighi
was the first (1523). In Italy and Spain and to some extent
in France and in England, italic was used for the vernacu-
lar languages as well as Latin. In Germany and Scandi-
navia its use was more or less confined to Latin. Inccaalllliiggrraapphhyy 8833