ABSTRACT
English secular diocesan and monastic calendars display a notable similarity of content and arrangement on account of their common ancestry, but here the likenesses end. A recognized distinguishing feature in the initial grouping of medieval calendars into their various families is the number of lessons ordered for festa principalia. If these number nine, then the calendar is likely to be secular diocesan (representing in particular the uses of Hereford, Sarum and York), though it may also be Augustinian; if twelve, then it is certainly monastic (Benedictine, Cluniac, Cistercian, Carthusian).1 Sub-grouping within these two families is achieved by identifying local peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, unique festa that beyond reasonable doubt associate a calendar with a particular church, religious foundation, or locality. This criterion is less likely to apply, however, where certain festa had been promulgated beyond diocesan to provincial level, or beyond their originating foundations, as the case may be. Adoption of the Exeter feast of St Raphael the Archangel (5 october) at Hereford and subsequently Salisbury and York, and the Winchester feasts of St Swithun (2 July, with translatio,15 July) are instances of local cults extending well beyond their places of origin.2 The rare occurrence of St Raphael in late medieval service-books suggests an Exeter or Hereford derivation for this observance,3 though Roman sources are also a possibility.4 Even in the Hereford books the feast occurs in one calendar only, that of the 1505 breviary, which also has a proper.5 The 1502 missal, by contrast, has a proper but no calendar entry.
