Introduction
The Calendar and the Cloister is a scholarly resource devoted to a single medieval manuscript: Oxford, St John's College 17. This splendid volume was created in the first decade of the 12th century at Thorney Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Cambridgeshire. Its importance for the cultural and intellectual history of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman England has been recognized since the 16th century by historians, philologists, and scholars working in the fields of medieval science, monastic culture, and the history of the book.
St John's 17 is a compilation of texts, tables, maps and diagrams. It is organized around the central theme of time-reckoning and calendar construction — what in the Middle Ages was called computus. The
core of computus material is surrounded by a halo of subjects which were intimately connected with time, such as astronomy, cosmology, geography, medicine, history, mathematics, and
prognostication. It is a superb example of a type of compilation that could be found in many medieval cloisters and schools; but it is also unique in its dimensions, its thoughtful arrangement, and its
exquisite decoration.
The Calendar and the Cloister contains a full digital facsimile of MS 17, including the five leaves which were removed in the 17th century, and which are now in the British Library as Cotton Nero C. VII, fols. 80-84. These leaves have been digitally restored to
their original position in the manuscript. The facsimile
is accompanied by a folio-by-folio commentary. Some parts of the manuscript have also been transcribed. Background essays discuss the palaeography, codicology, form and history of the manuscript. Reference documents include a list of related manuscripts, a glossary, a biographical register, and a bibliography.
The digitization of the manuscript was carried out by the Oxford Digital Library Project, with funding from a grant secured by St John's College from the Mellon Foundation. The commentary and additional materials were written by Faith Wallis, Associate Professor, Department of History and Department of Social Studies
of Medicine, McGill University. Funding for Prof. Wallis' work was provided by the Tomlinson Foundation through the Tomlinson Digital Initiatives Fund; by the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada through the Internal Grants Program administered by the office of the Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations) of McGill University; by the Faculty of Arts of McGill University
through the Arts Insights Initiatives program; by the Research Group on Transmission, Translation and Transformation in Medieval Cultures; and by the Department of History of McGill University. The Calendar and the Cloister was created by the
Digital Collections Program of the McGill University Library. For more information about the team, see Credits.
Copyright over MS 17 itself resides with the President and Fellows of St John's College, Oxford, from whom permission to reproduce must be sought in writing. Copyright over the electronic
images of MS 17 resides with St John's College and the Bodleian Library. Requests to reproduce any image from MS 17 should be addressed to St John's College. Copyright over the electronic images from MS British Library Cotton Nero C.VII fols. 80-84 resides
with the British Library; requests to reproduce these images should be sought from the British Library. Copyright and intellectual property rights over the commentary materials and the site design reside with the author and McGill University.
