Rota paschalis

There is a long tradition of rosette-like diagrams with characters around their perimeter, the so called “rota paschalis” used to determine the exact dates of Easter. Again a demonstration that our VMS-contemporaries might be able to perform rather complex symbol manipulations. - I have found many more interesting rosette-like diagrams but haven’t had the time to scan them yet. I was surprised that old tarock-card sets had no VMs like features (except a cosmological card describing the “primum mobile” sphere of the heavens). This one is from the "Illustrated Bartsch" - Early Italian Engravings.

003 EASTER TABLE (ROTA PASCHALIS) 204/06 x 147/50 (sheet). Goldschmidt, p. 358., "Incunabuli . . .,'' p. l 54., Donati 1946., Hind 1948, vol . 5, p. xv, no. E.III.Add.84. Across the top: .ROTA.PASCHE.MEMSIS [sic].DIES.AVREVS.NVMERVS. Inscriptions also fill three circular tables or wheels as follows: 1) The large wheel is surrounded by three circular bands divided equally into nineteen boxes. The outer boxes are labeled APPRILIS (April) fourteen times. MARCIJ (March) three times, and MARCIS (March) two times. The boxes in the middle band are inscribed, nonconsecutively, with Roman numerals from II to XXX representing days of the months to which they are adjacent. The innermost boxes are inscribed, nonconsecutively, with Roman numerals from I to XIX each one representing a ''golden number'' (the number of a particular calendar year within a so-called Metonic cycle, a nineteen-year period after which the phases of the moon return to a particular date within the calendar year). Golden numbers are traditionally used to fix the date of Easter, and here they are aligned with the days in the middle band and the months in the outer band so that II coincides with 30 March, VI with 17 April, etc. 2) The small wheel at the lower right, inscribed ROTA AVREIJ/ NVMERI ("wheel of golden numbers''), is surrounded by a circular band divided equally into nineteen boxes; the latter are numbered consecutively from I to XVIIII, counting clockwise from the upper right. 3) The small wheel at the lower left, inscribed L[ETTE]RE D[OME]NICA/LES. ET. VII.SEXTILES ("dominical letters'' the first seven letters of the alphabet, used in church calendars to determine the date of Easter ''and seven sextiles''), is surrounded by two circular bands. The outer one is divided equally into twenty-eight boxes containing the seven dominical letters A through G. There is one inner box for every four outer boxes; thus the inner boxes are used for leap years, although the central inscription mistakenly calls them sextiles instead of bisextiles.

The engraving is known in two impressions. One of them, colored red, green, and yellow, is pasted onto the binding of a copy of Nicolaus de Ausmo's Supplementum Summae Pisanellae published in Venice 30 November 1473 (Hain, no. 2151). The book belongs to the Franciscan convent of Campora on the island of Arbe (Rab), located off the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. It has been in the convent since the fifteenth century, having belonged to a friar named Bernardino, who was probably responsible for inscribing a date of 1480 inside the lower left wheel. The other impression (herein reproduced) is also from the binding of an incunabulum (Biblioteca Vaticana, no. 1V.654), the Confessionale of St. Antonino of Florence published 15 April 1472 (Hain, 130. 12.12).

Donati analyzes these works in detail, gives further bibliography, explains how they work, and observes how the minor wheels (but not the major ones) are valid for a period extending indefinitely beyond 1484. For the most part, all four of the German versions contain identical features: one large wheel and two smaller wheels with comparable inscriptions in gothic lettering; branches, leaves, or flowers in the three empty spaces at the bottom; a pair of hands with fingers pointing to the pair of smaller wheels and indicating the direction of movement around them; and images of the sun and the moon in the upper comers the sun on the side corresponding to the wheel of dominical ("Sunday'') letters at the lower left, the moon on the side corresponding to the wheel with the golden numbers (representing the lunar cycle) at the lower right. An interesting feature of these Easter tables, still extant in two of the versions (but not the present one), is an extra piece of paper in the form of a circle precisely the same size as the blank area in the middle of the larger wheel. Printed with the image of an angel and fastened to the center of the wheel, this disk is meant to revolve on its axis so that the angel points to specific alignments of boxes as described above (sub no. 1).

Donati demonstrates that all of these prints are direct or indirect copies of a lost original, which must have been a German woodcut issued in (or immediately before) the year 1466. The theory also holds true for the present item, with its principal wheel inscribed with nineteen dates from 6 April 1466 (APPRILIS VI IIII) to 18 April 1484 (APPRILIS XVIII III). That it is ltalian rather than German there can be no doubt, seeing that the lettering is Roman instead of gothic, that the vase at the bottom is classical in character, and that both known impressions are pasted into Italian incunables. The publication dates of these volumes, 1472 and 1473, are consistent with the supposition that the engraving was produced in the mid- to late 1460s, and so too is the handwritten date of 1480 on the Arbe impression. In view of the latter's location in a Venetian book belonging to a member of a convent on what was then a Venetian island, one may further surmise that the engraving is itself Venetian. To be sure, it contains few stylistic or technical elements that might serve to establish an attribution, but the very delicate shading of the moon-face is in keeping with the notion of Venetian authorship.

Accordingly, the present writer follows Donati in assigning the Easter Table to the early Venetian school and dating it to ca. 1466. Also acceptable is Donati's attribution of the preceding item, the Fountain of Love (.002), to the same anonymous craftsman, an attribution based on comparison of such details as the vases, the scroll-like plants, the ivy leaves, and the hands. Even the ornament of the present item's rectangular frame is identical to that which appears on two decorative bands on the upper section of the fountain in .002. The writer is not, however convinced that Donati is correct in ascribing the Madonna and Child with Saints (.001) and the Allegoty of Envy (.005) to the same hand. (Arbe; Vatican.)