{"id":56000,"date":"2025-09-13T15:48:49","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T14:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/?p=56000"},"modified":"2025-09-13T15:48:49","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T14:48:49","slug":"how-to-locate-the-life-of-a-specific-saint-botolph-in-random-early-modern-breviaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/2025\/09\/13\/how-to-locate-the-life-of-a-specific-saint-botolph-in-random-early-modern-breviaries\/","title":{"rendered":"How to locate the “Life” of a specific saint (Botolph) in random early modern breviaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

While trying to finish up the St. Botolph material, I came across a sentence in a fascinating article about St Botolph in Scandinavia. This referred to Scandinavian breviaries which might contain a “Life” of St. Botolph.\u00a0 I already knew that a very abbreviated “Life” of St Botolph was to be found in the Schleswig Breviary of 1512.\u00a0 But now…<\/p>\n

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The other printed breviaries that\u00a0have this Vita <\/em>are Aarhus, Uppsala and Link\u00f6ping. This means that although the\u00a0theory that this Vita <\/em>was\u00a0 composed in Scandinavia still holds, there is no longer evidence to fix it to Denmark.[ref]John Toy, “St Botulph: an English saint in Scandinavia”, in M.O.H.Carver (ed.), The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe<\/em>, AD 300-1300, York (2003), pp.565-570.[\/ref]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

No reference is given.<\/p>\n

Where to start?<\/p>\n

Luckily there is a splendid website on early printed breviaries in Hungary: Usuarium,\u00a0<\/a>A Digital Library and Database for the Study of Latin Liturgical History in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period.\u00a0 You can search for each town, and it will give you a list of early printed liturgical texts.\u00a0 It even has online copies, and detailed lists of contents.<\/span><\/p>\n

I started with the Uppsala breviary (Breviarium Upsalense), which can be found here<\/a>.\u00a0 This was printed in Stockholm in 1496.\u00a0 The site also gives a\u00a0 broad list of contents, which is incredibly handy.\u00a0 This tells me that the “sanctoral offices” are on pages 453-741.<\/p>\n

Looking for Botolph in this vast sea of saints, in no obvious order, in a terrible font, was a nightmare.\u00a0 I completely failed the first time, retiring hurt, to think and guess again. I had thought initially that it might be in alphabetical order of saint name – it begins with Andrew – but not so.\u00a0 Then I thought perhaps Saint’s day order, but I couldn’t see it.\u00a0 Paging through hundreds of pages of hard-to-read text, hoping to spot one small word… was futile.<\/p>\n

But I did succeed, so I will share how I did this.\u00a0 I was able to download a PDF of the whole volume, thankfully, and used my elderly copy of Adobe Acrobat Pro 9 to add bookmarks when I located stuff.<\/p>\n

I could see from the website contents that it began with “St Andreas”, i.e. St Andrew.\u00a0 I googled, and found that St Andrew’s day was Nov. 30.<\/p>\n

The orginal volume is unhelpfully without any page or folio numbers.\u00a0 But the Usuarium site helpfully says that the Sanctoral offices start on p.453 of the PDF\/online copy.\u00a0 So there I went.\u00a0 Sure enough, St Andrew was there.\u00a0 I bookmarked this, “Andrew (Nov 30) – 453”.<\/p>\n

Next I went to page 741, the end of the sanctoral offices.\u00a0 Or so Usuarium told me – I could not have determined this myself.\u00a0 I bookmarked this as “end”.\u00a0 I then paged back a bit, and found St Katherine.\u00a0 Back to Google, search “St Catherine Day”. It tells me Nov 25, so I add a third bookmark, “Katherine (Nov 25).<\/p>\n

I went back to Andrew, paged down and found… St Barbara (Dec. 4).\u00a0 Bookmarked that too.\u00a0 That’s a good start.<\/p>\n

So… it looks like the offices are in order of saints’s days.\u00a0 And the name of the saint is in the fat red text, the rubric.<\/p>\n

Botolph is June 17.\u00a0 So he should be somewhere in the middle.\u00a0 I picked page 600, and jumped.\u00a0 Luckily on this page I discovered St Margaret.\u00a0 Another Google gave me July 20.\u00a0 Added a bookmark for that, and started paging back, looking up saints as I went.<\/p>\n

And… eventually… I found St Botolph, on page 558.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I then located the Aarhus breviary, which had defeated me last night.\u00a0 It was harder to read, which had not helped.\u00a0 But the same method worked:<\/p>\n