As you scan around these two pages from the same Almanack, pay special attention to the very top of the second page. What does it tell us about the Renaissance calendar? By the way, remember that the letter "s" often appears much like an "f" when used in the beginning or middle of a word--yet another small, but perhaps meaningful difference (not disserance--I'm writing in 2001!) between the early modern world of Renaissance England and our own, 21st-century American world. Here's a link to a comment written by a contemporary scholar about how the "long S" was used in English.
Are you wondering why this Almanack says: "The first month called March hath , xxxi days"? I hope so. This is a significant difference between the Renaissance calendar and our own. Here's the scoop: they operated according to the Julian Calendar, while we use the Gregorian calendar. Here's what my American Heritage Dictionary says about each of them:
Julian Calendar--The solar calendar introduced by Julius Caesar in Rome in 46 B.C., having a year of 12 months and 365 days and a leap year of 366 days every fourth year. It was eventually replaced by the Gregorian calendar.
Gregorian calendar: The solar calendar in use throughout most of the world, sponsored by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 as a corrected version of the Julian calendar.
England and its colonies adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, and at that time the official first month became January. The changes were made because the Julian calendar had gotten out of whack and the first day of Spring, the vernal equinox, was by the Julian calendars, by 1700, 11 days off.
The point of showing you these Almanack pages is to help you to sharpen your eyes to look for all sorts of evidence about how the era we'll be studying, the Renaissance, was different and similar from ours. Remember: we've seen from these Almanack pages several important things: