A lot of thanks for your so complete explanations, they're very
interesting. I knew that
Canonical Hours were so variable, but I tried to set a trade-off between
simplicity
and their original definition. However, perhaps I was too optimistic or
simplistic and
it isn't really possible to implement these hours with a reasonable
accuracy in a
more or less straightforward way. I'll keep studying your e-mails and
other sources on the topic
and then I'll decide what to do next.
By the way, in our bulletin "ANALEMA" nr 37 there is an interesting
article by MM Valdes
on "Gouliardic Canonical Hours" as described in "Ye good love book", a
delicious
satyrical work made by a Spanish archpriest in the XIVth century in the
fashion of
Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", so to say.
Well, in paragraphs 372 to 387 the book describes canonical hours from
Matinae to
Completae and explains what gouliards (that is, itinerant monks not
adscribed to
a monastery and therefore having usually dissipated way of life) did on
each of them
at the time. Acording to MM Valdes, there is an *implicit* second
meaning on each
of the tasks he describes, being all of them sexually *explicit*.
Fortunately for the decency and good name of this Mailing List, the text
is too difficult
for me to translate into English without loosing the second meanings, so
I'm afraid
I have to finish at the most interesting :-D
Best regards,
Anselmo Perez Serrada
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