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John L Flood, Calendaria Bambergensia. Bamberger Einblattkalender des 15. bis 19. Jahrhunderts von der Inkunabelzeit bis zur Säkularisation. By Josef H. Biller, The Library, Volume 21, Issue 3, September 2020, Pages 393–395, https://doi.org/10.1093/library/21.3.393
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Extract
The Franconian city of Bamberg has a proud history. The cathedral dates from 1002 and the diocese was established in 1007. It was also one of the earliest cities to have a printing press—the 36‐line Bible (ISTC ib00527000) may have been produced there around 1460. So there is a rich heritage to celebrate, and it has been a splendid idea for the Bamberg State Library to mark the millennium of the diocese by encouraging publication of this magnificent book: a comprehensive study and richly illustrated catalogue of the library's impressive collection of printed broadside calendars associated with the diocese, the prince‐bishops, the cathedral chapter and other institutions in the city from the earliest times down to 1803 when the religious houses of Bavaria were secularized. Researching these calendars has been a preoccupation of Josef Biller since the mid‐1970s. Over the years he has published more than twenty studies of calendars from various ecclesiastical jurisdictions, including Augsburg, Eichstätt, Salzburg, Fulda, Kempten, Freising, Würzburg, and others, but this magisterial study of the collection held in Bamberg is a real triumph which will set new standards in the cataloguing and description of such neglected material. Biller describes his study as a Kalendariographie rather than as a bibliography for reasons which he sets out in the introduction. Essentially, the form the calendars took was determined by the body that authorized, commissioned, or designed them. Who the printers were or where they were printed was much less important.
