“To See beyond the Moment is Delightful”: Devout Chronologies of the Late Medieval Low Countries

The late fifteenth-century Low Countries were the site of radical attempts to rethink chronological questions, including the first printed horizontal timeline and a number of innovative harmonizations of the Gospel accounts of Christ's life. This article situates these attempts closely within the reform movements of the period, arguing for a history of chronology connected to the social and cultural worlds of the communities who produced and read them. More particularly, through close historicized readings of Werner Rolewinck's Fasciculus temporum, and Peter de Rivo's Monotesseron of the Gospels, alongside its transmission to and adaptation within a prominent reforming Augustinian house, the Rood Klooster near Brussels, this article shows how these often technical texts could be bound up with the devotional practices of the period. Devout chronology was constructed and read within a liturgical frame, in a milieu which promoted devotional practices of spiritual ascent and intellective vision through comprehensive engagements with time.