Dividing the Day

Despite the Italians being pioneers for mechanical time keeping, there would have been no clocks, as you know it, in the Fiorenza of Guidaloste's time. Clocks did exist - sundials, water clocks, candle clocks - but these would have been limited in the average citizen's life and would only have told the time of day by hour, or phase of the day. Accurate time keeping by the minute would have been unheard of. Essentially, time was important for two main reasons - when to pray (particularly for the monasteries and religious orders, which were a dominant feature of medieval life) and to know how much sunlight you had left of the day to complete your work. Since prayer was such a regular feature of the day, the monks would have been responsible for watching the time and conveying it to the townsfolk. This they did with the use of church bells. They would ring the bells regularly throughout the day and even through the night. The Matins bell was rung early morning during dark, perhaps around 2-3am, Prime was sunrise, Terce was the third hour after sunrise, Sext, the sixth hour after sunrise, Nones, the ninth hour after sunrise, Vespers was rung at sunset, and the bell of Compline marked the end of the day (in other words, approximately an hour after the onset of sunset, when it would first be considered dark). These times were the hours of prayer in the monasteries and would be universally referred to by all people to indicate at what time of day an event would occur. This also meant that time would often vary from town to town.

Since in winter the day is naturally only around 8-9 hours long, there might appear to be a coinciding of Nones and Vespers during these shorter days until you remember that they were keeping time by the position of the sun rather than by mechanical clock. While we understand now that the earth revolves around the sun and the axial tilt governs the number of daylight hours according to the season, in Guidaloste's world, they believed the sun rotated the earth and it is not a stretch, therefore, to imagine that they might believe that it rotated faster in winter than in summer, resulting in shorter hours of the day, and vice versa in the summer. In medieval Europe, the number of hours in a day did not change, but the length of each hour did! A summer hour in the Middle Ages, therefore, might be as much as one and a half of our modern clock hours, whilst in the winter an "hour" might only be 45-50 mins long! When mechanical clocks were introduced, people did in fact notice that an hour by the clock was different to an hour on the sundial. This is why, in England when we tell the time, we say o'clock - literally "of the clock".

Mealtimes were a social affair and were generally oriented around the bells too. Without telephones, people could not keep in regular contact throughout the day, so mealtimes were an opportunity for the household to come together. Breakfast was not a full meal at the end of the thirteenth century but people did fast (go without food) for the whole night so the first food of the day was considered breaking fast, which eventually evolved into breakfast. Whilst some people might have broken their fast with their first meal of the day, others might have had a bread roll and a mug of watered down wine after attending mass at Prime. The main meal of the day would have been dinner, taken around Sext, which was considered the middle of the day. In reality this could have been as early as 10 or 11am during the summer months! Cena, or supper, would have been a lighter affair, but still a formal sit-down meal, taken between Nones and Vespers.

Nowadays, we have electric lighting so we can go to bed well after the sun sets and expect to get a full 8-10 hours sleep. However, this idea of "sleeping through" the night is a relatively modern concept. As late as the 17th-19th century people were still practicing 2 sleep phases. This was not confined to one geographical area. So, in Guidaloste's Fiorenza, people would generally retire for bed at dark, shortly after Compline. They would then wake naturally after about 3-4 hours sleep and do anything and everything that they could do by oil or moon light, including household chores, study, reading, general chit chat, and other social activities within the home. Of course crime rates also generally went up at that time of night! After a couple of hours (around Matins), they would then go back to sleep until Prime.

Fun fact: Our word noon comes from nones (9th hour). It was originally around 3pm, but by Guidaloste's time it had already shifted to midday, due to the fact that historically during Lent, monks were required to fast until after the Nones prayers and 9 hours is a long time to not eat, so the prayers were gradually brought forward in the day until the monks were able to eat at midday (noon!) However, in terms of bell ringing and time keeping, Nones was still the word used to describe the 9th hour, i.e. the middle of the afternoon!