Almanach Cracoviense ad annum 1474
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The Almanach Cracoviense ad annum 1474 (Cracovian Almanac for the year 1474) is a single-sheet astronomical wall calendar for the year 1474 and Poland's oldest known print. This incunabulum, which is also known as the Calendarium Cracoviense (Cracovian Calendar), was published in Kraków in 1473 by Kasper Straube, a traveling Bavarian printer who worked in that city between 1473 and 1476.
Like other almanacs and calendars of its day, the Almanach lists Church holidays and astronomical data, including planetary oppositions and conjuctions. It also provides medical advice, listing the best days for bloodletting depending on the age and illness of the patient. The text of the Almanach is in Latin.
At this date the technology of printing with movable type was just twenty years old and remained almost entirely confined to Germans, who in the 1470s spread it widely through Europe. France and the Netherlands saw their first printing earlier in the decade, and England and Spain were first printed in after 1473.
The only surviving copy measures 37 cm by 26.2 cm and is part of the collection of the Jagiellonian University.
