Speculum academicum (1638): an Oxford lecture timetable in tabular form

Title: 'Speculum Academicum: Quadratura Circuli, Sive Cyclus Praelectorum in Schema redactus'. Oxford, 1638.

Source: Bodleian Library, shelfmark Wood 423 (16)

Description: A folded broadside sheet, entitled 'The University Mirror: Squaring the Circle, or the cycle of lectures reduced to a table'. Preserved as a separate sheet by wood, it is often bound with copies of the Statuta Selecta of 1638 (e.g. the Huntington Library copy in STC / 1180:07). Madan (Oxford Books, ii. 878) suggests that 'the Speculum was issued in some of the earlier copies [of the Statuta Selecta], but was superseded by the finer Encyclopaedia’.

The main table lists the days and hours at which lectures in each subject are held, the auditors who are obliged to attend each lecture, and the fines which lecturers and students must pay for missing lectures.  The branching tables below indicate the beginning and end of the four terms and the holidays within each (when no quodlibet disputations are held).