CRONOGRAMMA. – From the Greek χρόνος and γράμμα, an inscription in prose or verse in which all the letters corresponding to Roman numerals are intended to represent numbers marking the date. Sometimes this function is reserved only for the initial letters of each line; in this case it is called a chronostich. Here are some examples:
1. franCorVM tVrbIs sICVLVs fert fVnera Vesper.
2. aV teMps dV rol CharLes Le hVIt.
CestVI hosteL sI fVt ConstrVIt.
3. Ita VoVI anno DoMInI saLVatorIs nostrI IesV ChrIstI.
4. Mors neC orDInarIIs parCIt.
Adding the Roman numerals gives: for the first inscription, the year 1282, the date of the Sicilian Vespers (cf. s. V. ENOCH. Ital., XII [1931], p. 37); for the second, the year 1485, the date of the erection of a palace in Paris (cf. Noveau Larousse illustré, II, p. 828); for the third, 1679, the year in which Emperor Leopold I vowed to erect in Vienna a column, the «Pestsäule», in honor of the Most Holy Trinity (cf. Acta SS. Iunii, I, Venice 1742, p. xi); for the fourth, 1704, the year in which the funerary monument to the bishop of Seckau, Rodolfo Giuseppe von Thun, was erected (d. in 1702; cf. Gilde Seckau in Obserstiermark, Seckau 1928, p. 65). Chronograms were very much in vogue north of the Alps from the 11th century onward, as in Austria, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and France. With praiseworthy exceptions, c. are affected compositions: such, for example, was the one composed in honor of the Bollandist Fr.
Goffredo Henschenius, published on the occasion of his jubilee in Acta SS. Maii, IV, Venice 1740, p. V. Their correct interpretation can be of considerable assistance in dating monuments and documents.
Equally useful for the same purpose are chronodistichs, in which the date is indicated differently from the way it is in c.; here is an example:
Mille, C. ter, quini deciesque quater quoq. bini
Anni Verbigenae defluxerunt quasi plene.
When the two lines are deciphered, they yield the date 1358, the year in which the Premonstratensian Guglielmo Vressenich completed the manuscript containing the «Vita metrica B. Hermanni Joseph Steinfeldensis» (cf. Io. Chrys. Van der Sterre, Lilium inter spinas. Vita b. Joseph Presbyteri et canonici Steinfeldensis ordinis Praemonstratensis, Antwerp 1627, p. 272).