Medievalists.net Menu The medieval season of love and flowers. Nowadays, in the Northern hemisphere, Spring starts on March 21, which corresponds to an equinox, when daylight and nighttime are equal in length. Medieval authors too associated the beginning of Spring with March. In his seventh-century encyclopedia known as the Etymologies, Isidore of Seville wrote that March is “also called the month of new things, because the month of March is the beginning of the year. It is also called the “new Spring” from its signs of germination…” But why did Isidore qualify March as “the beginning of the year”, you might wonder? In several regions of medieval Europe, civil calendars followed the Annunciation model, with a change of year on the Feast day.