Bede: The Reckoning of Time

by Wallis, Faith

• ISBN13: 9780853236931
• ISBN10: 0853236933
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-01-04
• Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Summary

From the patristic age until the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582, computus the science of time reckoning and art of calendar construction was a subject of intense concern to medieval people. Bede's The Reckoning of Time (De temporum ratione) was the first comprehensive treatise on this subject, and the model and reference for all subsequent teaching, discussion and criticism of the Christian calendar. The Reckoning of Time is a systematic exposition of the Julian solar calendar and the Paschal table of Dionysius Exiguus, with their related formulae for calculating dates. But it is more than a technical handbook. Bede sets calendar lore within a broad scientific framework and a coherent Christian concept of time, and incorporates themes as diverse as the theory of tides and the threat of chiliasm. This translation of the full text includes an extensive historical introduction and a chapter-by-chapter commentary. The Reckoning of Time also serves as an accessible introduction to the computus itself.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	xi
Acknowledgements	xiii
INTRODUCTION	xv
``Our little book about the fleeting and wave-tossed course of time...''	xv
Computus as problem-based science and doctrina christiana	xviii
A brief history of the Christian calendar before Bede	xxxiv
Structure and content of The Reckoning of Time	lxiii
Bede's sources	lxxii
Manuscripts, glosses, editions, and principles of translation	lxxxv
BEDE: THE RECKONING OF TIME	1	(250)
Preface	3	(2)
[Table of Contents]	5	(4)
[I. Technical preparation (chs. 1-4)]
Calculating or speaking with the fingers	9	(4)
Three ways of reckoning time	13	(1)
The smallest intervals of time	14	(2)
The reckoning of duodecimal fractions	16	(3)
[II. The Julian calendar (chs. 5-41)]
The day	19	(5)
The world's first day	24	(4)
Night	28	(4)
The week	32	(4)
The seventy prophetic weeks	36	(3)
The week of the World-Ages	39	(2)
The months	41	(5)
The Roman months	46	(4)
Kalends, nones and ides	50	(1)
The Greek months	51	(2)
The English months	53	(1)
The signs of the twelve months	54	(4)
The course of the Moon through the signs	58	(2)
More on the course of the Moon: for those who are ignorant of the signs	60	(3)
More on the same subject: for those who do not know how to calculate	63	(1)
What the age of the Moon is on any given first day of the month	64	(4)
What day of the week it is on the kalends	68	(1)
A formula for any Moon or weekday	69	(2)
For those who do not know how to calculate the age of the Moon	71	(2)
The number of hours of moonlight	73	(1)
When and why the Moon appears to be facing upwards, facing downwards, or standing upright	74	(3)
Why the Moon, though situated beneath the Sun, sometimes appears to be above it	77	(1)
On the size, or eclipse, of the Sun and Moon	78	(2)
What the power of the Moon can do	80	(2)
The harmony of the Moon and the sea	82	(4)
Equinoxes and solstices	86	(3)
The varying length of days and the different position of the shadows	89	(2)
Why the same days are unequal in length	91	(2)
In what places the shadows or days are equal	93	(3)
The five circles of the universe and the passage of the stars under the Earth	96	(4)
The four seasons, elements and humours	100	(3)
Natural years	103	(1)
The different years of the ancients	104	(1)
The calculation of the leap-year day	105	(2)
Measuring the leap-year increment	107	(2)
Why it is intercalated on the sixth kalends of March	109	(1)
The Moon also has its quarter-day	110	(3)
[III. Anomalies of lunar reckoning (chs. 42-43)]
The ``leap of the Moon''	113	(2)
Why the Moon sometimes appears older than its computed age	115	(6)
[IV. The Paschal table (chs. 44-65)]
The nineteen-year cycle	121	(1)
Embolismic and common years	122	(2)
The ogdoas and the hendecas	124	(2)
The years of the Lord's Incarnation	126	(4)
Indictions	130	(1)
Formula for finding the indiction	130	(1)
Lunar epacts	130	(2)
How certain people err concerning the beginning of the first month	132	(3)
Formula for finding the number of the lunar epacts	135	(1)
Solar epacts	136	(1)
Formula for finding the number of the solar epacts, and when leap year will fall	137	(1)
The cycle of both epacts, and how to calculate them using the fingers	137	(2)
The lunar cycle	139	(2)
Formula based on the lunar cycle for finding the age of the Moon on 1 January	141	(1)
A formula to find what year of the lunar cycle or of the nineteen-year cycle it is	142	(1)
The fourteenth Moon of Easter	142	(2)
A formula for finding it	144	(1)
Easter Sunday	145	(2)
The Moon of that day	147	(2)
The difference between the Pasch and the Feast of Unleavened Bread	149	(2)
The allegorical interpretation of Easter	151	(4)
The Great Paschal Cycle	155	(2)
[V. The world-chronicle (ch. 66)]
The Six Ages of this world	157	(82)
[VI. Future time and the end of time (chs. 67-71)]
The remainder of the Sixth Age	239	(1)
Three opinions of the faithful as to when the Lord will come	240	(1)
The time of Antichrist	241	(2)
The Day of Judgement	243	(3)
The Seventh Age, and the Eighth Age of the world to come	246	(5)
COMMENTARY	251	(126)
APPENDICES	377	(53)
1. Bede's solar calendar	379	(13)
2. Bede's Paschal table	392	(13)
3. Bede's letters on computus
3.1 Letter to Plegwin	405	(11)
3.2 Letter to Helmwald	416	(1)
3.3. Letter to Wicthed	417	(8)
4. A note on the term computus	425	(2)
5. Brief glossary of computistical terms	427	(3)
Bibliography	430	(15)
Index of Sources	445	(20)
General Index	465