Doubts about the Calendar: Bede and the Eclipse of 664

Abstract

The thesis of this article is that Bede's great work on time reckoning, the De temporum ratione (A.D. 725), contains the seeds of later calendar reform. The year 664 was distinguished not only by the Synod of Whitby, after which the Northumbrian Church conformed to the Roman method of calculating Easter, but by an event of computistical significance--the solar eclipse on 1 May. Since this date showed the Roman reckoning to be inaccurate, it was altered to 3 May. Bede knew of this alteration and was uneasy about it. He at first attempted to justify the ecclesiastical dating, although eyewitness accounts showed it to be wrong, and later, by referring to the Acta synodi, a document used by the Irish to justify their Easter reckoning, implied how a solution to the problem might be found. In the eleventh century, Gerland spelled out the heterodox ideas at which Bede had only hinted.