De Temporum Ratione Research Articles

Early medieval vernacular Celtic glosses: originals or translations? A case study on the Vienna Bede

This study investigates the Old Irish glossing tradition on the Venerable Bede’s De Temporum Ratione, a computistical work from the early eighth century. Its main source is the Vienna Bede, a fragmentary manuscript with Old Irish and Latin glosses dating from the late eighth/early ninth centuries. It focuses on parallel glosses found in the Gloss-ViBe corpus where the Vienna Bede has an Old Irish gloss and the other manuscripts feature glosses in another language (Latin or Old Breton/Welsh). Minute analysis of individual glosses is used to determine whether early medieval vernacular Celtic glosses originals or translations from Latin glosses? The heterogenic nature of early medieval gloss corpora makes this a complex question for which there is no straightforward answer: for some glosses, a translation from Latin into Irish is almost inevitable, but others suggest Irish influence on the Latin parallel glosses. Accordingly, each case is discussed individually and the results are synthesised in the final part of the article.

Early medieval vernacular Celtic glosses:originals or translations? A case study on the Vienna Bede.

This study investigates the Old Irish glossing tradition on the Venerable Bede's De Temporum Ratione, a computistical work from the early eighth century. Its main source is the Vienna Bede, a fragmentary manuscript with Old Irish and Latin glosses dating from the late eighth/early ninth centuries. It focuses on parallel glosses found in the Gloss-ViBe corpus where the Vienna Bede has an Old Irish gloss and the other manuscripts feature glosses in another language (Latin or Old Breton/Welsh). Minute analysis of individual glosses is used to determine whether early medieval vernacular Celtic glosses originals or translations from Latin glosses? The heterogenic nature of early medieval gloss corpora makes this a complex question for which there is no straightforward answer: for some glosses, a translation from Latin into Irish is almost inevitable, but others suggest Irish influence on the Latin parallel glosses. Accordingly, each case is discussed individually and the results are synthesised in the final part of the article.

Bede and the Future ed. by Darby, Peter, and Faith Wallis

Reviewed by: Bede and the Future ed. by Darby, Peter, and Faith Wallis Anna Wallace Darby, Peter, and Faith Wallis, eds, Bede and the Future (Studies in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland), Farnham, Ashgate, 2014; hardback; pp. 286; 1 b/w illustration; R.R.P. £70.00; ISBN 9781409451822. The Venerable Bede is best known to many for his Historia ecclesiastica, and histories, by their nature, are about past time. However, as the editors note in their introduction to Bede and the Future, historia can also mean ‘description’, ‘and thus histories could be of present conditions’ (p. 2). To consider Bede as a historian only is to do a disservice to his wide-ranging mind and the depth of his works. Through his thinking and writing Bede transcended his time. Faith Wallis and Peter Darby are fitting editors for this volume. Wallis [End Page 167] has published translations of several of Bede’s works, including those most explicitly concerned with time: De temporum ratione (published as On the Reckoning of Time) and De temporibus (with Calvin Kendall, published as On the Nature of Things and on Times), while Darby’s 2012 monograph is titled Bede and the End of Time. The other contributors are no less well known in the field of Bede studies. The title of the collection expands on that of Darby’s monograph, taking Bede’s vision of the future as inclusive of but moving beyond the end of time. ‘Bede looked out on many futures’, the editors write (p. 3), and his ideas developed over time. The volume thus takes a roughly chronological sequence according to the order in which Bede penned his works, inasmuch as this can be known. This method of ordering means that thematically similar essays are not always grouped, but it demonstrates the ways in which Bede returned to certain topics throughout his life. The first essay, by Wallis, asks why Bede wrote his commentary on the Book of Revelation, one of his earlier works. As she notes, ‘the fact that he was selective tends to get lost’ (p. 23). Bede did not write commentaries on every book of the Bible, nor on every topic of science or history. The question is not only why did Bede choose Revelation, but why did he make such an ambitious choice at the beginning of his career? Wallis concludes that Bede’s choice was intended ‘to counter mistaken views about knowledge of the future’ as well as to state his own orthodoxy (p. 44). Alan Thacker continues the theme of Bede’s anxiety about accusations of heresy and unorthodoxy, which followed him throughout his life in one form or another. Christopher Grocock discusses Bede’s anxieties regarding more domestic matters: the possibility of changes to the Wearmouth–Jarrow monastery amid Northumbrian political upheaval. Grocock’s main source text is Bede’s Historia abbatum, but when Paul C. Hilliard visits a similar theme, Bede’s ideas about the future of Northumbria, it is from the later perspective of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica. Calvin B. Kendall writes on ‘Bede and Islam’, noting that the term Bede actually used was ‘Saracens’. Darby’s contribution addresses the ‘history of the future’ presented by Bede in De temporum ratione, and in particular the ways in which Bede’s eschatology differs from that of Augustine and Jerome. Bede’s use of ad dating in the Historia ecclesiastica is, Máirín MacCarron argues, a way of confirming the Christian future. James T. Palmer also examines De temporum ratione and its vision of the future, but in the context of computistical arguments and controversies, both in England and further afield, arguing that ‘Bede was addressing a disunited intellectual landscape in general’ (p. 146). Scott Gregorio’s essay on Bede’s ideas for monastic reform in his final works closes the volume, rounding out Bede’s many futures. [End Page 168] Anna Wallace Western Sydney University Copyright © 2017 Anna Wallace

Maria Galante, Giovanni Vitolo, and Giuseppa Z. Zanichelli, eds., Riforma della Chiesa, esperienze monastiche e poteri locali: La Badia di Cava nei secoli XI–XII. (Millennio Medievale 99.) Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014. Pp. vi, 410; 96 black-and-white and color plates. €82. ISBN: 978-88-8450-545-3.Table of contents available online at http://www.sismel.it/tidetails.asp?hdntiid=1378 (accessed 28 March 2016)

Maria Galante, Giovanni Vitolo, and Giuseppa Z. Zanichelli, eds., Riforma della Chiesa, esperienze monastiche e poteri locali: La Badia di Cava nei secoli XI–XII. (Millennio Medievale 99.) Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014. Pp. vi, 410; 96 black-and-white and color plates. €82. ISBN: 978-88-8450-545-3.Table of contents available online at http://www.sismel.it/tidetails.asp?hdntiid=1378 (accessed 28 March 2016)

New and corrected MS readings of the Old Irish glosses in the Vienna Bede

This paper offers new readings and translations of the Old Irish glosses on the fragment of Bede's De Temporum Ratione found in the Austrian National Library Codex 15298 (olim Suppl. 2698) in Vienna. In addition to the updated readings, a newly found gloss is discussed at the end of the paper.

Bede and the Future ed. by Peter Darby, Faith Wallis (review)

PETER DARBY and FAITH WALLIS, eds., Bede and the Future. Studies in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Pp. xv, 269. isbn: 978-1-4094-5182-2. $124.95.In their introduction to Bede and the Future, editors Peter Darby and Faith Wallis rightly point out that the Venerable Bede's place at the beginning of canonical literature written in England and the importance of his most famous work-the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum-cause modern readers to imagine him as a backward-looking author. The authors remind us, however, that Bede was motivated not only by 'antiquarian curiosity' (2), but also by the belief that biblical and post-biblical history offered important clues about future events and useful advice for improving one's chance of salvation at the Day of Judgment. The nine essays constituting Bede and the Future, arranged according to the chronology of the texts they interrogate, are intended to demonstrate and explore Bede's career-long interest in the coming days.In the first chapter, Faith Wallis explains why Bede wrote an explication of Revelation and, using clues from the prefatory letter to his commentary on Acts, argues that he tackled this potentially dangerous project early in his career, and did so partially in response to an accusation of heresy leveled against his first work on time, De temporibus. Bede was accused of holding the heretical view that the Incarnation occurred before the sixth age of the world. Bede successfully defended himself in a letter to a colleague, but Wallis argues that the charge, paired with his enmity toward contemporary millennialist theories, also prompted him to compose a strictly orthodox exegesis on Revelation. Moreover, in the following chapter Alan Thacker outlines Bede's reaction to two contemporary heresies, Monothelitism and Pelagianism, and argues that his commentaries on Samuel as well as on Ezra and Nehemiah indicate that he thought it was important for Christian teachers (doctores) to identify error and reconcile heretics.Turning to political realities in chapter three, Christopher Grocock gives a close reading of Benedict Bishop's dying words from the Historia abbatum and argues that Benedict's admonition to keep the rule, preserve the library, and maintain the monastic family reflects Bede's worries about the future unity and survival of his own community, Wearmouth-Jarrow. Calvin B. Kendall looks to potential cultural antagonism beyond Northumbria in the following chapter on Bede and Islam. Though not quite the anti-Islamic polemicist Edward Said suggested he was, Kendall argues that Bede was the first Christian writer to imagine 'Saracens' as important, biblically-prophesized enemies of Christianity.The next two chapters discuss Bede as a chronologer. Peter Darby addresses the eschatological sections of De temporum ratione, Bede's great treatise on the reckoning of time. Though he held the orthodox opinion advanced by Jerome and Augustine that the precise date for the end of the world could not be known, Bede's fondness for calculation and the work that he did challenging the practice of determining the age of the world with information in the Septuagint led him to believe that the end of time would unfold in a predictable sequence. …

A Medieval Planetary Diagram in Graz University Library

IntroductionThe manuscript MS 38 in the manuscript collection of the University Library in Graz, Austria, has as its main component a Biblia sacra Veteris Testamenti cum prologis Hieronymi. The codex is part of a series that includes two volumes catalogued as MS 37 in the same library and CVP 1 1 80 in the Austrian National Library. The series was in the possession of Stift Neuberg an der Miirz, Austria, until its suppression by Emperor Joseph ? in 1786. This monastery had been founded in 1327. For palaeographic reasons1 the writing can be dated to the twelfth or early thirteenth century. The text therefore is older than the monastery and hence must have been brought there from another location.The binding of the codices was carried out in the fifteenth century in Neuberg.2 For MS 38 a single folio of parchment was used as a flyleaf. It is inscribed on both sides, but the text has no relationship to the rest of the volume. Obviously the bookbinder chose this folio only for its suitable size, which is rather large (c. 45cm high, 31cm wide). From traces on the now exterior margin it can be concluded that the folio was at one time glued to others inversely compared to the present state, i.e. what is now the recto side was once verso. The present recto (the meat side) at that time was clearly empty of text or drawings, suggesting that the folio was the last in a codex (or at least in a major section). It carries several notes regarding coins, measures, and weights, and a verse to commemorate the names of the books of the Bible. All these texts are ascribed to the fifteenth century, i.e. the time of the binding.On verso (hair side) there is a text from Beda Venerabilis's De natura rerum, surrounding a circular diagram (Figure 1). It is followed by an explanation of the various forms and meanings of the word 'vesper' and an account of the Greek numerals taken from Beda's De temporum ratione. These texts and the diagram have been ascribed to the twelfth century.The diagram shows a peculiar drawing of the universe. It combines the Macrobiantype3 display with an Isidore-type TO-map,4 a presentation of the geographical directions, and a sketch of a lunar eclipse. From a detailed microscopic study of the folio it can be concluded that the drawing sequence was as follows. First the circles were drawn. Next the vertical line (north-south) was inscribed. Then the text was written (probably starting from the outer rim and proceeding inwards) and the central map drawn. Finally the horizontal (east-west) line was drawn. Thus it seems obvious that the drawing was made in a single action, and that the rather disparate elements were drawn at one time and not added later on. The quite unusual combination of elements opens an interesting view on the astronomical practice in monasteries of the twelfth century.The Accompanying TextThe text surrounding the planetary diagram reads:Inter terram celumque VII sidera pendent & certis discrepatus quae vocantur errantia. contrarium mundo agentia cursum. id est. levum. ilio semper in dextera praecipiti. & quamvis assidua conversione: inmense celeritatis. attollantur ab eo rapiuntur in occasus adverso tarnen ire motu per suos queque passus advertuntur.nunc inferius nec superius propter obliquitatem signiferi vagantia. Rathis autem solis praepedita anomala, vel retrograda, vel stationaria fiunt.Between Earth and Heaven 7 stars are suspended at certain distances and these are called wanderers. They are running their course contrary to the world that is to the left of it, always to the right of the precipice. And although by a perpetual revolution of immense celerity they are raised and carried to the setting, they nevertheless are perceived to go in adverse motion, everyone by its pace,straying once higher, once lower because of the obliquity of the sign-bearer. But hindered by the rays of the Sun they become abnormal, or retrograde, or stationary. …

A Greco-Latin Numerical List in a St. Gall Fragment

This article provides a detailed examination of a manuscript page in St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 1395, with special attention given to an unnoticed Greco-Latin numerical list. The main content of the page derives from Bede’s De temporum ratione, and the fragment offers information about the transmission of this computational text. Furthermore, scribal notes accompanying the list show early medieval uses of Greek learning alongside Latin sources-a phenomenon reflected in a number of other manuscripts from the same time period. Such glosses are also related to the overall trends of Carolingian learning, as well as some possible Insular connections.

‘Old Orthodoxies Die Hard’: Herwagen’s Bridferti Ramesiensis Glossae

An investigation and a critique of Johannes Herwagen’s attribution, in 1563, of a set of glosses on Bede’s De natura rerum and De temporum ratione to Byrhtferth of Ramsey in the light of recent publications supporting Herwagen’s claim.

Aelfric's De Temporibus Anni. Edited by MARTIN BLAKE.

Ælfric’sDe temporibus anni is a curiosity, a brief and orderly summary of essential general scientific knowledge distilled principally from Bede’s writings. As Martin Blake points out (p. 66), Ælfric does not aspire ‘to the heights of scientific learning’ seen in Bede’s De temporum ratione. Rather, the indications are of ‘an educational curriculum in England at the time which had limited ambitions in this area’. In Cambridge, University Library, Gg. 3. 28, where the De temporibus anni follows directly at the end of the second series of his Catholic Homilies, Ælfric himself tells us that his short treatise (‘lytel cwyde’) is not intended as a homily. In this manuscript, the earliest manuscript witness and base text for Blake’s edition as for Henel’s 1942 Early English Text Society edition, Ælfric’s De temporibus anni is followed by a miscellany of prayer and useful information for the laity who don’t know Latin (‘læwedum mannum þe þæt leden ne cunnon’), a sequence that ends with a letter written by Ælfric for Wulfsige, bishop of Sherborne 992–c.1000, for him to deliver to the priests of his diocese, almost a mini-compendium of useful information every priest should know. Ælfric’s De temporibus anni does not otherwise keep company with the Catholic Homilies but appears more typically among computistical and calendrical material. There are four further more or less complete texts, as well as a scattering of short excerpts, one of which was unknown to Henel (Ker first identified the sizeable extract in London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius C. viii, fos. 22–5). Blake includes a full account of all these in his clear and well-organized introduction (pp. 1–73). Appendices 1–3 (pp. 131–42) usefully tabulate materials discussed in the introduction, supplying a comparison of the text’s biblical quotations with the Vulgate, a list of the text’s biblical references, and a conspectus of parallels between the text and Ælfric’s other works. There are two illustrations, both from Gg. 3. 28: fo. 255r (showing the beginning of the text and also in Henel) and fo. 259r (a full page of text).

Virgil the Grammarian and Bede: a preliminary study

AbstractThe chapters in Bede's De temporum ratione begin with an etymology for the name of the subject to be examined. Sources and analogues for some have not hitherto been identified. This article shows that some of these etymologies of words for the divisions of time come ultimately, though perhaps not directly, from bk XI of Virgil the Grammarian's Epitomae. These accounts of the origins of calendrical and cosmological terms wound their way through early western computistical works and eventually into Bede's De temporum ratione. The article identifies examples of Virgil's influence on anonymous early medieval biblical commentaries and discusses their significance as pointers towards their place of composition.

Historical Re-Collections: Rewriting the World Chronicle in Bede’s De temporum ratione

Found in 245 manuscripts, Bede’s De temporum ratione (725 A.D.) was the most widely circulated of his scientific texts. In this article, the author considers this text in order to understand its popularity among Bede’s contemporaries and their continental successors. Bede locates the experience of his fellow Northumbrians at the center of the Christian historical narrative and, in so doing, provides other marginal peoples with a model for understanding their own place in Western Christianity. In particular, Bede introduces a new vocabulary of computus based on the language theory articulated by Augustine in De doctrina Christiana. Reading De temporum ratione in this way helps to explain its wide popularity, while providing further insight into Bede’s notions of English and Christian history. Ultimately, the text functions less as an exercise in objective or scientific history than as an attempt to introduce uniquely English concerns into the previously closed narrative of Western Christian history.

Discovering the Calendar (Annalis Libellus) attached to Bede's own copy of De temporum ratione

Cet article cherche à montrer que, malgré les assertions contraires de Charles Jones et d'Arno Borst, le calendrier julien composé par Bède, en même temps qu'une table pascale (532-1063), comme aide pour la lecture de son traité De temporum ratione (DTR), n'est pas perdu. Sa diffusion débuta du vivant de Bède et des copies se répandirent à travers toute l'Europe. Le calendrier du ms. Berlin, Phillipps MS 1869, considéré par Borst comme la source d'un Reichskalender qui, rédigé en 789, se serait propagé à travers l'Europe, n'est pas autre chose qu'un descendant du calendrier associé au DTR de Bède. La soigneuse collation, réalisée par Borst, de nombreux calendriers présentant les mêmes particularités distinctives, nous permet de reconstituer le calendrier associé au DTR de Bède (Appendice A), qui, à l'origine, était dépourvu de noms de saints. Ces derniers, insérés dans le calendrier à une époque ancienne, tandis que celui-ci circulait encore en Angleterre (Appendice B), contribuent à éclairer les origines de la fête de la Purification, en date du 2 février.

Early medieval science: the evidence of Bede

The Venerable Bede used observable proofs and mathematical calculations in his early 8th-century treatise De temporum ratione to teach the astronomical principles that inform the calculation of the date of Easter. This suggests that the seeds of the modern scientific method might be found before the 12th century in the educational practices of the early medieval monasteries.

Doubts about the Calendar: Bede and the Eclipse of 664

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.

Los <i>excerpta</i> de Beda (<i>De Temporum Ratione</i> 25-35) en el ms. ACA, Ripoll 225

The aim of this paper is lo study a fragment of Bede’s De Temporum Ratione (caps. 25-35), contained in the ms. Barcelona, ACA, Ripoll 225 ( saec. XI). These DTR excerpta from Ripoll are not included in the critical edition of Bede’s ecclesiastical computus texts made by Ch. W. Jones ( Bedae Opera de Temporibus , Cambridge, Mass., 1943, with a new edition of the same critical apparatus in the Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina , CXXIII B, Bedae Opera, Pars VI, 2 Opera Didascalica , Turnholt 1977). Our paper tries to study the readings of the Ripoll ms. in comparison with Jone’s edition, in order to put forward some improved variants. The paper also tries to come to certain conclusions about the relationship between the scriptorium of Ripoll and the other European scriptoria in which Bede’s DTR mss. were copied.

Music in Bede's De temporum ratione: an 11th-Century Addition to MS London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian B.VI

Music in Bede's De temporum ratione: an 11th-Century Addition to MS London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian B.VI

A fragment of Bede's De Temporum Ratione in the Public Record Office

A manuscript fragment containing part of ch. 47 of Bede's De Temporum Ratione has recently been identified in the State Papers Supplementary in the Public Record Office, Chancery Lane (London), where it has the reference SP 46/125, fol. 302 (see pl. I).1 It was added to the volume in which it is now to be found in June 1925, on the authority of C. S. B. Buckland, an Assistant Keeper of the Public Records, but no information appears to have survived about its source.

APRIL—APHRODITE IN BEDE'S “DE TEMPORUM RATIONE”: A NOTE ON THE “REVERDIE”

Journal Article APRIL—APHRODITE IN BEDE'S “DE TEMPORUM RATIONE”: A NOTE ON THE “REVERDIE” Get access J. M. STEADMAN J. M. STEADMAN San Marino, California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 20, Issue 11, November 1973, Pages 409-a–409, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/20-11-409a Published: 01 November 1973

Was Bede the Author of a Penitential?

The recent publication of the more important medieval handbooks of penance in an English version raises afresh the often disputed question, whether the Venerable Bede was the author or compiler of a penitential. What may be called the positive evidence that he did so is slight. In, or soon after, 906 Regino of Prüm composed his treatise, De synodalibus causis et disciplinis ecclesiasticis, in which he refers by name to the penitentials of Bishop Theodore and of the Venerable Bede. In the second place, there still survive several nearly related penitentials which are ascribed to Bede in the extant manuscripts. However, this ascription to Bede carries little weight, if unsupported by other evidence. For several centuries after his death his authority as a theologian ranked next to that of the four Latin doctors and the list of works going under his name, but not by him, is long. Nor is Regino's testimony unimpeachable, for his acquaintance with Bede's writings was not extensive. He does not seem to have used the theological works when composing the De synodalibus causis; and, though he did, when compiling his Chronica, make use of the chronicle inserted by Bede in the De temporum ratione, he did not consult the Ecclesiastical History. Had he been familiar with that basic work on British history, he would assuredly have drawn on it, as so many others did. He would also have found in 5, 24 Bede's own list of his writings. Thus we may suspect that Regino attributed a penitential to Bede merely on the strength of a rubric in a manuscript, and we shall do well to query the accuracy of his statement, unless corroborated by other proofs.