Article. Moreton. Doubts about the Calendar: Bede and the Eclipse of 664. 1998.
Doubts about the Calendar: Bede and the Eclipse of 664
Author: Jennifer Moreton
Source: Isis, Vol. 89, No. 1 (Mar., 1998), pp. 50-65
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.
Moreton_Doubts_about_Calendar
View p. 50 as image.
View p. 51 as image.
View p. 52 as image.
View p. 53 as image.
View p. 54 as image.
View p. 55 as image.
View p. 56 as image.
View p. 57 as image.
View p. 58 as image.
View p. 59 as image.
View p. 60 as image.
View p. 61 as image.
View p. 62 as image.
View p. 63 as image.
View p. 64 as image.
View p. 65 as image.
Moreton – Doubts About the Calendar_Bede and the Eclipse of 664 by novitestamentistudiosus on Scribd
NOTE: Please be aware that the rights of this article belong only and exclusively to The History of Science Society. You must not use this article for any commercial or professional activity without direct and explicit permission of it’s copyright holders. We do not store illegal materials nor promote any illegal activity, and this document is being cited only as a reference widely available through Internet, to help the personal study and investigation of researchers and students, without any kind of commercial/profitable usage.