Book Chapter. Ohashi. ‘Sexta aetas continet annos praeteritos DCCVIIII’ (Bede, De temporibus, 22): A Scribal Error? 2003.
‘Sexta aetas continet annos praeteritos DCCVIIII’
(Bede, De temporibus, 22): A Scribal Error?
Masako Ohashi
During the Middle Ages the reckoning of Easter was one of the most important and difficult problems for the church, since the festival had to be fixed by following a complicated lunisolar calendar. The system adopted in the medieval West was composed by the Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus in the early sixth century, in which he also introduced in his paschal table a new style of counting years from the birth of Jesus Christ. This is the AD (Anno Domini) reference that is now used world-wide. However, it was not Dionysius but Bede who really introduced the AD into historiography in the West. The Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (731) uses the AD to describe English and non-English events. Thus Bede adopted it in his famous history, but it was nearly thirty years before the publication of that work that he first explained how to calculate the ‘Year of the Lord’ by following Dionysius.
When he was about thirty years old, Bede started his career as a scholar, and De temporibus was one of his earliest works. In Chapter 14, in which he explains how to calculate the ‘Year of the Lord’, he gives an indication of the year of composition (annus praesens). This is given as AD 703, the fifth year of the Emperor Tiberius III. The reference to the same emperor (and the same regnal year) is found in the last chapter of the work.
However, there remains a problem in the transmission of the text. At the beginning of Chapter 22, we read ‘Sexta aetas continet annos praeteritos DCCVIIII’ (‘the sixth age contains 709 completed years’).7 Here Bede shows the traditional theological division of the universal history. The sixth age started at the birth of Jesus Christ, and the sum of the years (here 709) should give the Anno Domini. But the number does not correspond with the AD found in Chapter 14 of the same work. Historians have suggested that this number is a scribal error.Masako Ohashi. ‘Sexta aetas continet annos praeteritos DCCVIIII’ (Bede, De temporibus, 22): A Scribal Error? Internationational Medieval Research Volume 9, “Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse”, pp. 55-61. Brepols, 2003.
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