The Hydrologic Cycle In Bede’s De Natura Rerum

in The Nature and Function of Water, Baths, Bathing and Hygiene from Antiquity through the Renaissance, pp. 361-380.
Brill, Technology and Change in History, Volume 11, 2009.
Author: Lin Ferrand

It is generally believed that Bede wrote his secular treatise De natura rerum1 in 703 A.D. The work is closely modeled on an earlier work of the same title written in the early seventh century by Isidore of Seville. However, it has often been noted that Bede did not copy slavishly from Isidore. He omitted nearly all of his religious and metaphorical material, simplified the presentation of the remaining natural historical material, and supplemented it with information found in the thirteenth book of Isidore’s Etymologies, the second book of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, and occasionally the writings of the Church Fathers. According to Smyth and others, he also used material from a source long believed to have been written by Isidore but now thought to have been written in late seventh-century Ireland by an author often referred to as “Pseudo-Isidore”. Some have claimed that Bede did not hesitate to use his observations of his surroundings as a basis for emending his classical sources. It is important to ask whether his choices were consistent with what he could have observed in his own time and place —rather than with our constantly-evolving view of scientific truth— in order to evaluate the degree to which this is demonstrated in De natura rerum.

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