Texts

De temporum ratione ‘On the reckoning of time’

Bede
  • Latin
  • prose
  • Anglo-Saxon texts
Influential Latin treatise by the Northumbrian monk Bede on the methods of calculating time and the construction of a Christian calendar (computus). The work was preceded by Bede's briefer treatment of the same subject known as De temporibus.
Author
Bede
Bede
(d. 735)
English monk at Monkwearmouth-Jarrow; author of the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum and works on various religious and theological subjects.

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Manuscripts
A list of all manuscripts, 133 of which were listed by Charles Jones, is beyond the scope of this manuscript.
ff. 1–4
Fragment, with marginal and interlinear glosses in Early Irish and Latin
Angers, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 477
ff. 44v–85v
Fragments. Manuscript contains glosses in Old Breton.
Language
  • Latin
Date
c.725.
Form
prose (primary)
Textual relationships
(Possible) sources: De temporibus (liber)De temporibus (liber)

Short, influential and widely disseminated Latin tract on the topic of time-reckoning, written c.703 by the Northumbrian monk Bede. Bede came to revisit this topic at greater length when in c.725 he wrote De tempore rationum.

Classification

Anglo-Saxon textsAnglo-Saxon texts
...

Sources

Primary sources Text editions and/or modern translations – in whole or in part – along with publications containing additions and corrections, if known. Diplomatic editions, facsimiles and digital image reproductions of the manuscripts are not always listed here but may be found in entries for the relevant manuscripts. For historical purposes, early editions, transcriptions and translations are not excluded, even if their reliability does not meet modern standards.

[ed.] Jones, Charles W. [ed.], Beda Venerabilis. De temporum ratione liber, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 123 B, Turnhout: Brepols, 1977.
[tr.] Wallis, Faith, Bede: The reckoning of time, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999.

Secondary sources (select)

Darby, Peter, Bede and the end of time, Studies in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland, Farnham, Surrey, Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. xv + 261 pp.
Lambert, Pierre-Yves, “Les gloses en vieux-breton aux écrits scientifiques de Bède, dans le manuscrit Angers 477”, in: Stéphane Lebecq, Michel Perrin, and Olivier Szerwiniack (eds), Bède le Vénérable: entre tradition et posterité, 34, Villeneuve d'Ascq, 2005. 309–319.
Hleno.revues.org: <link>
Lambert, Pierre-Yves, “Les commentaires celtiques à Bède le Vénérable [part 1]”, Études Celtiques 20 (1983): 119–143.
Persée – Études Celtiques, vol. 20, 1983: <link>
Lambert, Pierre-Yves, “Les commentaires celtiques à Bède le Vénérable [part 2]”, Études Celtiques 21 (1984): 185–206.
Persée – Études Celtiques, vol. 21, 1984: <link>
Contributors
Dennis Groenewegen
Page created
June 2011, last updated: January 2024