Description
Book SynopsisThe Venerable Bede composed On the Nature of Things (De natura rerum) and On Times (De temporibus) at the outset of his career, about AD 703. Bede fashioned himself as a teacher to his people and his age, and these two short works show him selecting, editing, and clarifying a mass of difficult and sometimes dangerous material. He insisted that his reader understand the mathematical and physical basis of time, and though he was dependent on his textual sources, he also included observations of his own. But Bede was also a Christian exegete who thought deeply and earnestly about how salvation-history connected to natural history and the history of the peoples of the earth. To comprehend his religious mentality, we have to take on board his views on “science” —— and vice versa. On the Nature of Things is a survey of cosmology. Starting with Creation and the universe as a whole, Bede reads the cosmos downwards from the heavens, through the atmosphere, to the oceans and rivers of earth. This order (recapitulating the four elements or fire, air, water and earth) was derived from his main source, Isidore of Seville’s On the Nature of Things. However, Bede separated out Isidore’s chapters on time, and dealt with them in On Times. On Times, like its “second, revised and enlarged edition” The Reckoning of Time (De temporum ratione), works upwards from the smallest units of time, through the day and night, the week, month and year, to the world-ages. Bede’s innovation is to introduce a practical manual of Easter reckoning, or computus, into this survey. Hidden beneath the matter-of-fact surface of the work is an intense polemic about the correct principles for determining the date of Easter —— principles which in Bede’s view are bound up with both the integrity of nature as God’s creation, and the theological significance of Christ’s death and resurrection. In these works Bede re-united cosmology and time-reckoning to form a unified science of computus that would become the framework for Carolingian and Scholastic basic scientific education.
Trade ReviewThe translation itself is extremely well produced: it stays close to the Latin yet employs the best in modern idioms; I could uncover no errors of any kind. Scholars of Bede and the early Middle Ages will read these works with great interest for the light they throw on the organization of Bede's thought and the larger trajectory of his biblical vision; historians of science, meanwhile, will enjoy having in so inviting a volume translations of two early medieval works that had a strong hold on understandings of chronology and cosmology up till modern times.
Scott DeGregorio, ISIS, Volume 103, Number 2Table of Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Date and Purpose of On the Nature of Things (ONT)
- and On Times (OT)
- Structure and Content of ONT and OT
- Unity of Conception of ONT and OT
- The Place of ONT and OT in Bede’s Thought
- Bede’s template: Isidore of Seville’s De natura rerum (DNR)
- Bede’s transformation of Isidore’s DNR
- Bede’s Attitude Toward Isidore
- The Easter Controversy and the Pedagogy of Computus
- The Christian World-Chronicle
- Bede’s Science: Continuities and New Directions
- The Transmission of ONT and OT
- The reception of ONT and OT: glosses and excerpts
- Principles Governing this Translation
- Inventory of Manuscripts and Editions of Bede’s ONT and OT
- Bede: On the Nature of Things
- A Poem of Bede the Priest
- The Chapters of On the Nature of Things
- 1. The Fourfold Work of God
- 2. The Formation of the World
- 3. What the World Is
- 4. The Elements
- 5. The Firmament
- 6. The Varied Height of Heaven
- 7. Upper Heaven
- 8. The Heavenly Waters
- 9. The Five Circles of the World
- 10. The Regions of the World
- 11. The Stars
- 12. The Course of the Planets
- 13. Their Order
- 14. Their Orbits
- 15. Why Their Colours Change
- 16. The Circle of the Zodiac
- 17. The Twelve Signs
- 18. The Milky Way
- 19. The Course and Size of the Sun
- 20. The Nature and Place of the Moon
- 21. Method for Determining the Course of the Moon through the Signs of the Zodia
- 22. The Eclipse of the Sun and the Moon
- 23. Where there is No Eclipse and Why
- 24. Comets
- 25. The Air
- 26. The Winds
- 27. The Order of the Winds
- 28. Thunder
- 29. Lightning
- 30. Where Lightning is Not and Why
- 31. The Rainbow
- 32. Clouds
- 33. Rains
- 34. Hail
- 35. Snow
- 36. Signs of Storms or Fair Weather
- 37. Pestilence
- 38. On the Dual Nature of the Waters
- 39. The Ocean’s Tide
- 40. Why the Sea does Not Grow in Size
- 41. Why It is Bitter
- 42. The Red Sea
- 43. The Nile
- 44. That the Earth is Bound by Waters
- 45. The Position of the Earth
- 46. That the Earth is Like a Globe
- 47. The Circles of the Earth
- 48. More on the Same Subject: the Art of Using Sundials
- 49. Earthquake
- 50. The Fire of Mount Etna
- 51. The Division of the Earth
- Bede: On Times
- The Chapters of On Times
- 1. Moments and Hours
- 2. The Day
- 3. The Night
- 4. The Week
- 5. The Month
- 6. The Months of the Romans
- 7. Solstice and Equinox
- 8. The Seasons
- 9. Years
- 10. The Leap-Year Day
- 11. The Nineteen-Year Cycle
- 12. The ‘Leap of the Moon’
- 13. The Contents of the Paschal Cycle
- 14. The Formulas for the Headings of the Pascal Tables
- 15. The Sacrament of the Easter Season
- 16. The Ages of the World
- 17. The Sequence and Order of Times
- 18. The Second Age
- 19. The Third Age
- 20. The Fourth Age
- 21. The Fifth Age
- 22. The Sixth Age
- Commentary: On the Nature of Things
- Commentary: On Times
- Appendix 1: Bede: A Hymn on the Work of the
- First Six Days and the Six Ages of the World
- Appendix 2: An Excursus on Bede’s Mathematical Reasoning
- Appendix 3: Bede’s Calculation of Tidal Periods and the Purported ‘Immaturity’ of
- On the Nature of Things
- Appendix 4: Bede and Lucretius
- Select Bibliography
- Index of Sources
- General Index
