It will also serve as an accessible introduction to computus itself. It will interest historians of medieval science, theology, and education, Bede scholars and Anglo-Saxonists, liturgists, and Church historians. This translation of the full text of The Reckoning of Time includes an extensive historical introduction and a chapter-by-chapter commentary. Bede sets calendar lore within a broad scientific framework and a coherent Christian concept of time, and incorporates themes as diverse as the theory of tides and the doctrine of the millennium. But it is more than a technical handbook. It is a systematic exposition of the Julian solar calendar and the Paschal table of Dionysius Exiguus, with their related formulae for calculating dates. Bede's The Reckoning of Time (De temporum ratione) was the first comprehensive treatise on this subject and the model and reference for all subsequent teaching discussion and criticism of the Christian calendar.

The topics covered in this new handbook pertain to issues such as love and marriage, belief in God, hell, and the devil, education, lordship and servitude, Christianity versus Judaism and Islam, health, medicine, the rural world, the rise of the urban class, travel, roads and bridges, entertainment, games, and sport activities, numbers, measuring, the education system, the papacy, saints, the senses, death, and money.ĭescription: From the patristic age until the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582, computus - the science of time reckoning and art of calendar construction - was a matter of intense concern. The present, innovative handbook offers compact articles on essential topics, ideals, specific knowledge, and concepts defining the medieval world as comprehensively as possible.

Particularly our understanding of medieval culture, of the basic living conditions, and the specific value system prevalent at that time has considerably expanded, to a point where we are in danger of no longer seeing the proverbial forest for the trees. Medieval research has grown tremendously in depth and breadth over the last decades. Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KGĭescription: A follow-up publication to the Handbook of Medieval Studies, this new reference work turns to a different focus: medieval culture.

Waves of Reckoning by Terri Marie