Bede: On the Nature of Things and On Times (Liverpool University Press - Translated Texts for Historians)
Accurate, elegant, utterly clear and easily accessible, even for readers who lack expertise in the relevant disciplines. The Commentaries and Appendices shed floods of light on Bede's mental processes and expertise, and will represent a very significant landmark in Bedan studies. The book, in short, will be a wonderful addition to the series of TTH. -- Professor Michael Lapidge, University of Cambridge Bede, a Benedictine monk (d. 735) from the Abbey of Jarrow in Northumbria, is a stellar witness to the excellence of the monastic schools in the eighth century. Best known for his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, his total output consists of twelve folio volumes, with works on theology, Scripture, grammar, and science. He was the last of a group of natural philosophers known as the Encyclopedists: Lucretius, Pliny, Martianus Capella, Isidore of Seville. At a time when practically the whole corpus of Greek philosophy was eclipsed (only Plato's Timaeus and some parts of Aristotle's logical works being available) this group of scholars kept alive a genuine interest in the natural world for its own sake and a recognition of the need for mathematics. Kendall and Wallis deserve credit for making two of Bede's works available to scholars who are not able to work with Latin texts. Although Bede wrote that he never departed more than fifty miles from his abbey, he had an impressive array of authors available to him: Pliny, Augustine, Isidore, Pseudo-Isidore, Ambrose, Vergil, Dionysius Exiguus,Junilius. Bede's use of these sources was not always critical, sometimes repeating claims he knew to be false. As was typical in the Middle Ages, credit was rarely given to the sources used, but the editors provide a complete set of notes tracking the sources. Consistent with virtually all of the natural philosophers since Aristotle, Bede states that the earth is a sphere (46). What is significant is the casual way that he describes the proof for this assertion: as one travels north and south, different star patterns are visible. For example, in Egypt the constellations of the Great and Little Bear cannot be seen. The claim that Columbus' sailors were afraid of falling off a flat earth is a modern legend (J. Russell: Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians). Considering that Bede was writing nine centuries before the invention of the telescope, he has an impressive knowledge of astronomy-retrograde motion of the planets, the speed of the movement of the sun and the moon through the Zodiac. Of course Bede's interest in these two phenomena is connected with the need to determine the date of Easter, which always occurs on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This date had to be predicted well ahead of its occurrence to allow time for the season of Lent and its antecedents. The science dealing with these calculations has been called computus, and Bede's contributions to it exceed all previous works. As is seen in On Times, dealing with phenomena that are not strictly periodic can be challenging. He notes (ch. 10) that the date of the spring equinox arrives earlier and earlier each year and if an extra day is not added every fourth year, after 365 years the spring equinox would occur on December 20! Actually, since adding this day did not prevent the "creeping" of the date of the spring equinox backward in time, another modification was made by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, when he declared that Thursday, October 4, be followed by Friday, October 15. Bede only deals briefly with tides in On the Nature of Things (39), writing a more extensive work on this subject later. Here he ascribes the tides to a breathing action of the moon (ch. 39). I would translate the first sentence as: "When the moon inhales, the ocean is drawn back, and when it exhales, the ocean recedes." Although the Latin text is difficult, the authors have done a creditable job of translating. However, in chapter 45, it might be important to retain the plural form of ignibus and aquis, because Bede might have wanted to show that he was aware of different kinds of these elements. Also, since some historians have assumed that Copernicus denigrated the earth by taking it out of the center, it is good to remember that the center was the most degraded [humillimumJ position of all. In the same chapter, perhaps in creaturis ought to be rendered among creatures rather than in creation. -- Wilfrid Theisen, O.S.B., St. John's Abbey, Collegeville, MN ABR 62:3 201109 The past two decades have seen something of a revolution in the study of the works of Bede. The eighth-century Anglo-Saxon monk, once seen as a man of one book, has been increasingly studied in the totality of his rich and varied output. An important element in this reappraisal has been the increasing availability of writings other than his Ecclesiastical History of the English People in translation. Liverpool University Press has been at the forefront in producing these translations through their excellent series, 'Translated Texts for Historians'. Both the authors of the present volume have previously translated Bede for the series, and Faith Wallis's magisterial volume on De Temporum Ratione/On the Reckoning of Time has been a particular high-water mark in recent work on Bede's scientific writings. The current volume seems to be a spiritual successor to that work. The two brief treatises translated here were forerunners to De Temporum Ratione, in which Bede was substantially to rework them. De Natura Rerum/On the Nature of Things is a cosmographical treatise in which the author works his way down from the highest heavens to earth, discussing the celestial bodies and meteorological phenomena along the way. De Temporibus/On Times serves as a brief introduction to computus, the science of calculating time and especially the date of Easter. It also includes a brief world chronicle, divided according to the six ages of the world which, although first popularised by Augustine, Bede was to champion passionately. Both works are very compressed and their laconic style frequently hinders rather than helps understanding when the discussion becomes technical. It was partly to deal with such difficulties for his own pupils that Bede seems to have set about expanding on both works in De Temporum Ratione. Calvin Kendall and Faith Wallis, however, supply the brief texts with ample notes, a detailed introduction and commentary, and no less than four appendices, one of which provides the translation of a hymn of Bede's composition on the relationship between the six world ages and the six days of creation. In their introduction Kendall and Wallis argue that Bede himself conceived of De Natura Rerum and De Temporibus as a pair, although the treatises were frequently to be separated in the manuscripts. They locate the works in a tradition of writing deliberately aimed at undermining superstition (as was Isidore of Seville's De Natura Rerum) and millenarian tendencies. While the two works are quite probably among Bede's earliest writings, Kendall and Wallis make a convincing case both for their place in Bede's overall corpus (connecting them with his early commentary on the Apocalypse, for instance), and for their definite originality on certain points. In particular, Bede's decision to uncouple the theory of the six world ages from the world chronology established by the Septuagint was aimed at undermining millenarian speculations that the world would end after six thousand years. It was also to lead to an accusation of heresy from some of his less intellectually precise countrymen. Kendall and Wallis also have some valuable things to say about Bede's attitude to Isidore of Seville. It has long been orthodoxy to declare that Bede distrusted his Spanish predecessor. Such a belief, while based on fairly slim evidence, has gained authority through constant repetition, and two articles by William D. McCready published in 1995, aimed at disproving it, have not had the influence they should have had. The authors here return to McCready's arguments and establish a convincing case for Isidore's influence on Bede that should lay the lazy repetition of well-known 'facts' to rest. For a translation of two such small works in a relatively slim volume, Kendall and Wallis's work is impressive for the sheer amount of detail it contains. De Natura Rerum and De Temporibus are unlikely to be many students' first encounters with Bede, but this translation ensures that even beginners will be able to engage with his scientific work without having to go straight to the Latin. If this means that more undergraduates will get to know Bede, not just as the key source for early English history, but as the dominating intellectual figure of his day (Kendall and Wallis show what a capable mathematician he must have been, for example), then so much the better. The volume meets the generally high standards of the series to which it belongs. The interlinear references to the page numbers of the Latin edition, that of Charles W. Jones from Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, cxxiii, are very helpful in works such as this (though on p. 109 the reference to /588/ in the Latin seems to have disappeared; it should appear just after the first semicolon in ch. 5). Much work has been expended on these seemingly slight texts and it is to be appreciated. -- Conor O'Brien English Historical Review, vol 127, no 529 201212 The volume meets the generally high standards of the series to which it belongs. The interlinear references to the page numbers of the Latin edition, that of Charles W. Jones from Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, cxxiii, are very helpful in works such as this (though on p. 109 the reference to /588/ in the Latin seems to have disappeared; it should appear just after the first semicolon in ch. 5). Much work has been expended on these seemingly slight texts and it is to be appreciated. English Historical Review, vol 127, no 529 201212 Following Faith Wallis's 1999 translation of Bede's De temporum ratione of AD 725 (DTR in the following; The Reckoning of Time), the Translated Texts for Historians series (TTH) of Liverpool University Press h...