The Reckoning of Time
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A treatise on computing the date of Easter becomes the standard medieval textbook of calendar science, and works out the Anno Domini era in the form later centuries adopted.
- calendar computation set out as a teachable science
- the Anno Domini era worked out in usable tabular form
- tides related to the moon, with locally observed variation
- a contested church practice settled by arithmetic
The problem was practical and divisive: fixing Easter required reconciling solar years, lunar months and the week, and Britain had recently been split between competing systems. Bede sets out finger-reckoning, the divisions of time, the lunar and solar cycles, the nineteen-year Easter table, and a world chronicle organised on the six ages. He also discusses tides in relation to the moon with observations from the Northumbrian coast, noting that tide times differ from place to place along it.
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