11. The months
TRANSLATION
¢rst man was made in the image of God; subsequently, woman was fashioned from a rib taken from his side while he slept. In the Sixth Age, as the Prophets foretold, the Son of God appeared, who would recreate man in the image of God.108 As he slept upon the Cross, water and blood £owed from his side, from which he would consecrate the Church to himself. The evening of this Age, darker than all the others, will come in Antichrist's persecution.109 /312/ On the seventh day, when His labours were ended, God rested; blessing that day, he bade it be called ''sabbath'', and we do not read that it had an evening. In the Seventh Age the souls of the righteous, when the excellent labours of their lives are ¢nished, will rest forever in another life which will never be blemished by any sorrow, but rather will culminate in the greater glory of the Resurrection. For man, this Age began when the ¢rst martyr Abel, his body having been laid to rest in the earth, entered in spirit into the sabbath of perpetual rest. It will be complete when the saints, having received their bodies [back], shall possess a double measure in their land,110 and everlasting joy shall be theirs. This is the Eighth Age,111 concerning which the sixth Psalm was written.112 I believe that in the Six Ages of this world we ought to pray for the Seventh or Eighth Age of the world. Because the just shall receive joy, but the wicked punishment, the Psalm concerning this Age begins, proceeds and ends in great fear: O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, etc.
11. THE MONTHS
The months [menses] take their name from the measure [mensura], by which each of them is measured.113 But it is more correct [to say that they take their name] from the Moon, which in the Greek language is
108 Cf. John 19.34.
109 Cf. ch. 69, below.
110 Isaiah 61.7.
111 Cf. ch. 71, below.
112 Bede is referring here to the rubric of Psalm 6: In ¢nem in carminibus pro octava Psalmus David. Cf. In Gen. 1.1.2 (32.995^33.1002); Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 6.1^2, ed. E. Dekkers and J. Fraipont, CCSL 38 (1956):27.1^28.48. Cf. ch. 71, below, and Jones, ''Some Introductory Remarks'', 196^197.
113 As with the etymology of tempus in ch. 2, this etymology is not derived from Isidore, but is also found in the non-Bedan ''Merovingian computus of 727'', 5 (54). An untraced common source is likely.
THE RECKONING OF TIME
called ''mene'',114 fortheGreekscall the months ''mene''. Jerome says that amongst the Hebrews as well, the Moon, which they call iare, gives its name to the month.115 /313/ Hence Jesus son of Sirach,who undoubtedly wrote in Hebrew, says, in speaking of the Moon, that the month is called after her name.116
The ancients customarily calculated their months not by the course of the Sun, but by that of the Moon. Hence whenever Holy Scripture
(whether [speaking of a time] under the Law or before the Law) indicates a day of the month on which something was said or done, it signi¢es nothing other than the age of the Moon. The Hebrews, to whom the oracles of God are entrusted, have never ceased to observe the months after the ancient custom of their fathers. They call the ¢rst month of the new fruits, which is dedicated to the rites of Passover, Nisan. Because of the £uctuating course of the Moon it sometimes falls in March, sometimes in April, and occasionally encroaches on some days of May. But it is properly assigned to April, and always either begins, ends or is totally included within it, provided that the rule we discussed above117 is observed: when the 15th day of the Moon follows the equinox, it constitutes the ¢rst month of the new year, and when it comes before the equinox, it forms the last month of the preceding year, and so on in sequence. By a similar calculation, their second month, Iyyar, corresponds to May; their third, Sivan, to June; their fourth, Tammuz, to July; their ¢fth, Av, to August; their sixth, Elul, to September; their seventh, Tishri, to October, which they call the new year, because then the harvest is gathered and special festivities held; the eighth,
Marheshvan, /314/ to November; the ninth, Kislev, to December; the tenth, Tevet, to January; the eleventh, Shevat, to February; and the twelfth, Adar, to March.118 Because the lunar orbit comprises 29ˆ~˜ days,
114 Isidore, Etym. 5.33.1.
115 De divisionibus temporum 14 (659C), including the quotation from Jerome, In Amos 2.4.7.8^9, ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 76 (1969):264.275. Cf. On Times 5.
116 Ecclesiasticus 43.8.
117 In ch. 6. Since the full Moon of Easter cannot come before the equinox on March 21, even the earliest legitimate Paschal lunation will end in the month of April. The calendar month in which a lunation ends is the month to which that lunation is assigned.
118 Cf. Polemius Silvius, Laterculus, ed. Theodore Mommsen, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 1, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Georg Remer, 1893):335^357.The Laterculus is an annotated Julian calendar; each month contains the names of the parallel Hebrew, Egyptian,
Athenian and Greek months. For a cognate list of Hebrew month names, cf. Eucherius, Instructionum ad Salonium libri duo 2.7, ed. C. Wotke, CSEL 31 (1894):153.10^19.
TRANSLATION
these months alternate between 30 and 29 days, and in the second or third year they intercalate an extra month made up from the days of the 11 epacts from each year.
Hence I have some misgivings about how our predecessors calculated the day on which the Law was given ^ which is the third day of the third month ^ as being the ¢ftieth day after the slaying of the [Paschal] lamb.
They count 17 days left over from the ¢rst month (because the ¢rst 13 had elapsed before Passover), 30 in the second month, and 3 in the third.
Together these make 50 days, but it is agreed that two lunar months ¢nish, not in 60, but in 59 days. Therefore if, /315/ having calculated the Paschal month at 30 days, one retains the 17 days of its course which follow Passover, the second month ought to end not in 30, but in 29 days. By this calculation no more than 49 days will be found at the end of the speci¢ed time, unless one considers that the whole is construed from the part by synecdoche, a very common rule in Holy Scripture.119
But however these things were done or reckoned, it is obvious that the Hebrews were accustomed to observe their months according to the course of the Moon. When in the book of Genesis Noah is said to have gone into the Ark with his folk on the 17th day of the second month, and to have left it on the 27th day of the same month after the Flood, the only correct way of understanding this is that a whole solar year, that is, 365 days, is signi¢ed.120 For the Moon, which this year, for instance,121 is in its 17th day on the nones of May [7 May] will next year be 27 days old on the day before the nones of May. /316/
Note well that those who say that the month ought to be de¢ned, or was de¢ned by the ancients, as the length of time in which the Moon traverses the zodiacal circle, make a serious mistake.122 As more pains119 By ''predecessors'' Bede is referring to Augustine, Ep. 55.30, CSEL 34
(1898):204.12^205.4; Quaestiones in Heptateuchum 70, ed. J. Fraipont, CCSL 33 (1958):102.1123^1130. Cf. ch. 8, above. The passage where the date of the giving of the Law is speci¢ed is Exodus 19.10^11. On the frequency of synecdoche in Scripture, see also ch. 5, above.
120 Since Noah's months are lunar, and he left the Ark one lunar year and 11 days after he entered it, he therefore spent 354 + 11 days in the Ark, or one solar year of 365 days.
Cf. Bede, In Gen. 28.15^18 (126.1926^127.1946). Bede's source seems to be Ambrose, De
Noe et Arca 17.60, ed. C. Schenkl, CSEL 32.1 (1897):456.1^4.
121 This passage must have been composed in 722, when the calculated Moon would have been 17 days old on May 7.
122 Isidore, DNR 4.1 (185.5^6), who does not actually endorse this error, but certainly perpetuated it; cf. Pliny, HN 2.6.44^45 (1.194^196).
THE RECKONING OF TIME
taking inspection of nature has taught, the Moon plainly completes the zodiac in 27 days and 8 hours, but its proper course is 29 days and 12 hours,123 setting aside the calculation of the ''leap of the Moon''.124
Therefore it is more accurate to de¢ne a lunar month as the circuit and reintegration of the lunar light from new Moon to new Moon. The solar month is the passage of the Sun through a twelfth part of the zodiac, that is, the circle of the signs, which is accomplished in 30 days and 10ˆ~˜ hours. It is longer than a lunar month by 22ˆ~˜ hours, and from this the 11ˆ~˘ days of the epacts annually accrue, for 12 times 22 makes 264, which it is easy to see are the number of hours in 11 days, because 11 times 24 makes the same total. Then, 12 times ˆ~˜ makes 6, which is the number of hours in a quarter-day in each year. Now if the Moon [has] 12 months, which (as we said) are, when cumulated, /317/ shorter by 11ˆ~˘ days than
[12] solar months, nonetheless it illuminates the path of the zodiac 13 times in the course of these [12 solar] months.125
But in reckoning both months, custom or authority or at least convenience of calculation prevails over nature. For not only are lunar months reckoned as 30 and 29 days as the necessity of calculation demands, but also most people intercalate the extra Moon, which according to the logic of nature ought to be intercalated at the end of the year, in any place they please. And what is worse, the computists are in such disagreement with each other that frequently on one and the same day one of them will say that the Moon should be reckoned as in its 14th day, and another, that it is in its 15th, and another, in its 16th,
/318/ and each nation measures the solar months throughout the year by a very divergent rule and in a di¡erent order. Therefore, because the 123 The siderial lunar month of approximately 27ˆ~¯ days is the length of time necessary for the Moon to depart from and return to the same point in relation to the backdrop of the constellations. The synodic month (what Bede calls its ''proper course'') is the period from new Moon to new Moon, 29ˆ~˜ days. This is longer than the siderial month, because by the time the Moon returns to the point where it was last in conjuction with the Sun, the Sun will have moved into the next sign of the zodiac. It will take the Moon about two days to catch up with the Sun and achieve conjunction again.
124 On the saltus, see below, ch. 42.
125 12 synodic months of 29ˆ~˜ days is less than a solar year by 11 days, plus the ˆ~˘ day for the leap-year increment; 12 siderial months of 27ˆ~¯ days is 327˜~¯ days,or more than 37 days shorter than the solar year. That means that the Moon can go once more around the zodiac before the end of the solar year, for a total of 13 zodiacal revolutions, with 7˜~¯ days left over.
Cf. chs. 16^18 below, and Commentary. Bede's sources are Isidore, DNR 1.5; Dionysius
Exiguus, Epistola ad Petronium, ed. Krusch, Studien II, 65.28^66.4.
TRANSLATION
course of the Moon is swift, and lest an error in calculation be occasioned by that swiftness, the Egyptians were the ¢rst to begin to calculate their months according to the course of the Sun, whose slower motion could more easily be apprehended.126 Starting in the autumn, they set up these months to comprise 30 days each. The ¢rst month, Thoth, began on the 4th kalends of September [29 August]; the second, Phaophi, on the 4th kalends of October [28 September]; the third, Hathyr, on the 5th kalends of November [29 October]; the fourth, Choiac, on the 5th kalends of December [27 November]; the ¢fth, Tybi, on the 6th kalends of January [27 December]; the sixth, Mecheir, on the 7th kalends of February [26 January]; the seventh, Phamenoth, on the 5th kalends of March [25 February]; the eighth, Pharmouthi, on the 6th kalends of April [27 March]; the ninth, Pachons, on the 6th kalends of May [26
April]; the tenth, Payni, on the 7th kalends of June [26 May]; the eleventh, Epieph, on the 7th kalends of July [25 June], and the twelfth,
Mesore, on the 8th kalends of August [25 July].127 This [last month] ends on the 10th kalends of September [23 August], and they call the remaining ¢ve days epagomena ^ ''intercalated'' or ''added''. Every fourth year, they add a sixth day to these [¢ve], made up from the quarter-days. Hence it happens that their ¢rst year following the leap year /319/ begins on the 3rd kalends of September [30 August], but the other years on the 4th kalends of that month [29 August]. Their leap years end on the 4th kalends [29 August], and the other years on the 5th
[28 August].128 Now, the discrepancies which we say arise in leap years from the time of the intercalated day, in computing the age of the Moon or in the festivities of those days, cannot be brought into harmony with the course of our year until the time when we make the intercalation, which is on the 6th kalends of March [24 February]; rather, the same calendar date on the same day of the Moon, for example the seventh, which we calculate as falling on a Monday, they calculate as falling on a Tuesday, and so on for the rest.129
126 Isidore, Etym. 5.33.2.
127 Cf. Polemius Silvius, Laterculus.
128 Cf. Isidore, DNR 4.7 (191); Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.15.1 (69.12^32).
129 I.e. the Egyptian and Julian calendars will be out of phase by one day between September (when the Egyptians insert their leap day) and the end of February, when the Romans do so.