2. Three ways of reckoning time
TRANSLATION
this. Now let us proceed to the explanation of time, in so far as He who created and imposed order upon time will deign to assist us.
2. THREE WAYS OF RECKONING TIME
Times (tempora) take their name from ''measure'' (temperamentum),8 either because every unit of time is separately measured (temperatum), or because all the courses of mortal life are measured (temperentur) in moments, hours, days, months, years, ages and epochs.9 We shall explain each in turn, as the Lord grants us the power to do so.
First, we point out to the reader that there are three kinds of timereckoning: it operates either according to nature, or according to custom, or according to authority. This authority is itself twofold. It is either human authority ^ for example, holding Olympics in a cycle of four years, markets in a cycle of eight days, and indictions in a ¢fteenyear cycle; likewise the Romans, Greeks and Egyptians ordered the [leap-year] day formed out of quarter-days to be intercalated in the month of February or August as it pleased them10 ^ or divine authority, as the Lord in the Law commands that the sabbath be kept on the seventh day,11 that one refrain from agriculture in the seventh year,12 or that the ¢ftieth year be called a Jubilee.13 For although it is true that barbarian nations are believed to have weeks, it is nonetheless obvious that they borrowed this from the people of God.
Now it is by human custom /275/ that the month is considered as having 30 days, even though this does not match the course of either the Sun or the Moon. Those who probe with subtlety into these matters
8 The source of this etymology is unknown. Isidore in Etym. 5.35.1 states that the seasons are called tempora because of ''the tempering of commonality, by which each tempers the other with respect to moisture, dryness, heat and cold'' (Dicta sunt autem tempora a communionis temperamento, quod invicem se humore, siccitate, calore et frigore temperent). But Bede's explanation concerns measurement, not tempering, and he speaks of times in general, not seasons in particular. Jones' apparatus cites the ''Merovingian Computus of 727'', ch. 7 (ed. Krusch, Studien II, 54), but this work also refers to seasons, not times in general, and was evidently not Bede's source.
9 Cf. De divisionibus temporum 1 (PL 90.633A); Isidore, Etym. 5.29.1; Bede, On Times 1.
10 Cf. Letter to Wicthed.
11 Exodus 23.11^12.
12 Leviticus 25.1^7.
13 Leviticus 25.8 sqq., esp. 10.