3. The smallest intervals of time
THE RECKONING OF TIME
con¢rm that, in fact, the Moon has ^ setting aside the calculation of the ''leap of the Moon''14 ^ 12 hours less [than 30 days],15 and the Sun has
10ˆ~˜ hours more. Thus with nature as our guide we discover that the solar year is made up of 365ˆ~˘ days, but the lunar year is ¢nished in 354 days if it is common and 384 days if it is embolismic.16 The complete course of the Moon is encompassed in a nineteen-year cycle. But each of the planets as well is borne around the zodiac at its own rate.17 This Nature was created by the one true God when He commanded that the stars which He had set in the heavens should be the signs of seasons, days and years;18 it is not, as the folly of the pagans asserts, a creating goddess, one amongst many.19
3. THE SMALLEST INTERVALS OF TIME
An hour is one-twelfth of a day, and a day is made up of twelve hours, as the Lord testi¢es, saying, Are there not twelve hours in a day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not.20 Here, although He spoke of Himself allegorically as the ''day'', and of His disciples (who received the light from Him) as ''hours'', He nonetheless de¢ned the number of hours according to the usual manner of human computation. Now it should be noted that if all the days of the year were thought to have twelve hours, summer days would of necessity be composed of longer hours and winter days of shorter hours. But if we wish to make all hours
14 See below, ch. 42.
15 Bede is referring here to the synodic lunar month, or the period between one new Moon and the next. He points out that this period is slightly more than 29ˆ~˜ days, but that this slight excess is disregarded until the end of the 19-year cycle, when its cumulative e¡ect will be to put the calculated Moon one day ahead of the astronomical Moon. This is corrected by ''leaping over'' one day in the lunar calculation.
16 See below, ch. 45. The 10ˆ~˜ hours by which the Sun exceeds the 30 days of the notional month, when multiplied by 12 months, makes 180 hours, or 5ˆ~˘ days. Added to 30612, or 360 days, this produces the solar year of 365ˆ~˘ days. The lunar ''year'' is 12 months of 29ˆ~˜ days, or 354 days; in embolismic years, an additional month of 30 days is added, bringing the total to 384 days.
17 Cf. ch. 8 below, and The Nature of Things 13.
18 Genesis 1.14.
19 Jones' apparatus cites Lucretius, De rerum natura 1.629, ed. Joseph Martin (Leipzig: Teubner, 1969):24. It is, however, extremely unlikely that Bede knew Lucretius at ¢rst hand, save perhaps through an excerpt in a grammar text. Where he heard about the ''goddess Natura'' remains uncertain.
20 John 11.9.
TRANSLATION
equal, that is, to have equinoctial [hours], we must then give fewer hours to the winter day, and more to the summer day.
An hour has four puncti, 10 minuta, 15 partes, 40 momenta, and in some lunar calculations, ¢ve puncti.21 These divisions of time are not natural, but apparently are agreed upon by convention. For since it was necessary for calculators to divide the day into 12, or the hour into 4 or 10 or 15 or 40 or other segments, whether larger or smaller, they sought out terminology for themselves by which they might designate what they wished, and might denote one thing or another. What [constitutes] the margin [ora] of a certain [span of] time, they call an ''hour'' [hora], even as we are accustomed to call the boundaries of garments, rivers, or of the sea ''margins'' [oras].22 Puncti they name after the swift passage of the point [punctus] /277/ on a sundial, minuta after an even smaller
[minore] interval, and partes from the partition of the zodiacal circle, which they divided into thirty days for each month. Then they name momenta after the swift motion [motu] of the stars, when it was observed that something moved and succeeded itself in a very brief space of time.23
The smallest time of all, and one which cannot be divided by any reckoning, they call by the Greek word ''atom'', that is, ''indivisible'' or ''that which cannot be cut''.24 Because of its tiny size, it is more readily apparent to grammarians than to computists, for when they divide a verse into words, words into feet, feet into syllables, and syllables into quantities [tempora], and give double quantity to the long [foot] and single to the short, they are pleased to call this an atomus, as they had nothing more beyond this which they could divide.25 In exploring the nativities of men, astrologers likewise claim to arrive at the atom when they divide the zodiacal circle into 12 signs, /278/ each sign into 30 partes, each pars into 12 puncti, each punctus into 40 momenta, and each momentum into 60 ostenta, so that by carefully observing the position of the stars they might learn, virtually without error, the fate of the 21 De divisionibus temporum 3^6 (654D^655D). On the ''lunar calculations'', see
The Reckoning of Time, ch. 17.
22 De divisionibus temporum 6 (655D); Isidore, Etym. 5.29.2.
23 Isidore, Etym. 5.29.1.
24 Ibid. 13.2.3.
25 Julian of Toledo, Excerpta, ed. Heinrich Keil, Grammatici latini (Leipzig:
Teubner, 1855^1880):5.321^323; De divisionibus temporum 2 (643A^D); Bede, De arte metrica 2 (BOD 86.4); MS Bern 207, fol. 112 (ed. Keil, 8.xxiv).