36. Natural years
TRANSLATION
to have ¢elds all a£ower with herbs and orchards laden with fruit in the middle of our winter.
36. NATURAL YEARS328
The word ''year'' [annus] derives either from the renewal [innouando] of all things which pass away according to the natural order, or from the cycle of time, for the ancients were accustomed to use ''an'' for ''circum'' ^ as Cato says in the Origins, ''oratorum an terminum'', that is ''circum terminum'' ^ and to say ''ambire'' for ''circumire''.329
There is a lunar year and a solar year, a separate year for [each of] the wandering stars,330 and one for all of the planets, which is particularly called ''the great year''.331 But ''lunar year'' is taken in four ways.The ¢rst is when the Moon, /396/ traversing the zodiac in 27 days and 8 hours, returns to the sign from which it set out. The second is two days and four hours longer, and is customarily called a month; after 29 days and 12 hours, the now waning Moon seeks the Sun from which it departed when it was new. The third is when the Moon completes 12 of these months, that is 354 days; this is called a common year, because two of them usuallyfalltogether.Thefourth,whichiscalledbytheGreekname''embolismic'' (that is, ''augmented over and above''), has 13 months, that is, 384 days. The Hebrews begin both these years at the commencement of the Paschal month, but amongst the Romans they have their beginning and end with the lunation that begins with the month of January.332
Again, the Sun's year is [complete] when it returns to the same place with respect to the ¢xed stars after 365 days and 6 hours, that is, a quarter of a whole day. The fraction, multiplied by four, makes it necessary to interpolate one day, which the Romans call the bissextus, so that the Sun is brought back into the same cycle. The fourth year of the solar cycle is bissextile, and one day longer than the other three. When it is
328 Bede also addresses this theme in OnTimes 9,where his main source is Isidore,
DNR 6 (193^197).
329 Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.14.5 (66.24^26).
330 I.e. the planets, so called because they ''wander'' around the zodiac, unlike the ''¢xed'' stars.
331 Cf. Isidore, Etym. 5.36.
332 This, in Bede's view, is the rationale behind the the 19-year ''lunar cycle'' (cf. ch. 56 below, and Commentary).