Cycles of Time and Scientific Learning in Medieval Europe (Variorum Collected Studies)

The calendar worked out by Bede remains essentially the one we still use today, yet the mathematical and scientific studies of the early medieval schools have been largely neglected in most discussions of the cultural and intellectual history of Latin Europe. These articles by Wesley Stevens are based on an unrivalled knowledge of the manuscript sources and provide a very different perspective, demonstrating the real vitality of this science in the early medieval West. Working from the original texts and diagrams, he identifies and explains mathematical reckonings and astronomical cycles by early Greek, Roman and Christian scholars. Through made for religious purposes, those early studies created a demand for standard arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, and this remained of often intense interest through into the 9th century, in the schools of Fulda and Reichenau. One paper here further sets out to correct much mis-information on the ideas of Isidore, Boniface and other church fathers; a second, revised especially for this volume, looks in detail at Bede’s scientific achievements, his theories of latitudes and tides, as well as his cosmology and computus. Cover 1 Series 3 Half Title 4 Title 6 Copyright 7 Contents 8 Foreword 10 Acknowlegements 12 I Cycles of Time: Calendrical and Astronomical Reckonings in Early Science 14 II Bede's Scientific Achievement 40 III The Figure of the Earth in Isidore's De natura rerum 98 IV Scientific Instruction in Early Insular Schools 108 V Sidereal Time in Anglo-Saxon England 138 VI Fulda Scribes at Work: Bodleian Library Manuscript Canonici Miscellaneous 353, with nine facsimiles 166 VII A Ninth-Century Manuscript from Fulda: Canonici Miscellaneous 353, with three facsimiles 206 VIII Introduction to Hrabani De computo liber 216 IX Compotistica et astronomica in the Fulda School 248 X Walahfrid Strabo: A Student at Fulda 286 XI Computus-Handschriften Walahfrid Strabos 294 Addenda et corrigenda 314 Index 318 Codices manuscripti 329 Cycles,of,Time;,Insular,Schools;,Walahfrid,Strabo Cycles of Time,Insular Schools,Walahfrid Strabo