TIME AND TIDE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY
BEDE, the Venerable, Saint.
Bedae presbyteri Anglosaxonis, monachi benedicti, viri literatissimi opuscula cumplura de temporum ratione diligenter castigata: atq[ue] illustrata veteribus quibusdam annotationibus una cum scholiis in obscuriores aliquot locos, authore Iohanne Nouiomago. Nunc primum inuenta ac in lucem emissa …
Cologne, Johannes Prael for Peter Quentel, May 1537.
Folio, ff. [14], 18, [6], 30, XXXI-CXXVI, [4]; erratic pagination; with woodcut Prael device to colophon and 33 woodcut diagrams in text, woodcut initials; substantial marginal worming (touching only a few letters), a little foxing and toning; otherwise a very good copy in sixteenth-century French red morocco, gilt arabesque block to centre of each board, single gilt filet borders, spine blind-ruled in compartments with gilt floral centrepiece in each, guards of eleventh-century manuscript waste (see below); short splits to joints, tailcap neatly repaired, corners minimally bumped, worming to rear endpapers; annotations to a6r, eighteenth-century printed booklabel with name erased to upper pastedown, bookplate of the master printer Pierre Lallier (1946–2021) loosely inserted.
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Bedae presbyteri Anglosaxonis, monachi benedicti, viri literatissimi opuscula cumplura de temporum ratione diligenter castigata: atq[ue] illustrata veteribus quibusdam annotationibus una cum scholiis in obscuriores aliquot locos, authore Iohanne Nouiomago. Nunc primum inuenta ac in lucem emissa …
First illustrated edition (second overall) of Bede’s two principal scientific and computistical works De natura rerum and De temporum ratione, with commentary by the Dutch scholar Joannes Noviomagus (1494-1570), a very good copy in an attractive French binding.
Despite never travelling more than fifty miles from the Northumbrian monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, Bede (673/4–735) was one of the greatest scholars of the Anglo-Saxon age. On the nature of things and On the reckoning of time were first printed at Basel by Heinrich Petri in 1529, but appear here for the first time with woodcut illustrations, including a world map to d1r.
The De natura rerum, written around 700, is Bede’s great synthesis of cosmography and physical science, drawn from Isidore, Suetonius, and Pliny the Younger, as well as from Bede’s own observations on tides from the shores of Northumberland. ‘[Bede] first stated the tidal principal of “establishment of port”, which has been described … as the only original formulation of nature to be made in the West for some eight centuries’ (DSB). Composed around 725, De temporum ratione is the foundation text for the Western calendar. Bede explains and promotes the suggestion that years should be numbered from the birth of Christ, anno domini. ‘Bede’s greatest practical effect was on the Western calendar. His decisions (beginning the year, calculation of Easter, names of days and months, calculations of eras, and so forth) in most instances finally determined usage that was only refined, not changed, by Gregorian reform’ (ibid.).
‘Chapter 35 of Bede’s De temporum ratione is the locus classicus of the concept of the “ages of man”, the medieval division of human life into a number of distinct periods best known to us today through the speech on the “seven ages of man” by Jaques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (Act II, scene 7). Most ancient and medieval writers thought of human life not as a continuous development but instead as punctuated by a number of sudden changes from one “age” to the next … Bede was the first Englishman to describe the theory of the four “ages of man”’ (G.J. Whitrow, Time in History).
The binding incorporates fragments from an eleventh-century Latin Biblical commentary (likely French), with text, including part of a large decorated initial, visible on a stub facing the title, and beneath the rear pastedown.
Adams B-448; USTC 615412; VD16 B-1440; cf. Tomash & Williams B123.
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