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Byrhtferth's Enchiridion and the computus in Oxford, St John's College 17

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Peter S. Baker
Peter S. Baker
Affiliation:
Emory University, Georgia
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Extract

More than fifty years after its first appearance in print, Byrhtferth's Manual, or Enchiridion as he called it himself, is among the most puzzling texts of the Old English prose corpus. Its obscurity is due partly to its unglamorous subject matter – mathematics (computus) and the calendar – but more, perhaps, to its apparently bewildering organization. Humfrey Wanley called it an ‘opus miscellaneum’, Richard Wülker described it as ‘auβerordentlich bunter’ and Frederick Tupper referred to it as ‘that remarkable potpourri’. Indeed the Enchiridion seems often enough to wander aimlessly or shift abruptly; it seems to follow no plan and many an intrepid scholar has come away from it with the disquieting feeling that, having read a scientific primer, he has learned shamefully little science. As Heinrich Henel and N. R. Ker pointed out, the text has come down to us disarranged; but the restoration of the misplaced sections to their proper order only partly relieves the confusion. We may as well admit at the outset that Byrhtferth often digressed and often backtracked: as an organizer he was barely tolerable. But if we fail to understand the Enchiridion the fault is partly our own, for it was not Byrhtferth's intention to write a wholly self-contained book. As Henel ably demonstrated, the Enchiridion was designed as a commentary on the computus; this fact is the key we need to unlock the mysteries of Byrhtferth's work. To read it without referring to a computus would be as pointless as to read a biblical commentary without referring to a bible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 10 , December 1981 , pp. 123 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

1 The Old English portions only were printed by Kluge, Friedrich (‘Angelsächsische Excerpte aus Byrhtferth's Handboc oder Enchiridion’, Anglia 8 (1885), 298–337).Google Scholar The complete text was first edited by Crawford, Samuel J. (Byrhtferth's Manual, EETS o.s. 177 (London, 1929;Google Scholar repr. with a table of errata by N. R. Ker, 1966)). That Byrhtferth called his book the Enchiridion has most recently been pointed out by Lapidge, Michael (‘Byrhtferth and the Vita S. Ecgwini’, MS 41 (1979), 331–53, at 337 and n. 31).Google Scholar I cite the text by page and line number. In quotations I have omitted the accents and the italics used by Crawford for editorial expansion of manuscript contractions and for Latin words in Old English passages. I have expanded the ampersand and the abbreviated dates (following Byrhtferth's practice of using the genitive singular of months’ names) and altered occasionally Crawford's punctuation. I have, however, retained Crawford's editorial signs: ( ) for words and letters to be omitted, [ ] for words and letters altered and ‹ › for words and letters added. I have emended Crawford's text in several places and omitted a few of his emendations.

2 Wanley, Humfrey, Antiqua Literaturœ Septentrionalis Liber Alter, seu Humphredi Wanleii Librorum Vett. Septentrionalium…Catalogus (Oxford, 1705), p. 104;Google ScholarWülker, Richard, Grundriss zur Geschichte der angelsächsischen Litteratur (Leipzig, 1885), p. 506;Google Scholar and Tupper, Frederick Jr, ‘Anglo-Saxon Dæg-Mæl’, PMLA 10 (1895), 119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Blair, Peter Hunter, An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 359–60Google Scholar, and Greenfield, Stanley B., A Critical History of Old English Literature (New York, 1965), p. 61.Google Scholar

3 Henel, Heinrich, Studien zum altenglischen Computus, Beiträge zur englischen Philologie 26 (Leipzig, 1934), pp. 6–7;Google ScholarKer, N. R., ‘Two Notes on MS Ashmole 328 (Byrhtferth's Manual)’, MÆ 4 (1935), 16–19.Google Scholar The text should be read in the following order: 2.1–30.9; 44.28–56.29; 30.9–44.27; and 56.30–end.

4 Studien, pp. 5–3;. Henel's study is still the fundamental guide to the Enchiridion; it is supplemented by his ‘Notes on Byrhtferth's Manual’, JEGP 41 (1942), 427–43.Google Scholar Throughout this article I am deeply indebted to these studies.

5 See Bedae Opera de Temporibus, ed. Jones, Charles W., Med. Acad. of America Publ. 41 (Cambridge, Mass., 1943), 75–7.Google Scholar

6 Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, Bernhard, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 9 (Hamburg, 1914;Google Scholar repr. with a suppl. intro. by Peter Clemoes, Darmstadt, 1966), 1.52, 2.137 and 11.157 (PP. 13, 51 and 126–7). In the first instance the word gerim is glossed Kalendarium, which shows that at least one reader understood the word to mean the calendar and (one must assume) the tables needed to make it intelligible.

7 Byrhtferth translates compotus (2.2) as gerimcrœft (2.9), used of the science; later compoti (28.1) is translated gerimes (44.33), used of the tables and texts that accompany the calendar.

8 Studien, pp. 1–4. I follow Henel in restricting the sense of ‘computus’.

9 Ibid. p. 21: ‘das gerīm, das B. besaβ, nicht bekannt und höchstwahrscheinlich auch nicht erhalten ist’.

10 ‘Les Oeuvres inédites d'Abbon de Fleury’, RB 47 (1935), 144–5.Google Scholar Years earlier Charles Singer had written, ‘A rather surprising feature of this encyclopædia is the acquaintance with Greek that it betrays especially in the medical sections’ (‘On a Greek Charm used in England in the Twelfth Century’, Annals of Medical Hist. 1 (1917), 258–60).Google Scholar Michael Lapidge has pointed out Byrhtferth's great fondness for Greek words (‘Byrhtferth and the Vita S. Ecgwini’, p. 355). Singer's observation provides further evidence that Byrhtferth was the compiler of St John's 17.

11 See Hart's, two articles, ‘The Ramsey Computus’, EHR 85 (1970), 29–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Byrhtferth and his Manual’, MÆ 41 (1972), 95–109.Google Scholar I am much indebted to the second of these articles.

12 For a fuller description of the manuscript, see Coxe, Henry O., Catalogus Codicum MSS. qui in Collegiis, Aulisqut Oxoniensibus Hodie Adservantur (Oxford, 1852) 11, 5–8.Google Scholar See also Singer, Charles, ‘A Review of the Medical Literature of the Dark Ages, with a New Text of about 1110’, Proc. of the R. Soc. of Medicine 10 (1917)Google ScholarPubMed, Section of the History of Medicine, 117–27.

13 The medical texts (J iv–2v) have been printed by Singer (‘A Review’, pp. 128–37); the runic alphabet (J 5v) has been printed by René Derolez (Runica Manuscripta: the English Tradition (Bruges, 1954), pp. 26–34 and 37–45).Google Scholar Pl. 111 reproduces J 5v. The Old English glosses on J 6v have been printed by Gough, J. V. (‘Some Old English Glosses’, Anglia 92 (1974), 282–3);Google Scholar see also Bierbaumer, P., ‘Zu J. V. Goughs Ausgabe einiger altenglischer Glossen’, Anglia 95 (1977), 119.Google Scholar

14 The diagram is reproduced as the frontispiece to Crawford's edition of the Enchiridion and has been described by Charles, and Singer, Dorothea (‘A Restoration: Byrhtferð of Ramsey's Diagram of the Physical and Physiological Fours’, Bodleian Quarterly Record 2 (1917–1919), 47–51).Google Scholar

15 Forsey, George F., ‘Byrhtferth's Preface’, Speculum 3 (1928), 505–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Byrhtferth used the word epilogus to mean ‘preface’; see Lapidge, , ‘Byrhtferth and the Vita S. Ecgwini’, p. 337, n. 32.Google Scholar

16 Jones, Charles W., Bedae Pseudepigrapha: Scientific Writings falsely attributed to Bede (Ithaca, N. Y., 1939), pp. 8 and 60.Google Scholar The Compotus vulgaris (with calendar) is badly printed Migne, Patrologia Latina 90, cols. 727–820, and has been discussed by Jones (Bedae Pseudepigrapha, pp. 59–79). An Abbonian calendar is also printed in the ‘Noviomagus’ edition of Bede's scientific works, Bedae Presbyteri Anglosaxonis … opuscula de temporum rationt (Cologne, 1537), fols. 1–12.Google Scholar The Old English names of the months from the calendar in J have been printed by Gough, (‘Some Old English Glosses’, p. 283).Google Scholar

17 Cf. Enchiridion, 232.9 – 234.13. The attribution to Abbo is Byrhtferth's.

18 Vyver, Van de, ‘Les Oeuvres’, p. 140Google Scholar, attributed De differentia and De cursu. vii. planetarum to Abbo. For the attribution of De quinque zonae, see Bober, Harry, ‘An Illustrated Medieval School–Book of Bede's De Natura Rerum’, Jnl of the Walters Art Gallery 19–20 (1956–1957), 78 and 93.Google Scholar

19 The three works of Bede have most recently been edited by Jones, Charles W. (Bedae Venerabilis Opera, VI: Opera Didascalica 2, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 123 b (Turnhout, 1977)).Google Scholar John Leland (c. 1503–52), in his De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea (ed. Hearne, Thomas, 2nd ed., 6 vols. (London, 1770–1774) iv, 97)Google Scholar, speculated, with little or no evidence, that Byrhtferth wrote the glosses in J; see Baker, Peter S., ‘Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the Renaissance Scholars’, Anglo-Saxon Scholarship: the First Three Centuries, ed. Gatch, Milton McC. and Berkhout, Carl T. (forthcoming, Boston, Mass., 1982).Google Scholar In fact there is evidence to suggest that Leland was right. For example, a gloss on 15 r–v that summarizes parts of Hrabanus Maurus's Liber de Computo (quoted below, pp. 136–7) uses the polysyllabic adverb indiuisibiliter (see Lapidge, , ‘Byrhtferth and the Vita S. Ecgwini’, p. 336)Google Scholar and uses binos, a word of which Byrhtferth was fond, instead of Hrabanus's duo (cf. Enchiridion 10.6, 200.12–14 and 204.5). Michael Lapidge has pointed out to me that a gloss to De Temporum Ratione, ch. 36 (J 89v), ‘Annus iubeleus est annus remissionis’, recalls wording both in the Vita S. Oswaldi and in Byrhtferth's portion of the Historia Regum; see Lapidge, , ‘Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the Early Sections of the Historia Regum attributed to Symeon of Durham’, above, pp. 97–122, at 111.Google Scholar A gloss to De Temporum Ratione, ch. 8 (J 71v) is similar: ‘Iubeleus annus remissionis’. Byrhtferth's obsession with numerology is also represented in these glosses; for example, a gloss to De Temporum Ratione, ch. 35 (J 88v–9r), which lays out in tabular form the concordance of the seasons, the qualities and the elements, resembles other diagrams and discussions by Byrhtferth (see below, p. 133 and n. 40). A gloss to De Temporum Ratione, ch. 1 (J 66v) closely resembles the Enchiridion, 224.25 – 226.8: ‘Sexagenarius numerus ad uiduas et continentes pertinet, quod etiam in ipsa digitorum computatione ostenditur: digitus a digito premitur, sicut praesens lectio pandet Beda docente. Centesimus fructus ad perfectionem pertinet, dum carnis incorruptionem domino promittunt, tamo magis praemium percepturi, quanto uberiorem et grauiorem deo fructum proferunt; cuius perfectio in ipsa digitorum computatione demonstratur quemadmodum centenarius numerus de leua transit in dextram.’ The gloss is, as Crawford's note to 224.26 shows, largely quoted from Haymo, but several words and phrases (e.g. Sexagenarius and Centesimus fructus) are shared by the gloss and the Enchiridion but not by Haymo's text. This gloss, I should note, cannot be the source of the passage in the Enchiridion. A thorough study of the glosses in J might reveal further signs of Byrhtferth's authorship. Some Old English glosses on 74r have been printed by Napier, A. S. (‘Contributions to Old English Lexicography’, TPS 1903–1906, 278–9)Google Scholar and glosses on 71v and 76r–v by Gough, (‘Some Old English Glosses’, pp. 283–4).Google Scholar

20 On the connection of the version of Helperic in J with Abbo, see Vyver, Van de, ‘Les Oeuvres’, pp. 147–9Google Scholar, and McGurk, P., ‘Computus Helperici: its Transmission in England in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, MÆ 43 (1974), 1–5.Google Scholar McGurk is preparing a new edition of the Liber de Computo.

21 Edited from other manuscripts by Krusch, Bruno (Studien zur christlich-mittelalterlichen Chronologie, Abhandlungen der Preuβischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 8 (Berlin, 1938), 63–8 and 82–6).Google Scholar

22 Ker, N. R., ‘Membra Disiecta’, Brit. Museum Quarterly 12 (1937–1938), 131–2.Google Scholar

23 The annals down to the year 1111 have been edited by Hart, (‘The Ramsey Computus’, pp. 38–44).Google Scholar

24 The medical texts (J 175r–7v) have been printed by Singer, (‘A Review’, pp. 137–49).Google Scholar

25 ‘Byrhtferth's Preface: the Epilogue of his Manual?’, Speculum 18 (1943), 297:Google Scholar ‘I am greatly hampered…by not having a first-hand knowledge of J since, due to the war, it is impossible to obtain photostats.’

26 Forsey, , ‘Byrhtferth's Preface’, p. 519Google Scholar, corrected from J. In quoting the texts in J I have printed the hooked e without the hook, modernized capitalization and punctuation and expanded all abbreviations, including those for dates.

27 E.g., the postscript to the Enchiridion (pp. 247–50), the long digressions on grammar, prosody and rhetoric in the same work (94.12 – 100.20 and 170.17 – 180.14) and the long glosses to the Vita S. Ecgwini, which expand the narrative as well as explain it; see Lapidge, , ‘Byrhtferth and the Vita S. Ecgwini’, pp. 351–2.Google Scholar

28 Wanley (Catalogus, pp. 103–4) listed thirteen sections in the Enchiridion. Karl M. Classen (Über das heben und die Schriften Byrbtferðs, eines angelsächsiscben Gelehrten und Schriftstellers um das Jahr 1000 (Dresden, 1896)) thought that it was to be divided into three books. Crawford thought that it was to be divided into four, but at the time of publication of his edition he did not know where to begin bk II. He later decided to begin it at 58.10 (Henel, , Studien, p. 8, n. 25).Google Scholar I follow Henel's view that bk II should begin at 62.8.

29 ‘The Old English Canon of Byrhtferth of Ramsey’, Speculum 55 (1980), 32–4.Google Scholar

30 My chapter divisions differ somewhat from Henel's: he ended 1.1 at p. 26 and I end it at p. 22, my 11.1 combines two of his chapters, my 111.1 and 2 divide a single chapter of his and my 111.3 combines five of his under the heading ‘ Miscellanea’. Differences are otherwise minor.

31 Henel, , Studien, pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

32 PL 137, col. 30: ‘Quid ergo necesse est toties addere xxx et retrahere cum lunaris ætas illo anno per singulas Kalendas numero regularium constet? Ob hoc eo anno nullæ pronuntiantur epactæ.’ In quoting the following passage I correct Crawford's text from Ker's table of errata (see above, n. 1).

33 In fact, Byrhtferth's quotations from Bede differ widely from the copy in J, but most of the differences may be due to the corrupt state of our manuscript of the Enchiridion. Two points bear mentioning, however. At 74.26 Crawford emends hos to h[a]s; but while the latter is the reading of J, the former is the reading of Jones's edited text (Bedae Venerabilis … Opera Didascalica 2, p. 408). Here the Enchiridion contains a well-attested reading that disagrees with another well-attested reading in J. At 76.1 Crawford emends quinque (clearly an error) to quattuor; but the mistake is repeated twice: once in a later quotation of the passage from Bede and once in Byrhtferth's Old English explanation of the passage (76.20). Since it is unlikely that a copyist made the same error three times independently, the reading probably originated either with Byrhtferth himself or with his source manuscript. The error is not in J (91v). These circumstances suggest that Byrhtferth may have used a text of De Temporum Ratione somewhat different from that in J.

34 Note, however, that following the words ‘et dies. xxviii.’ in the Enchiridion (24.9) J has ‘et in bissexto. xxix.’, which Byrhtferth omits.

35 The attribution of mnemonic verses on the computus to Bede was common in the Middle Ages, but these verses were not actually written by him; see Jones, Bedae Pseudepigrapha, p. 2. For bibliography on the verses that Byrhtferth quotes, see Dieter Schallcr and Könsgen, Ewald, Initia Carminum Latinorum Saeculo Undecimo Antiquorum (Göttingen, 1977), nos. 1716, 7613 and 14907.Google Scholar

36 ‘Byrhtferth and his Manual’, p. 107, n. 36.

37 This partial collation is based on Crawford's emendations and notes to the Enchiridion. I have noted where the versions in J and the Enchiridion differ from the sources printed by Crawford or where Crawford found it necessary to emend his text and the error is found also in J.

38 This work is not in J. It has been edited by Henel, Heinrich (Aelfric's De Temporibus Anni, EETS o.s. 213 (London, 1942)).Google Scholar

39 This entry for . viii. kalendas Apriles is a hexameter from a metrical calendar from York, preserved in the calendar of the J computus; see Lapidge, Michael, ‘A Metrical Calendar from Ramsey’, RB, forthcoming.Google Scholar

40 Byrhtferth's diagram of the physical and physiological fours (see above, n. 14) is yet another example of his fascination with numerology. The significance of the number four comes up repeatedly in his work; see the Enchiridion, 10.4 – 14.4, 90.24 – 92.27 and 200.10 – 204.18. A gloss by Byrhtferth to the Vita S. Ecgwini briefly explicates the number four (Lapidge, , ‘Byrhtferth and the Vita S. Ecgwini’, p. 352);Google Scholar another explication of the number four in the margin of De Temporum Ratione, ch. 35 (see above, n. 19) is perhaps also Byrhtferth's work. For further examples of Byrhtferth's numerology, see Lapidge, , ‘Byrhtferth and the Vila S. Ecgwini’, pp. 339–40.Google Scholar

41 The idea of the eighth day of the world as a foreshadowing of the eternal day apparently comes from Augustine's De Civitate Dei, xxii.30. I have not found it in Ælfric's works, though his Letter to Sigeweard identifies the eternal day as the eighth age of the world (The Old English Version of the Heptateuch, ed. Crawford, S. J., EETS o.s. 160 (London, 1922), 70).Google Scholar

42 See also Henel, , Studien, p. 19.Google Scholar

43 Recently edited by Stevens, Wesley M., ‘Rabani Mogontiacensis Episcopi De Computo’, in Kabani Mauri, Martyrologium, De Computo, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 44 (Turnhout, 1979), at 163–323.Google Scholar

44 Abbo's De cursu. vii. planetarum (see above, p. 126 and n. 18).

45 Jones, , Bedae Opera de Temporibus, pp. 6–122Google Scholar, is an excellent introduction to the subject, which is, however, seemingly inexhaustible. Recent studies include Strobel's, August massive Ursprung und Geschichte des frühchristlichen Osterkalendtrs (Berlin, 1977)Google Scholar and Harrison, Kenneth, ‘Easter Cycles and the Equinox in the British Isles’, ASE 7 (1978), 1–8.Google Scholar

47 See also Henel, , Studien, pp. 30–1 and 45–6.Google Scholar

48 See Henel, , ‘Notes’, pp. 436–8.Google Scholar

49 ‘Two Notes on MS Ashmole 328’, p. 18.

50 Ibid, pp. 18–19.

51 Not, as Crawford writes, ‘de regularibus terminis paschae’; see Henel, , ‘Notes’, pp. 439–41.Google Scholar

52 I think the Abbonian text a far more likely source than Martianus Capella (cited in Crawford's notes), whom Byrhtferth apparently did not use again in the Enchiridion. Martianus was only beginning to be widely read in Anglo-Saxon England according to Ogilvy, J. D. A. (Books known to the English, 597–1066, Med. Acad. of America Publ. 76 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 199).Google Scholar

53 This has been discussed by Murphy, James J. (‘The Rhetorical Lore of the Boccras in Byrhtferth's Manual’, Philological Essays: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Literature in honour of Herbert Dean Meritt, Janua Linguarum Series Maior 37 (The Hague, 1970), 111–24).Google Scholar See also Gatch, Milton McC., ‘Beginnings Continued: a Decade of Studies of Old English Prose’, ASE 5 (1976), 236 and n. 4.Google Scholar

54 Jones has printed a one-part version of the table (Bedae Opera de Temporibus, p. 225). The table as printed by Jones can be used with the calendar in J.

55 See Loyn, Henry R., A Wulfstan Manuscript, EEMF 17 (Copenhagen, 1971), 49.Google Scholar

56 See Raynes, Enid M., ‘MS Boulogne-sur-Mer 63 and Ælfric’, MÆ 26 (1957), 65–73Google Scholar, and Gatch, Milton McC., Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto, 1977), pp. 129–33.Google Scholar

57 I wish to thank Michael Lapidge and Fred C. Robinson for advice on a number of points in this article. It is too late to thank Heinrich Henel, the greatest of the scholars who have written about the Enchiridion, for the many kindnesses he has shown me since 1 began to work on Byrhtferth. He died in March 1981.