Understanding how medieval textual cultures engaged with the heritage of antiquity (transmission and translation) depends on recognizing that reception is a creative cultural act (transformation). These essays focus on the people, societies and institutions who were doing the transmitting, translating, and transforming -- the "agents". The subject matter ranges from medicine to astronomy, literature to magic, while the cultural context encompasses Islamic and Jewish societies, as well as Byzantium and the Latin West. What unites these studies is their attention to the methodological and conceptual challenges of thinking about agency. Not every agent acted with an agenda, and agenda were sometimes driven by immediate needs or religious considerations that while compelling to the actors, are more opaque to us. What does it mean to say that a text becomes "available" for transmission or translation? And why do some texts, once transmitted, fail to thrive in their new milieu? This collection thus points toward a more sophisticated "ecology" of transmission, where not only individuals and teams of individuals, but also social spaces and local cultures, act as the agents of cultural creativity.

Bede (c. 673-735) was Anglo-Saxon England's most prominent scholar, and his body of work is among the most important intellectual achievements of the entire Middle Ages. Bede and the Future brings together an international group of Bede scholars to examine a number of questions about Bede's attitude towards, and ideas about, the time to come. This encompasses the short-term future (Bede's own lifetime and the time soon after his death) and the end of time. Whilst recognising that these temporal perspectives may not be completely distinct, the volume shows how Bede's understanding of their relationship undoubtedly changed over the course of his life. Each chapter examines a distinct aspect of the subject, whilst at the same time complementing the other essays, resulting in a comprehensive and coherent volume. In so doing the volume asks (and answers) new questions about Bede and his ideas about the future, and will undoubtedly stimulate further research in this field.

For scholars in the European Middle Ages, Isidore, bishop of Seville (560? - 636) was one of the most influential authorities for understanding the natural world. Isidore's On the Nature of Things is the first work on natural science by a Christian author that is not a commentary on the creation story in Genesis. Instead, Isidore adopted a classical model to describe the structure of the physical cosmos, and discuss the principles of astronomy, physics, geography, meteorology and time-reckoning. Into this framework he incorporated an eclectic array of ancient and patristic erudition. The fact that On the Nature of Things presents an essentially Greco-Roman picture of the universe, but amplified with Christian reflections and allegories, played a crucial role in the assimilation of ancient science into the emerging culture of the Middle Ages. It exerted a deep and long-lasting influence on scholars like Bede, one of whose earliest works was an adaptation of On the Nature of Things. On the Nature of Things provides a new window into vital intellectual currents, as yet largely unexplored, flowing from Visigothic Spain into Celtic Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England, and Merovingian France. This is the first translation of this work into English. The introduction places the work in the context of Isidore's milieu and concerns, and traces the remarkable diffusion of his book. A chapter-by-chapter commentary explains how Isidore selected and transformed his source material, and added his own distinctive features, notably the diagrams that gave this work its medieval name The Book of Wheels (Liber rotarum).

Bede (c. 673-735) was Anglo-Saxon England's most prominent scholar, and his body of work is among the most important intellectual achievements of the entire Middle Ages. Bede and the Future brings together an international group of Bede scholars to examine a number of questions about Bede's attitude towards, and ideas about, the time to come. This encompasses the short-term future (Bede's own lifetime and the time soon after his death) and the end of time. Whilst recognising that these temporal perspectives may not be completely distinct, the volume shows how Bede's understanding of their relationship undoubtedly changed over the course of his life. Each chapter examines a distinct aspect of the subject, whilst at the same time complementing the other essays, resulting in a comprehensive and coherent volume. In so doing the volume asks (and answers) new questions about Bede and his ideas about the future, and will undoubtedly stimulate further research in this field.

The Venerable Bede composed On the Nature of Things (De natura rerum) and On Times (De temporibus) at the outset of his career, about AD 703. Bede fashioned himself as a teacher to his people and his age, and these two short works show him selecting, editing, and clarifying a mass of difficult and sometimes dangerous material. He insisted that his reader understand the mathematical and physical basis of time, and though he was dependent on his textual sources, he also included observations of his own. But Bede was also a Christian exegete who thought deeply and earnestly about how salvation-history connected to natural history and the history of the peoples of the earth. To comprehend his religious mentality, we have to take on board his views on "science" -- and vice versa. On the Nature of Things is a survey of cosmology. Starting with Creation and the universe as a whole, Bede reads the cosmos downwards from the heavens, through the atmosphere, to the oceans and rivers of earth. This order (recapitulating the four elements or fire, air, water and earth) was derived from his main source, Isidore of Seville's On the Nature of Things. However, Bede separated out Isidore's chapters on time, and dealt with them in On Times. On Times, like its "second, revised and enlarged edition" The Reckoning of Time (De temporum ratione), works upwards from the smallest units of time, through the day and night, the week, month and year, to the world-ages. Bede's innovation is to introduce a practical manual of Easter reckoning, or computus, into this survey. Hidden beneath the matter-of-fact surface of the work is an intense polemic about the correct principles for determining the date of Easter -- principles which in Bede's view are bound up with both the integrity of nature as God's creation, and the theological significance of Christ's death and resurrection. In these works Bede re-united cosmology and time-reckoning to form a unified science of computus that would become the framework for Carolingian and Scholastic basic scientific education.

The Commentary on Revelation is Bede's first venture into Biblical exegesis -- an ambitious choice for a young monastic scholar in a newly Christianized land. Its subject matter -- the climax of the great story of creation and redemption, of history and of time itself -- adds to the Commentary's intrinsic importance, for these themes lie at the heart of Bede's concerns and of his achievement as a historian, exegete, scholar, and preacher. But Bede was also a man of his age. When he penned the Commentary around 703, speculation and anxiety about the end of the world was in the air. According to conventional chronology, almost 6000 years had passed since creation. If for God -one day... is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day' (2 Peter 3:8), the world was destined to last six millennia, corresponding to the six days of creation. The end, then, was close. Bede vigorously opposed the temptation to calculate the time of the end. The Commentary argues that Revelation is not a literal prophecy, but a symbolic reflection on the perennial struggle of the Church in this world. At the same time, the young Bede is starting to shape his own account of how the end-times would unfold. This translation, prefaced by a substantial Introduction, will be of interest to students of medieval religious and cultural history, of Anglo-Saxon England, and of the history of Biblical exegesis in the Middle Ages.

Commenting on the Bible was the principal way in which early medieval Christians conducted the work of theology; commentaries also open a window for modern readers onto the way in which these people strove to understand humanity, the world and history through complex acts of layered winterpretation and cross-referencing within the sacred text. Bede's commentary on Luke, composed in the first half of the 710s, is a turning point in his career as an exegete. It is ambitious in its length, but also in its subject-matter, because the life of Christ is the key to the meaning of the entire Bible. To expound a Gospel also entails engaging with a formidable body of commentary by the Church Fathers. In Bede's case, the Luke commentary marks as well the moment when he publically asserts his own intellectual authority by displaying his mastery of the Patristic tradition, and by deftly confronting criticisms of his earlier works. Finally, Bede's treatment of Luke was highly influential in the Carolingian Renaissance, and in the compilation of the Glossa Ordinaria in the twelfth century. This translation is thus an important resource for historians, as well as scholars interested in the role of the Bible in medieval culture.

First published in 2005, this encyclopedia demonstrates that the millennium from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance was a period of great intellectual and practical achievement and innovation. In Europe, the Islamic world, South and East Asia, and the Americas, individuals built on earlier achievements, introduced sometimes radical refinements and laid the foundations for modern development. Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine details the whole scope of scientific knowledge in the medieval period in more than 300 A to Z entries. This comprehensive resource discusses the research, application of knowledge, cultural and technology exchanges, experimentation, and achievements in the many disciplines related to science and technology. It also looks at the relationship between medieval science and the traditions it supplanted. Written by a select group of international scholars, this reference work will be of great use to scholars, students, and general readers researching topics in many fields, including medieval studies, world history, history of science, history of technology, history of medicine, and cultural studies.

From the patristic age until the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582, computus -- the science of time reckoning and art of calendar construction -- was a matter of intense concern. Bede's The Reckoning of Time (De temporum ratione) was the first comprehensive treatise on this subject and the model and reference for all subsequent teaching discussion and criticism of the Christian calendar. It is a systematic exposition of the Julian solar calendar and the Paschal table of Dionysius Exiguus, with their related formulae for calculating dates. But it is more than a technical handbook. Bede sets calendar lore within a broad scientific framework and a coherent Christian concept of time, and incorporates themes as diverse as the theory of tides and the doctrine of the millennium.

This translation of the full text of The Reckoning of Time includes an extensive historical introduction and a chapter-by-chapter commentary. It will interest historians of medieval science, theology, and education, Bede scholars and Anglo-Saxonists, liturgists, and Church historians. It will also serve as an accessible introduction to computus itself. Generations of medieval computists nourished their expertise in Bede's orderly presentation; modern scholars in quest of safe passage through this complex terrain can hope for no better guide.

For scholars in the European Middle Ages, Isidore, bishop of Seville (560? - 636) was one of the most influential authorities for understanding the natural world. Isidore's On the Nature of Things is the first work on natural science by a Christian author that is not a commentary on the creation story in Genesis. Instead, Isidore adopted a classical model to describe the structure of the physical cosmos, and discuss the principles of astronomy, physics, geography, meteorology and time-reckoning. Into this framework he incorporated an eclectic array of ancient and patristic erudition. The fact that On the Nature of Things presents an essentially Greco-Roman picture of the universe, but amplified with Christian reflections and allegories, played a crucial role in the assimilation of ancient science into the emerging culture of the Middle Ages. It exerted a deep and long-lasting influence on scholars like Bede, one of whose earliest works was an adaptation of On the Nature of Things. On the Nature of Things provides a new window into vital intellectual currents, as yet largely unexplored, flowing from Visigothic Spain into Celtic Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England, and Merovingian France. This is the first translation of this work into English. The introduction places the work in the context of Isidore's milieu and concerns, and traces the remarkable diffusion of his book. A chapter-by-chapter commentary explains how Isidore selected and transformed his source material, and added his own distinctive features, notably the diagrams that gave this work its medieval name The Book of Wheels (Liber rotarum).

The Commentary on Revelation is Bede's first venture into Biblical exegesis -- an ambitious choice for a young monastic scholar in a newly Christianized land. Its subject matter - the climax of the great story of creation and redemption, of history and of time itself - adds to the Commentary's intrinsic importance, for these themes lie at the heart of Bede's concerns and of his achievement as a historian, exegete, scholar, and preacher. But Bede was also a man of his age. When he penned the Commentary around 703, speculation and anxiety about the end of the world was in the air. According to conventional chronology, almost 6000 years had passed since creation. If for God 'one day... is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day' (2 Peter 3:8), the world was destined to last six millennia, corresponding to the six days of creation. The end, then, was close. Bede vigorously opposed the temptation to calculate the time of the end. The Commentary argues that Revelation is not a literal prophecy, but a symbolic reflection on the perennial struggle of the Church in this world. At the same time, the young Bede is starting to shape his own account of how the end-times would unfold. This translation, prefaced by a substantial Introduction, will be of interest to students of medieval religious and cultural history, of Anglo-Saxon England, and of the history of Biblical exegesis in the Middle Ages.

The Venerable Bede composed On the Nature of Things (De natura rerum) and On Times (De temporibus) at the outset of his career, about AD 703. Bede fashioned himself as a teacher to his people and his age, and these two short works show him selecting, editing, and clarifying a mass of difficult and sometimes dangerous material. He insisted that his reader understand the mathematical and physical basis of time, and though he was dependent on his textual sources, he also included observations of his own. But Bede was also a Christian exegete who thought deeply and earnestly about how salvation-history connected to natural history and the history of the peoples of the earth. To comprehend his religious mentality, we have to take on board his views on "science" -- and vice versa. On the Nature of Things is a survey of cosmology. Starting with Creation and the universe as a whole, Bede reads the cosmos downwards from the heavens, through the atmosphere, to the oceans and rivers of earth. This order (recapitulating the four elements or fire, air, water and earth) was derived from his main source, Isidore of Seville's On the Nature of Things. However, Bede separated out Isidore's chapters on time, and dealt with them in On Times. On Times, like its "second, revised and enlarged edition" The Reckoning of Time (De temporum ratione), works upwards from the smallest units of time, through the day and night, the week, month and year, to the world-ages. Bede's innovation is to introduce a practical manual of Easter reckoning, or computus, into this survey. Hidden beneath the matter-of-fact surface of the work is an intense polemic about the correct principles for determining the date of Easter -- principles which in Bede's view are bound up with both the integrity of nature as God's creation, and the theological significance of Christ's death and resurrection. In these works Bede re-united cosmology and time-reckoning to form a unified science of computus that would become the framework for Carolingian and Scholastic basic scientific education.

Understanding how medieval textual cultures engaged with the heritage of antiquity (transmission and translation) depends on recognizing that reception is a creative cultural act (transformation). These essays focus on the people, societies and institutions who were doing the transmitting, translating, and transforming -- the "agents". The subject matter ranges from medicine to astronomy, literature to magic, while the cultural context encompasses Islamic and Jewish societies, as well as Byzantium and the Latin West. What unites these studies is their attention to the methodological and conceptual challenges of thinking about agency. Not every agent acted with an agenda, and agenda were sometimes driven by immediate needs or religious considerations that while compelling to the actors, are more opaque to us. What does it mean to say that a text becomes "available" for transmission or translation? And why do some texts, once transmitted, fail to thrive in their new milieu? This collection thus points toward a more sophisticated "ecology" of transmission, where not only individuals and teams of individuals, but also social spaces and local cultures, act as the agents of cultural creativity.

Medical knowledge and practice changed profoundly during the medieval period. In this collection of over 100 primary sources, many translated for the first time, Faith Wallis reveals the dynamic world of medicine in the Middle Ages that has been largely unavailable to students and scholars. The reader includes 21 illustrations and a glossary of medical terms.