Doubts about the Calendar: Bede and the Eclipse of 664
Jennifer Moreton
The thesis of this article is that Bede's great work on time reckoning, the De temporum ratione (A.D. 725), contains seeds later calendar reform. year 664 was distinguished not only by Synod Whitby, after which Northumbrian Church conformed to Roman method calculating Easter, but an event computistical significance--the solar eclipse 1 May. Since date showed reckoning be inaccurate, it altered 3 Bede knew alteration and uneasy about it. He at first attempted justify ecclesiastical dating, although eyewitness accounts wrong, later, referring Acta synodi, a document used Irish their Easter implied how solution problem might found. In eleventh century, Gerland spelled out heterodox ideas had hinted.
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