Venerable Bede

[oggbashan]

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the death of The Venerable Bede.

He is one of the few people from before 1000 whose date of death is known exactly. (Julius Caesar was another)

Bede was responsible for popularising the conventional year numbering AD Anno Domini (or now sometimes CE) from the assumed birth year of Jesus. Whether the calculation of Jesus's birth year was right or not, using AD reduced confusion in dating historical events.

Og

 

[Lady_Fiona]

Weirdly, its my birthday tomorrow and I went to St Bedes School

 

[voluptuary_manque]

According to most scholars, he got pretty close. Best guess I've seen is that Jesus was born in 6 or 7 BC. Given that Bede was calculating from around seven hundred years later he was within 1% of being dead on. Pretty good for medieval scholarship. I'd settle for a 99 on any test I ever took.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the death of The Venerable Bede.

He is one of the few people from before 1000 whose date of death is known exactly. (Julius Caesar was another)

Bede was responsible for popularising the conventional year numbering AD Anno Domini (or now sometimes CE) from the assumed birth year of Jesus. Whether the calculation of Jesus's birth year was right or not, using AD reduced confusion in dating historical events.

Og

The dating was first developed by Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the Short), and, given that the Europeans had yet to figure out the zero, he assigned the number I to Christ's presumed birth year.

My students still have trouble with the fact that the year before 1 AD is 1 BCE.