Gregory of Tours’s Historical Conception and Dionysius Exiguus’s Anno Domini and Easter Table in Early Medieval Europe
This article investigates the possibility of a link between the historical concept of Gregory of Tours and the spread of the Easter tables of Dionysius Exiguus that were set and started in 532. In terms of the Easter time reckoning, it was the beginning of an entirely new cycle that warranted its application to the new period in the history of Europe. Using novel approaches that have been developed in recent historiography of the problem, this article attempts to find a deep interconnection between the long periods of historical chronology, i.e. the eras from the Creation and from the Incarnation of Christ, and the Easter cycles of years 19 and 28/84 that had reached their mathematical and theological perfection in the works of Dionysius Exiguus and other scholars of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Having outlined the basic innovations in the studying of both the eras and the Easter calculations in the recent works, the article attempts to find a deeper correlation between the long and the short cycles on the example of Gregory of Tours and both his uses of the Christian era and the hints of using the Easter cycles in the structuring of his historical narrative. The article shows that Gregory was well aware of the specifics of the Old Testament and the Christian eras and their eschatological implications and that he was one of those scholars who opted to use the era of Eusebius (which put the birth of Christ to 5199 from the creation) because it was this era and not the so-called “Alexandrian” (or “Byzantine”) one that allowed to move the end of the 6th millenium and the coming of the Millenial kingdom 200 year ahead from the time of him writing his “Histories”. By investigating Gregory’s use of unusual natural and celestial phenomena in his work, the article suggests that occasions that were linked to the beginning of the 19-year Easter cycle were marked by a description of events that pointed to the beginning (or the end) of the cycle as the “resetting of the clock”. At the same time, the investigation of his using the 28/84-year cycle suggests how he used this date to pinpoint the importance of the sacrifice of Christ by God-father and the eventual end of the earthly life of Christ. In other words, the study suggests that Gregory attributed various unusual events with eschatological expectations, the second coming of Christ and of the beginning of the Millenial kingdom to the beginning of the 19-year cycle (with epact 0), and he assigned the story that metaphorically reminded of Jesus’ incarnation, sacrifice, and resurrection to the end of the 28-year cycle. In a sense, therefore, in his approach, the 28-year, solar, calendar (the metaphor of the coming light) was that of the beginning of the Christian time, whereas the 19-year, lunar, calendar (the metaphor of the coming of darkness) was that of the end of times.
Keywords
chronology,
Anno Domini,
historiography,
early Middle Ages,
Gregory of Tours,
Dionysius ExiguusAuthors
| Starostin Dmitry N. | Saint Petersburg State University | d.starostin@spbu.ru |
Всего: 1
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