![]() ![]() It was widely circulated and adapted, and would remain a cornerstone of Christian learning for centuries. 4) But his system - known as a computus digitorum, or simply computus - found an appreciative audience. (The technique, Bede wrote, is “better conveyed by the utterance of a living voice than by the labor of an inscribing pen”. 3 Beyond this basic set-up, he left the details obscure and didn’t bother to include an illustration. In this way, Bede noted, the hands can “readily hold the cycles of both planets”. The joints of both hands taken together, minus the nails, gives you twenty-eight landmarks: the approximate length in years of a full solar cycle. ![]() This number tracks the metonic cycle: how many years it takes for the moon to return to the same phase on the same calendrical day. The five fingers, he observed, contain fourteen joints, plus five nails - nineteen landmarks in all. To find the date of Easter - which falls after the Northern Hemisphere’s spring equinox, on the Sunday immediately following the first full moon - one needs to reckon with planetary rhythms, which Bede mapped across his hands. ![]()
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