7th International Conference on the Science of Computus in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

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7th International Conference on the Science of Computus in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Organizer
National University of Ireland, Galway
Venue
Moore Institute, National University of Galway, Ireland
Location
Galway
Country
Ireland
From - Until
27.06.2018 - 29.06.2018
Website
By
Immo Warntjes

Since 2006, the Moore Institute of the National University of Ireland in Galway hosts, under the direction of Professor Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, a biannual conference on the science of computus in the Middle Ages. The science of computus – the mathematics required to calculate the date of Easter, and related topics (incl. astronomical observations and calculations) – straddles the fields of mathematics and astronomy, biblical interpretation and cosmology, empirical astronomical observation, and the perennial quest to understand the concepts of time and time-reckoning.
The core period covered by the conference stretches from the formation of Easter calculations in the third century to the introduction of Arabic and Greek science in the Latin West in the 12th century, but papers on the reckoning of time and its cultural context in the later Middle Ages have also always been welcomed. Each conference had a special theme (the formation of computus in Late Antiquity; the rise of prognostications in the early Middle Ages; the revolution of computus in the 11th and 12th centuries; Computus in the Carolingian Age; etc.).
The next conference will have as its special theme:

Computus and the vernacular

In most western European societies, script came with Christianity, and with Christianity came computus. Thus, the earliest writings from many western European regions are computistical. The vernacular tradition in some areas started right at the introduction of script, in others later. Either way, computistical texts often are the earliest witnesses of the respective language. This conference seeks to gain a better understanding of the relationship between calendrical science and the vernacular.

Programm

7th International Conference on the Science of Computus in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Galway 27-29 June 2018

Wednesday, 27 June

16:00-18:00 Late Antique computus

Daniel Mc Carthy (Dublin) – The Index prefixed to Athanasius’ Festal Letters
Jan Zuidhoek (Zwolle) – Reconstructing the Alexandrian 19-year lunar cycles
David Paniagua (Salamanca) – A late antique almanac: the Laterculus of Polemius Silvius
Leofranc Holford-Strevens (Oxford) – The Acts of the Council of Caesarea

18:15-19:30 Book launches
- Alden Mosshammer, The Prologues on Easter of Theophilus of Alexandria and [Cyril] (Oxford 2017)
- Philipp Nothaft, Walcher of Malvern: De lunationibus and De dracone – study, edition, translation, and commentary (Turnhout 2017)
- Philipp Nothaft, Scandalous error: calendar reform and calendrical astronomy in medieval Europe (Oxford 2018)
- Immo Warntjes & Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Late antique calendrical thought and its reception in the early Middle Ages (Turnhout 2017)

Thursday, 28 June

COMPUTUS AND THE VERNACULAR

9:30-11:00 Scandinavian Computus

Carla Cucina (Macerata) – Calendar runes and epigraphic evidence for time reckoning in early medieval Scandinavia
Jens Ulff-Møller (Copenhagen) – The origin of the Icelandic Misseri Calendar in Íslendingabók
Sarah Baccianti (Belfast) – Calendars and Calculations: Creating a National Identity in Medieval Iceland

11:30-12:30 Celtic computus

Jacopo Bisagni (Galway) – The transmission of computus between Ireland, Brittany and Carolingian Francia: the enigma of Laon 422
Bernhard Bauer (Maynooth) – The interrelation of the ‘Celtic’ De Temporum Ratione manuscripts

12:30-14:30: lunch

14:30-15:30 Old English / Old High German

Cristina Raffaghello (Vercelli) – The plurivernacular aspects in Byrhtferth's Enchiridion
Immo Warntjes (Dublin) – Notker the German’s De quatuor questionibus compoti

15:30-16:30 Anglo-Norman

Geoff Rector (Ottawa) – Audience, affinity, and exclusion in Philippe de Thaön’s Comput
Edward Mills (Exeter) – Forbidden knowledge/ escience celee? The vernacular and knowledge exchange in two Anglo-Norman computus texts

17:00-18:00 Arabic influences

Fathi Jarray (Tunis) – The medieval and modern astronomy in the Miterranean: ancient heritage and the contribution of Islamic civilization (L’astronomie médiévale et moderne en Méditerranée: l’héritage antique et la contribution de la civilisation Islamique)
Charles Burnett (London) – The reception of the cosmologies of Pseudo-Mash’allah and al-Farghani from the ninth to the seventeenth centuries

18:00-18:30 New Digital Approaches

Thom Snijders (Utrecht) – Computus.lat and object oriented cataloguing of early medieval computus manuscripts

20:00 Conference Dinner

Friday, 29 June

9:30-11:30 Computus in Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England

David Howlett (Oxford) – The Victorian prologue of AD 699
Elisa Ramazzina (Belfast) – Rainbow and flood in insular computus tradition
Marilina Cesario (Belfast) – Natural science and prognostication in the Peterborough Chronicle

12:00-13:30 Later Medieval Computus

Michael Schonhardt (Freiburg) – Contemplatio stellarum: William of Hirsauˈs sphaera and the beginning of observational astronomy in the 11th century
Philipp Nothaft (Oxford) – The Compotus Petri of 1171—A “forgotten classic” of twelfth-century computistics
Sarah Griffin (Oxford) – Synchronising the hours: a fifteenth-century wooden volvelle from Verona

Contact (announcement)

Immo Warntjes

Department of History, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

iwarntje@tcd.ie

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