ABSTRACT

Bede, in contrast, paid more attention to Christ’s Nativity and treated this as the focal point of salvation history. In the ‘Chronicle of 703’ he reversed Isidore’s practise by dating the Nativity using imperial years and years from Creation, and the Passion only by imperial years. Bede is, of course, famous for counting time from Christ’s arrival in the world. Anno Domini dating provides the underlying chronological framework for his Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum and the work played a key role in disseminating this chronology in medieval Europe. The general view in modern historiography is that chroniclers and chronographers in the Western Church did not distinguish between the Incarnation and Nativity until after the time of Bede. Bede came to regard the Nativity as a localised event in time, whereas the Incarnation covered the totality of Christ’s life on earth from the Annunciation in Nazareth to the Passion and death on the Cross in Jerusalem.