ABSTRACT
De temporibus ends with an assertion that ‘the rest of the sixth age is known to God alone’.1 This is entirely in line with traditional Christian thought; declarations of this nature had often been made by the Church Fathers. Bede’s wording echoes the closing remarks from both of Isidore of Seville’s world chronicles, and it is particularly close to the final line of Isidore’s own Chronica minora. 2 Bede did not discuss future time or the end of time in De temporibus. The short statement cited above is the only reference to future time in that work, aside from a similar comment in Chapter 16 that the sixth age is not fixed according to any number of times or generations.3 The four-line poetic preface to De natura rerum, which seems to refer to De temporibus as well, could also be relevant in this context. In the final part of the quatrain, the reader is urged to focus upon the heavenly kingdom when studying the broad periods of fleeting time: ‘You who study the stars above, fix your mind’s gaze, I pray, on the Light of the everlasting day’.4 This plea echoes the warnings about astrologers (mathematici) that are found elsewhere in Bede’s writings. In De temporum ratione, regarding mathematici who seek to predict fates according to the position of the stars, Bede states: ‘let us see to it that these things are avoided, because such observance is futile and alien to our faith’.5 The prefatory quatrain may suggest that Bede anticipated the future misuse of De temporibus. Any concerns that Bede might have had about the reception of De temporibus were well grounded: his statement that the remainder of the sixth age is known only to God needed to be forcefully reiterated just a few years after the text was first issued in 703.
