Of all Bede's works, the chronological made the greatest immediate
impression, and was of most general use at the time and for some
centuries afterwards. The computation of Easter was the groundwork of
the ecclesiastical year, and every church felt the benefit of his
services. Chronology was then in its early maturity, and the Christian
era was not yet a familiar method of reckoning. Bede was the first
historian who arranged his materials according to the years from the
Incarnation. He had made himself completely master of this subject, and
he left it in such order that nothing more had to be done to it, or
could be improved upon it, for many centuries.

His fullest and most detailed work on chronology is entitled "De
Temporum Ratione," and to this is added a chronicle of the world. On
this elaborate work he was working down to A.D. 726. We have the
authority of Ideler for saying that this is a complete guide to the
calculation of times and festivals. He treats of the several divisions
of time; and under the months, he speaks of the moon's orbit (c. xvii.),
and its importance for the calendar, and the relation of the moon to the
tides (c. xxix.); then of the equinoxes and solstices, the varying
length of the days, the seasons of the year, the intercalary day, the
cycle of nineteen years, the reckoning Anno Domini (c. xlvii.),
indictions, epacts, the determination of Easter. All these things are
taught with theoretical thoroughness, as well as also in their practical
application. He also (c. lxv.) made a table for Easter from A.D. 532,
"when Dionysius began the first cycle," to A.D. 1063.[66] This is
followed by the "Chronicle or Six Ages of this World," altogether a work
that was a growing nucleus, and went on expanding down to the invention
of printing and the revival of classical literature.

But the works on which his eminence permanently rests, and by which he