Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/76

 NOtES AND QUERIES. [ft* s. m. JAN. 28, m

THE CHARTER RELATING TO ST. PETER'S, WOLV ERHAMPTON.

(9 th S. ii. 46, 214.)

THIS charter formed the subject of a monograph ' The Charter of Wulf run to the Monastery at Hamtun ' which was published in 1888 by Mr. W. H. Duignan, and which con- tained a translation contributed by Mr. W. H. Stevenson, last year's Sandars Lecturer in the University of Cambridge on Old English diplomata. Mr. Stevenson believed the docu- ment to be genuine, and he assigned its original to 994 He said (p. 7, note 1) that its annuary datum DCCCCXCUI. was "a mistake for 994," and in support of that correction he urged that " the seventh indiction [that given in the document] fell in that year, and not in 996." Mr. Stevenson's fixation will not bear scrutiny, and in assigning what I believe to be the date of the document I shall show that he did not treat a single one of the data fundamentally, and that he made no fewer than five computistical mistakes.

1. The data "anno a passione DCCCCXCUI." and " indictione septima " are not absolutely contradictory, and it is not right to assume that DCCCCXCUI. is " a mistake of the copyist " simply because A.D. 996 fell in the ninth indic- tion. This assumption springs from the sup- position that 'the person who styled himself

"notarius Ethelredi regis" began to count

theyearsinhisowneraofthePassioii from A.D.I. This supposition overlooks the fact that, according to some chronographers, the Incar- nation must be dated three years earlier than Dionysius dated it. (Others, it is generally known, confused the era of the Passion with the era of the Incarnation ; consequently this peculiarity in the charter in question need not trouble us.) A.D.I. 996 (used a passione} therefore equals A.D. 993, and in this year the month of October, in which the charter pur- ports to have been witnessed, actually fell in both the seventh Greek indiction and the seventh Bedane indiction.

2. It is obvious that Mr. Stevenson's reason for correcting the year ignores the well-known ambiguity of indictionary data. Dom Clement, in his 'Dissertation sur les Dates des Chartes et des Chroniques, especially warned students of chronology that the indiction is no safe guide in deter- mining the year of our Lord when an event or document whose year we may have to fix is dated in either September, October November, or December. The reason is clear Unless we know which class of indiction is

imployed, all that the numeral of the indie- ion can teach us is that the date we are seeking fell within a period of about sixteen nonths ; that is, between the end of an im- perial indiction year on 31 Aug. in one year )f grace and the beginning of a Pontifical ndiction year on 25 Dec. in the next. These considerations show that the original docu- ment may have been written in A.D. 993 = A.D.I. 996) between 31 Aug. and the end of
 * he year.

3 and 4. MR. C. S. TAYLOR remarks (9 th S. i. 214): "A moon which was twenty-two days old on 16 Oct. [the calendar dates of the document] would have been new on 24 Sept.," and from this he argues that the golden number was III. and the year of grace in which the document was witnessed was 1009, and that this discrepancy with DCCCCXCUI. ntitles us to regard the document as spurious. MR. TAYLOR'S computation is erroneous. If moon xxii. had fallen on 16 Oct. the moon would have been new on 25 Sept. But no new moon ascended on this day in any Dionysian lunar year, as may be seen by re- ferring to an ancient lunar calendar. Hence, when Mr. Stevenson equated 16 Oct., 994, with moon xxii. he made two mistakes : (1) in 994 16 Oct. actually fell on moon viii., and (2) while the Church was using the tables of Dionysius 16 Oct. never fell on moon xxii. A.D. 993, however, had golden number VI. and epact 25 ; consequently, as the lunar regular of October is 16, 1 October fell on moon xi. ( = 25 plus 16 minus 30), and 16 Oct. on moon xxvi. As the lunar value does not agree with the calendar date, I suggest that " luna xxii." is a misreading of " luna xxu.," and, further, that we should emend these supposititious figures to xxui.

5. The data in the document run : " in mense Octobris, in dominico die, xvii. kal." Mr. Stevenson believed that in 994 16 Oct. fell on Sunday. In that year, however, it fell on Tuesday, and it was in 992 that it fell on Sunday, while in 993 it fell on Monday. In the seventh Greek indiction, in A.D. 993, Sunday, moon xxv., fell on 15 Oct. the Ides. It is hardly possible that " xvii. kal." can be a scribal error for " Idibus," and it would seem, on one hand, that the Julian calendar date fits neither the weekday nor the lunation ; while, on the other, the year 993 ( = A.D.I. 996, used a passione), the indiction seven, the weekday Sunday, and the moon xxy., are all in harmony. The error or errors in the tradition of the datal clause should not, I think, invalidate the document, and I believe that the ecclesiastical practice of changing the Julian and lunar calendar dates at vespers