150
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. m. FEB. 25, m
according to the * Chronicle,' and because 994
was the seventh indiction. On this slender
basis MR. ANSCOMBE founds the sweeping
charges specified above. I have nowhere
"equated 16 October, 994, with moon xxii.,
and made two other mistakes in doing so,"
and I have nowhere expressed the belief
"that in 994 16 October fell on Sunday," as
MR. ANSCOMBE so definitely charges me with
doing. For one thing, I was not sure as to
the date intended by the clause "in mense
Octobris, in Dominico die, xvii. kal., luna
xxii." MR. ANSCOMBE has no doubt that it
means 16 October (17 kal. Nov.). It may,
however, possibly mean 17 kal. Oct. (15 Sep-
tember). As I was unable to reconcile the
figures with either of these dates, I left them
alone, thinking that there might be some
errors in the carelessly printed text.
MR. ANSCOMBE is the victim of his own ingenuity. It is highly improbable that any critical student will be able to accept con- clusions that have been reached by such processes as the following.
1. MR. ANSCOMBE assumes that the chancery official who is stated to have written this charter reckoned the era of the Incarnation, which he calls the Passion,* from an epoch three years older than the usual one, that of Dionysius Exiguus, the one exclusively used in English diplomas of this period. There is nothing to support this extraordinary assump- tion beyond "the fact that, according to some chronographers, the Incarnation must be dated three years earlier than Dionysius dated it." No evidence is vouchsafed that the uncertainty as to the date of the Saviour's birth ever affected the reckoning of the era of the Incarnation, t It is quite certain that it did not influence the chancery of ^Ethelred. By this bold flight MR. ANSCOMBE is able to reduce the date from 996 to 993. But this does not solve the difficulties, so he resorts to another assumption.
2. According to this, the erratic scribe, in
- If this is so, it is evident that "Passion "has
been written, copied, or printed for " Incarnation " by mistake. This explanation is much too prosaic for MB. ANSCOMBE. So he tells us that "others, it is generally known, confused the era of the Passion with the era of the Incarnation; conse- quently this peculiarity in the charter need not detain us." It does not trouble MR. ANSCOMBE that there is no evidence of this confusion in England, and that only two instances of it in foreign diplomas are known to the handbooks. Even if these are not mere clerical errors, the confusion is, as Ideler remarked, exceedingly unusual.
t Prof. Riihl (p. 198) has truly remarked that the question whether or not the calculation of the Dio- nysian epoch agrees with the real date of the Incar- nation is immaterial for technical chronology.
addition to using an era specially invented
and used exclusively on tnis occasion, em-
ployed a special and unusual method of calcu-
lating the indiction. That is, instead of using
the ordinary so-called Pontifical indiction he
employed the Greek or the Bedaii indictions
which necessitate a change of the indiction
number in September in each year, whereas
by the Pontifical indiction the number re-
mained unchanged throughout the year. MR.
ANSCOMBE does not give any proof that either
of the former indictions was ever used in
the English chancery of the tenth century.
Kemble believed that after the eighth century,
and probably during and before it, the only
indiction used in England was the Pontifical
one (' Codex Diplomaticus,' i. Ixxx). It is a
bold thing to assume the use of either of the
other systems merely because it suits MR.
ANSCOMBE'S convenience. It is bolder still to
hold, as he does when he says that my calcu-
lation based upon the Pontifical indiction is
"a mistake that will not bear scrutiny," that
this hypothetical use of the other indictions
absolutely precludes the possibility of the
ordinary one being used in the present
case.
3. MR. ANSCOMBE next tampers with the figures. He suggests that "luna xxii. is a misreading of xxu." He is fond of this notion that the use of u for the numeral five may be misread as ii.; but he is straining the possi- bility beyond breaking point when he applies it to an English royal charter of this date, for at that time the scribes no longer used u for the numeral. It is still more out of place when dealing with a MS. that is later in date than the Norman Conquest, as the lost original of this Wolverhampton charter must have been.
4. Even this does not suffice to explain the data, so MR. ANSCOMBE suggests that "we should emend these supposititious figures to xxui." By this process 22 is transmuted into 26!
5. Yet another hypothesis, equally impro- bable, is required, that the document was witnessed after Vespers, in order to reconcile the age of the moon with the calendar day.
The intrinsic improbability of assumption. No. 1 is alone sufficient to bring down this imposing edifice of guesswork. Apart from this, it is evident that the structure will collapse if it can be shown that 993 is an impossible date. This can be done. There is evidence tending to prove that the date of 996, which MR. ANSCOMBE thus twists into 993, did not exist in the "autographum," and that the mistake in the 'Monasticon' text was not, as I assumed a transposition of I and v,
