Byrhtferth's diagram with the Four elements (earth, water, air, fire), seasons, solstices, equinoxes, signs of the zodiac and ages of man. An Ogham inscription is in the centre. Miniature from twelfth century English medieval manuscript MS Oxford St John's College 17, folium 7 verso. Copy from original about 1000 AD by Byrhtferth.
Byrhtferth (Old English: Byrhtferð; c. 970 – c. 1020) was a priest and monk who lived at Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdonshire (now part of Cambridgeshire) in England.[1] He had a deep impact on the intellectual life of later Anglo-Saxon England and wrote many computistic, hagiographic, and historical works.[2][3] He was a leading man of science and best known as the author of many different works (although he may not have written many of them).[4] His Manual (Enchiridion), a scientific textbook, is Byrhtferth's best known work.[5]
He studied with Abbo of Fleury, who was invited to Ramsey Abbey by Oswald of Worcester to help teach. Abbo was there during the period 985 to 987, and became a large influence on Byhrtferth who was interested in the same studies, such as history, logic, astronomy, and mathematics.[6] We do not have contemporary biographies of Byrhtferth, and the only information we have is that given in his Manual and his Preface.[7]
^Henry Bradley (1886). "Byrhtferth". In Dictionary of National Biography. 8. London. pp. 126–27.
^The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Michael Lapidge (1991)
^Medieval England: an encyclopedia; editors: Paul E. Szarmach, M. Teresa Tavormina, Joel T. Rosenthal. New York: Garland Publishing (1998)
^"The Old English Canon of Byrhtferth of Ramsey", Peter S. Baker. Speculum, Vol. 55, No. 1. (1980)
^Byrhtferth of Ramsey. (2011). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/87049/Byrhtferth-of-Ramsey
^Who's Who in Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon England, Richard Fletcher. (2002)
^Forsey, G. (1928). Byrhtferth's Preface. Speculum, 3(4), 505–22.
Byrhtferth (Old English: Byrhtferð; c. 970 – c. 1020) was a priest and monk who lived at Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdonshire (now part of Cambridgeshire) in...
Charter S 937 of around 999, which gives details of his election as king, Byrhtferth of Ramsey's Life of St Oswald, written around 1000, and parts of some...
of Hippo, a compact treatise on Christian piety (420) Enchiridion of Byrhtferth (fl. 1000) Enchiridion Militis Christiani of Erasmus (1501) Erfurt Enchiridion...
ISBN 0-85323-693-3. Baker, Peter S.; Lapidge, Michael, eds. (1995) [1016]. Byrhtferth's Enchiridion. Early English Text Society. ISBN 978-0-19-722416-8. Jones...
weakened Eadwig so much that his enemies felt able to act against him. Byrhtferth, in his hagiographical Life of St Oswald, states that Eadwig, who was...
founded, and his remains were enshrined there. A hagiography was written by Byrhtferth of Ramsey, a monk at Ramsey Abbey, around 1016. Another Vita Sancti Egwini...
but Ealdorman Byrhtferth ordered him to pay his wer (the value of his life) to the king, and when Æthelstan could not pay Byrhtferth required him to...
possible division of time. The earliest known occurrence in English is in Byrhtferth's Enchiridion (a science text) of 1010–1012, where it was defined as 1/564...
and Northumbrian history. The first five sections are now attributed to Byrhtferth of Ramsey. It is a "historical compilation" or a "historical collection"...
Life is a forgery by Byrhtferth, basing his case primarily on an analysis of Byrhtferth's and Asser's Latin vocabulary. Byrhtferth's motive, according to...
(725), Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-85323-693-3. Byrhtferth's Enchiridion (1016). Edited by Peter S. Baker and Michael Lapidge. Early...
after a siege, taking Ælfheah, archbishop of Canterbury, as a prisoner. Byrhtferth, Benedictine monk of Ramsey Abbey, writes his Manual (Enchiridion) on...
was writing in Old English at the same time as Ælfric and Wulfstan was Byrhtferth of Ramsey, whose book Handboc was a study of mathematics and rhetoric...
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