The Tabernacle and Theophany in Byrhtferth of Ramsey’s Enchiridion and Computus

Abstract In a puzzling passage from his computistical handbook, Byrhtferth of Ramsey asks his students to imagine the Venerable Bede sitting in Moses’ tabernacle and teaching them about the calculation of time. This article considers how Bede was portrayed as a mediator of divine wisdom about computus in Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion and Epilogus , culminating in Bede’s elevation to the eternal space of the tabernacle. Building on Mary Carruthers’ ‘machines of meditation’ and Faith Wallis’ work on Byrhtferth’s diagrams as ‘visual exegesis’, it argues that a collection of riddling references to the tabernacle across Byrhtferth’s canon amount to a cosmography in which the tabernacle is conceived as an exegetical model for God’s presence in time and space.