![]() Then 84-year tables were introduced in Rome by Augustalis near the end of the 3rd century. The earliest known Roman tables were devised in 222 by Hippolytus of Rome based on eight-year cycles. Thereafter, the computus would be the procedure of determining the first Sunday after the first ecclesiastical full moon falling on or after 21 March. In 395, Theophilus published a table of future dates for Easter, validating the Alexandrian criteria. By the time of the First Council of Nicaea, the Church of Alexandria had designated 21 March as an ecclesiastical date for the equinox, irrespective of actual astronomical observation. To do so, it was necessary to identify the first full moon following the March equinox. Consequently, they decided to separate the dating of Easter from the Hebrew calendar. Later the Jews adopted the Metonic cycle to predict future intercalations.Ī possible consequence of this intercalation is that 14 Nisan may occur before the equinox, which some third-century Christians considered unacceptable, although this cannot happen in the fixed calendar currently in use. The Hebrew calendar is a lunisolar one and does not have a simple relationship with the Christian calendars: it resynchronizes with the solar year by intercalating a leap month every two or three years, before the lunar new year on 1 Nisan. Additionally, by the 2nd century, many Christians had chosen to observe Easter only on a Sunday. Nisan is the first month of spring in the northern hemisphere, with the 14th corresponding to a full moon. In the Hebrew calendar, Passover occurs on the 14th day of Nisan. ![]() See also: Easter controversy and List of dates for EasterĮaster commemorates the resurrection of Jesus, which is believed to have occurred on the third day (inclusive) after Passover. It was the drift of 21 March from the observed equinox that led to the Gregorian reform of the calendar, to bring them back into line. For this reason, the Catholic Church and Protestant churches (which follow the Gregorian calendar) celebrate Easter on a different date from that of the Eastern Orthodox Churches (which follow the Julian calendar). The calculations produce different results depending on whether the Julian calendar or the Gregorian calendar is used. In The Reckoning of Time (725), Bede uses computus as a general term for any sort of calculation, although he refers to the Easter cycles of Theophilus as a "Paschal computus." By the end of the 8th century, computus came to refer specifically to the calculation of time. Additionally, the church wished to eliminate dependencies on the Hebrew calendar, by deriving the date for Easter directly from the March equinox. By the early third century, however, communications in the Roman Empire had deteriorated to the point that the church put great value in a system that would allow the clergy to determine the date for themselves, independently yet consistently. It was originally feasible for the entire Christian Church to receive the date of Easter each year through an annual announcement by the Pope. The complexity of the algorithm arises because of the desire to associate the date of Easter with the date of the Jewish feast of Passover which, Christians believe, is when Jesus was crucified. Determining this date in advance requires a correlation between the lunar months and the solar year, while also accounting for the month, date, and weekday of the Julian or Gregorian calendar. Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the Paschal full moon, which is the first full moon on or after 21 March (a fixed approximation of the March equinox). A calendar of the dates of Easter, for the years 532–632, marble, in the Museum of Ravenna Cathedral, Italy.Īs a moveable feast, the date of Easter is determined in each year through a calculation known as computus ( Latin for 'computation').
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