first day of March; and if the full Moon happens upon Sunday, Easter-day is the Sunday after. Upon what occasion this rule was framed. §. 2. To shew upon what occasion the rule was framed, it is to be observed, that in the first ages of Christianity there arose a great difference between the churches of Asia and other churches, about the day whereon Easter ought to be celebrated. Easter differently ferent churches. The churches of Asia kept their Easter upon observed by dif- the same day on which the Jews celebrated their passover, viz. upon the fourteenth day of their first month Nisan (which month began at the new moon next to the vernal equinox); and this they did upon what day of the week soever it fell; and were from thence called Quartodecimans, or such as kept Easter upon the fourteenth day after the dáois, or appearance of the moon: whereas the other churches, especially those of the West, did not follow this custom, but kept their Easter on the Sunday following the Jewish passover; partly the more to honour the day, and partly to distinguish between Jews and Christians. Both sides pleaded apostolical tradition: these latter pretending to derive their practice from St. Peter and St. Paul; whilst the others, viz. the Asiatics, said they imitated the example of St. John.3 Ordered to be every where observed on the same day by the Council of Nice. This difference for a considerable time continued with a great deal of Christian charity and forbearance; but at length became the occasion of great bustles in the Church; which grew to such a height at last, that Constantine thought it time to use his interest and authority to allay the heat of the opposite parties, and to bring them to a uniformity of practice. To which end he got a canon to be passed in the great general Council of Nice, "That every where the great feast of Easter should be observed upon one and the same day; and that not on the day of the Jewish passover, but, as had been generally observed, upon the Sunday afterwards." And that this dispute might never arise again, these paschal canons were then also established, viz. The Paschal 1. "That the twenty-first day of March shall canons passed in be accounted the vernal equinox. the Council of Nice. 2. "That the full moon happening upon or next after the twenty-first day of March, shall be taken for the full moon of Nisan. 2 Josephus, Antiq. Judaic. lib. 3. cap. 10. 3 Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 5, c. 23, 24, p. 193 &c. Vide et 1. 4, c. 14. 4 Eusebius in Vita Constant. 1. 3. c. 18. 3. "That the Lord's day next following that full moon be Easter-day. 4. "But if the full moon happen upon a Sunday, Easterday shall be the Sunday after." The moons to be Golden Number. §. 3. Agreeable to these is the Rule for finding Easter, which we are now discoursing of. But found out by the here we must observe, that the Fathers of the next century ordered the new and full moons to be found out by the cycle of the moon, consisting of nineteen years, invented by Meton the Athenian,5 and from its great usefulness in ascertaining the moon's age, as it was thought for ever, was called the Golden Number; and was for some time usually written in letters of gold. By this cycle, I say, the Fathers of the next century ordered the moon's age to be found out; which they thought a certain way, since at the end of nineteen years the moon returns to have her changes on the same day of the solar year and month, whereon they happened nine teen years before. For which reason the cycle was some time afterwards placed in the calendar, in the first column of every month, in such manner as that every number of the cycle should stand against those days in each month, on which the new moons should happen in that year of the cycle. But now it is to be noted, that though at the end of every nineteen years the moon changes on the very same days of the solar months, on which it changed nineteen years before; yet the change happens about an hour and half sooner every nineteen years than in the former; which, in the time that the Golden Number stood in the calendar, had made an alteration of about five days. Easter was kept sometimes sooner and sometimes later than the rule seems to direct. §. 4. By this means it happened that Easter was kept sometimes sooner and sometimes later than the rule seemed to direct, and the Fathers of the Nicene Council intended. For it is very manifest that they designed that the first full moon after the vernal equinox should be the paschal full moon (for otherwise they knew that the resurrection of our blessed Lord could not be commemorated at the time it happened:) but then, for want of better skill in astronomy in those times, they confined the equinox to the twenty-first of March; whereas it hath since been discovered not only that the moon's cycle of nineteen years complete was too long, but also that the Julian solar year, which they reckoned by, ex 5 Blondel's Roman Calendar, part I. lib. 2, c. 5. ceeds the true solar one by about eleven minutes every year; which had brought the equinoxes forward eleven or twelve days from the time of the Nicene Council. Hence it must often have happened, that the first full moon after the twentyfirst of March hath been different from the first full moon after the vernal equinox; and that they who have observed Easter according to the letter of the Nicene canons, and the rule for finding the paschal full moon by the Golden Number as placed soon after in the calendar, have not always observed it according to the intent of those Fathers. But yet as soon as ever the canons were passed, the whole catholic Church was very strict in adhering to them; and so tender of the authority of them, that about two hundred years after the Nicene Council this following table was drawn up by Dionysius Exiguus, a Roman; wherein are expressed all those days on which the first full moons after the twenty-first of March happen in all the nineteen years of the lunar cycle: which was so well approved of, that, by the Council of Chalcedon holden a little after, it was agreed that the Sunday next following the Paschal Limits answering the Golden Numbers, as they are expressed in this table, should be Easter-day; and that whosoever celebrated Easter on any other day should be accounted an heretic. The Paschal Limits answering the Golden Numbers, accord ing to the Julian ac count. Golden The Paschal April 5. March 22. March 30. April 18. 10 11 April 15. 17 18 19 March 27. March 24. March 29. According to this table was Easter observed from the year of Christ 534, or thereabouts, till the year 1582: at which time pope Gregory XIII. reformed the calendar, and brought back the vernal equinox to the twenty-first of March. So that the Roman Church keeping their Easter from that time on the first Sunday after the first full moon next after the twenty-first of March, observed it exactly according to the use of the primitive Church. And in the year 1752, the like reformation was made in our calendar, by ordering the third day of September in that year to be called the fourteenth, thereby suppressing eleven intermediate days, and bringing back the vernal equinox to the twenty-first of March, as it was at the time of the Nicene Council. SECT. II. Of the Tables for finding Easter The bishop of Alexandria was to give notice of at first appointed Easter-day to AFTER the Rule for finding Easter is inserted an account when the rest of the movable feasts and holy-days begin: and after that follow certain tables relating to the feasts and vigils that are to be observed in the Church of England, and other days of fasting or abstinence, with an account of certain solemn days for which particular services are appointed. But these, and every thing relating to them, I shall have a more convenient opportunity to treat of hereafter; and therefore shall pass on now to the Tables for finding Easter. When the Nicene Council had settled the true time for keeping Easter in the method set down in the first section of this chapter, the bishop of Alexandria (for the Egyptians at that time excelled in the knowledge of astronomy) was appointed to give notice of Easter-day to the pope and other patriarchs, to be notified by them to the metropolitans, and by them again to all other bishops. But this injunction could be but temporary: for length of time must needs make such alteration in the state of affairs, as must render any such method of notifying the time of Easter impracticable. And therefore this was observed no longer than till a Cycle or course of all the variations which might happen in regard to Easter-day might be settled. 6 other Churches. §. 2. Hereupon the computists applied themselves to frame such a Cycle: and the vernal Cycles afterwards equinox being fixed by the Council of Nice, and drawn up. Easter-day by them also appointed to be always the first Sunday after the first full moon next after the vernal equinox; they had nothing to do, but to calculate all the revolutions of the moon and of the days of the week, and inquire, whether, after a certain number of years, the new moons, and consequently the full moons, did not fall out, not only on the same days of the solar year, (for that they do after every nineteen years,) but also on the same days of the week on which they happened before, and in the same ordinary course. Because, by calculating a table for such a number of years, they might find Easter for ever; viz. by beginning again at the end of the last year, and going round as it were in a circle. * See Pope Leo's Epistle to the Emperor Marcianus, Epist. 64 years. And first a Cycle was framed at Rome for The Cycle of 84 eighty-four years, and generally received in the Western Church; it being thought that in that space of time the changes of the moon would return to the same days both of the week and year in such manner as they had done before." During the time that Easter was kept according to this Cycle, Britain was separated from the Roman empire, and the British churches for some time after that separation continued to keep their Easter by this table of eighty-four years. But soon after that separation, the Church of Rome and several others discovered great deficiencies in this account, and therefore left it for another, which was more perfect: not but that also had its defects, though it has been continued ever since in the Greek Church, and some others; and till very lately in our own. The Cycle of 532 an period. The Cycle I mean was drawn up about the years, or Victori- year 457, by Victorius or Victorinus, a native of Aquitain, an eminent mathematician: who, observing that the Cycle of the Sunday letter consisted of twenty-eight years, and consequently that the days of the week have a complete revolution, and begin and go on again every twenty-eight years, just in the same order that they did twenty-eight years before, and that the Cycle of the Moon returned to have her changes on the same days of the solar year and month, where on they happened nineteen years before, but not on the same days of the week: Victorius, I say, having observed this, and endeavouring to compose a Cycle, which should contain all the changes of the days of the week, and of the moon also, (which was necessary to find Easter for ever;) he multiplied these two Cycles of nineteen and twentyeight together, and from thence composed his period of five hundred and thirty-two years, from him ever after called the Victorian period. And in this time he supposed the new moons would fall out on the same days both of the month and week, on which they happened before, and in the same orderly course. So that this day (be it what day it will) is 7 See the bishop of Worcester's Historical Account of Church-government, p. 67, and Bede Hist. 1. 5, c. 22, in fin. 8 This alteration of the Cycle to find Easter was the cause that the Britons, who kept to the old account, differed from the Romans in the time of celebrating this festival. For though both kept it on a Sunday, according to the rule of the Council of Nice; yet they differed as to the particular Sunday. This upon the coming in of Augustin the monk, first archbishop of Canterbury, caused some contests in this island, of which Bede gives a large account, [Hist. Eccl. 1. 3, c. 25, 1.5, c. 22,] where it may be seen that the Britons never were Quartodecimans, as some have imagined them to be. |