EASTKlt. 



KASTI'lt. 



710 



first, whether the fext \ro< to be venion of the IWover, to be kept 

 oo the fourteenth day of the moon, or an anniversary of the Resur- 

 notion, to be kept on the firtt day of the week ; noondly, in what 

 manner the full moon wa* to be predicted. The detail* of this dispute 

 do not affect us here, except in one point It seems clear that towards 

 the end of the 2nd century, the Metonic cycle of nineteen years was 

 frequently introduced into the reckoning. It is the peculiarity of this 

 cycle of nineteen years [PERIODS or REVOLUTION], that the new and 

 full moons return to the same days of the month, generally speaking ; 

 that if, for instance, a full moon fall on the 10th of March in any year, 

 it is most likely to fall on the same day in nineteen years, and certainly 

 on the 9th or llth, if not on the 10th. The astronomers, and all who 

 predicted celestial phenomena for common use, used this Metonic cycle; 

 even! modern writers on ecclesiastical history speak as if the Christians 

 had invented the cycle of the golden number, which is only the Metonic 

 cycle with ita commencement altered. But it is material to notice that 

 all countries unto which Greek civilisation had found its way, had their 

 new and full moons predicted by this cycle. 



The Nicene Council (A.D. 825) attempted to bring about a general 

 usage in keeping Easter. What is left of this council is its creed, a 

 synodical epistle, and twenty canons. Whether those canons which 

 now exist be the genuine work of the Nicene Council is nothing to our 

 present purpose, for they do not mention Easter at all ; nor should we 

 have noticed them here, had we not seen them cited by name in refer- 

 ence to Easter, to give, as it were, an impression that the council had 

 laid down rules on the subject iu a definite form. All their inter- 

 ference in the matter, as far as it can be collected from the earliest 

 historians of the council, Socrates and Theodoret, is contained in one 

 sentence of the synodical epistle, as follows : " We also send you the 

 good news concerning the unanimous consent of all in reference to the 

 celebration of the most solemn feast of Easter, for this difference also 

 has been made up by the assistance of your prayers ; so that all the 

 brethren in the bant, who formerly celebrated this festival at the same 

 time as the Jews, will in future conform to the Romans and to us, and 

 to all who have of old observed our manner of celebrating Easter." 

 The case is clear enough : there was a great schism between the 

 Pasterns and Westerns, not an astronomical schism, but a part of the 

 great conflict between the Jewish and Gentile Christians ; and the 

 council simply decreed that the former should adopt the usual practice 

 of the latter. St. Ambrose, in the next generation, in a letter written 

 A.D. 386, says that the council had got up the method of the cycle of 

 nineteen years, which they had named Enntadecaftrrit ; that is, 

 Ambrose was not astronomer enough to know that both the thing and 

 the name had been current even in elementary works for hundreds of 

 years before the council. In this, as we have mentioned, he has had 

 followers ; indeed, the necessity of accounting for the cycle of nine- 

 teen years in some way, and the want of knowledge of its astronomical 

 history, has in a manner compelled theological writers to lay it at the 

 door of the Nicene bishops, and thence to infer that they paid a very 

 particular attention to the astronomical part of the settlement of 

 Easter. But in fact their object was merely to keep the Eastern 

 Christians from celebrating the Jewish Passover. So long as this point 

 was gained, they do not seem to have thought it necessary to interfere, 

 even as regarded the East, with those differences of astronomical 

 method, which they do not even mention, though they could not be 

 ignorant that they existed in the West. And the result was as 

 follows : from the time of the Nicene Council little or nothing more is 

 heard about celebrating Easter on the 14th, instead of the Sunday after, 

 while the disputes about the astronomical cycle of Easter recommenced 

 almost immediately, and lasted for centuries. 



Eusebius of Ciesarea, the historian, informs us in his life of Con- 

 stantino that he had presented to that emperor a treatise on Easter, 

 wherein the mystic character of that festival was explained ; apparently 

 a purely theological work. Jerome (' de Scriptor. Eccles.') mends this 

 statement, and informs us that Eusebius was the author of the cycle of 

 nineteen years. Bede and others have copied Jerome, and Clavius (see 

 the article cited at the beginning) brings forward Bede as more clearly 

 explaining a statement of Ambrose to the same effect. Now Ambrose 

 mentions no such thing ; and meeting with the statement of Jerome 

 rince we wrote that article, we are inclined to suppose that Clavius 

 meant to have quoted one of the contemporary sainta, and wrote down 

 a citation from the other, a supposition which would explain what 

 must otherwise be called a disingenuous proceeding. Hence comes the 

 current story that Eusebius and others were appointed by the council 

 a committee to superintend the drawing up of the rule. 



Shortly after the Nicene Council there were disputes about the 

 proper cycle for Easter. It is unnecessary here to note the various 

 cycle* which were proposed. It was not till the time of Pope Hilarius 

 (A.D. 403) that the cycle of nineteen years obtained a permanent footing. 

 The pontiff employed Victorinus of Aquitaine to correct the calendar ; 

 and Victorimu actually constructed the cycle of 532 years, or of 28 

 Metonic cycles. When Dionysius Exiguus (A.D. 530) altered the mode 

 of reckoning, and abandoned the Diocletian era in favour of what he 

 mippoted to be the year of the birth of Christ, he adjusted the mode 

 of reckoning employed by Victorinus accordingly, and the cycle of 

 the latter hat ever since been called Dionysian. From his time till 

 that of the Gregorian reformation the rule was strictly observed, no 

 disapprobation producing anything but written argument*. So that 



the Nicene Council neither succeeded, nor, we assert, intended to suc- 

 ceed, in doing more than destroying, among the great bulk of Christians, 

 what was called the quartmlrcimaH heresy, the opinion that Hosier was 

 to be kept on the fourteenth day of the moon, the opinion, in fact, 

 that Easter was (Ac Pattortr, The settlement of the arithmetical or 

 astronomical question is the work of Hilarius and Victorinus. Not 

 but that these reformers considered themselves as fulfilling the inten- 

 tions of the Nicene Council : in fact, all parties after the council made 

 it their authority. All dissentients assumed theirs to be the Nicene 

 faith in this matter ; and even the blunder of the British Parliament 

 has been defended by supposing it to be the true intent of the assembled 

 bishops in the 4th century. 



The assumption of the so-called Dionysian cycle involved two errors. 

 The Julian year being too Jong by about a day in 180 years, threw the 

 vernal equinox back by a day in that time ; while the rule of the cycle 

 supposed that the equinox remained fixed on the 21st of March. Again, 

 the cycle of nineteen years, which supposes 235 lunations to till up 

 that time exactly, was wrong in a manner which caused the new moons 

 of the calendar to advance a day in every 300 years. The consequence 

 was, that by the time of Pope Gregory XIII., in 1582, the equinox had 

 receded to the llth of March, while the calendar new moon generally 

 fell on the fourth day following that of the real new moon. These 

 errors were obvious enough to every astronomer. Sacrobosco and 

 Roger Bacon pointed them out in the 13th century. The former says 

 they must be borne on the authority of the council ; the latter strongly 

 recommended Pope Clement to make on amendment, and gave a 

 reformed plan which is perfectly good. He had (and where he got it 

 from we cannot guess) the length of the year more correctly than any 

 of his predecessors or contemporaries. Cardinal Cusa and Regiomon- 

 tanus, in the 15th century, pointed out the necessity of a change. 

 Stoffler, Pitatus (who proposed the plan afterwards adopted with the 

 leap years), Paul us Forosemproniensis (bishop of Fossombrone), and 

 others in the 16th century, wrote in advocacy of the same thing. The 

 Council of Trent sanctioned an alteration, and referred the details to 

 the see of Rome. A plan was presented to the pope by the relatives of 

 one Aloysius Lilius, deceased, who had occupied himself with the sub- 

 ject. This plan was approved of; and in 1677 a circular was forwarded 

 to princes and universities throughout the Catholic world, stating the 

 nature of the intended alterations, and inviting suggestions. The Jesuit 

 Clavius was the person, or the principal person, to whom the concoction 

 of the scheme was intrusted. March 1, 1582, a bull was published, 

 dated February 24th, 1581, abolishing the old calendar, giving a general 

 description of the new one, and announcing that it would be fully ex- 

 plained in a forthcoming work. Clavius published this work, namely, 

 ' Kalendarium Gregorianum Perpetuum,' 4to, Rome, 1582 (pp. 60) ; and 

 it was reprinted in the folio collection of his works. We have nothing 

 here to do with the alteration of the style, but only with what relates 

 to Easter. This calendar had to undergo several severe attacks, par- 

 ticularly from Joseph Scaliger, Moestlinus, and Vieta [VlBTA, in Bioo. 

 Div.] ; but these, of course, produced no effect against established 

 authority, nor, in truth, ought they to have done so in this instance. 

 The calendar answers its purpose exceedingly well, and is, astronomi- 

 cally speaking, better than it was supposed to be by Clavius himself. 



Referring for a full description of the details to the article in the 

 ' Companion to the Almanac,' we shall give a slighter account of the 

 process. Clavius held astronomical considerations to be secondary in 

 importance to the general notions of his predecessors and contempo- 

 raries. One of these was, that it was not desirable ever to keep Easter 

 on the same day as the Jews keep the Passover. To avoid this, he 

 uniformly lessens the moon's age by a day, taking care, as much as 

 possible, that all the necessary errors of the imperfect cycle shall have 

 the same effect, namely, that of lessening the moon's age, or throwing 

 the new moons forward. Accordingly, his new moons are seldom on 

 the real day, generally one or two days in advance, about as much of 

 one as of the other, and sometimes even three days in advance. It is 

 therefore very important to remember that the moon of the calendar 

 is not the moon of the heavens, and not even the mean moon of tho 

 astronomers. So that in the act of parliament, instead of the full 

 moon (being the fifteenth or sixteenth day) of the heavens (the first 

 day being that of new moon), should have been read the fourteenth 

 day of the moon of the calendar. There is evidently a compensating 

 effect ; the fourteenth day of a moon, which begins for the most part 

 one or two days after the moon of the heavens, is of course generally 

 the fifteenth or sixteenth day of the moon of the heavens. 



Clavius uses the Dionysian cycle in a way which we may describe as 

 follows : Neglecting the preceding arbitrary alteration, which may be 

 made once for all when everything else is done, there are two things 

 to be provided for. First, the defect of the cycle itself, the error of 

 which is to advance the new and full moons by a day in about 300 

 years ; Clavius took it to be eight days in 2500 years, and accordingly 

 he allowed one day for seven periods of 300 years, and then one day 

 for a period of 400 years, as we shall presently see. Next, the aban- 

 donment of three leap-years in every four centuries, which, though 

 necessary for keeping the equinox at or about one day of one month, 

 would destroy the efficiency of the cycle of nineteen years. There are 

 then two shiftings, as it were, of the cycle necessary arbitrary alte- 

 rations of the moon's age at certain periods (we are now speaking only 

 of the calendar moon). We shall now give a set of cycles, resembling 



