tiii: i>i-:tki:.mi nation of kastki; day. 



159 



of these years the same Golden Number would be attached. 

 This cycle is said to have been discovered by Meton, a celebrated 

 Athenian astronomer, about the year B.C. 433, and was called 

 from him the Metonic Cycle ; and the successive years of the 

 cycle, with the dates of the new moons corresponding to each 

 year, were inscribed in characters of gold upon the walls of the 

 temple of Minerva. Hence the origin of the name " Golden 

 Numbers." In the distribution of the Golden Numbers over 

 the successive years of the Metonic Cycle, it was assumed (as 

 indeed was an actual fact at the date of the Council of Nicaea) 

 that a new moon fell on January 1 in the third year of the 

 cycle. The year 0 (or B.C. 1) of our era is reckoned the first 

 year of the cycle; therefore, to find the Golden Number for any 

 year, " add one to the year of our Lord, and then divide by 19 ; 

 the remainder, if any, is the Golden Number ; but if nothing 

 remaineth, then 19 is the Golden Number," to quote the 

 words of the Prayer Book rule. 



The determination of Easter by this system made it recur, 

 under the Julian calendar, after each period of 28 x 19, or 

 532 years. This period was called the Paschal Cycle. It was 

 used as a practical means of finding the date of Easter, for a 

 long time before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar. 



Before the change of style was introduced into the ecclesias- 

 tical calendar it was the practice to attach their proper Golden 

 Number to each of the 235 days of the year which were the 

 computed first days of lunations. Twelve of the Numbers 

 appeared twelve times, and seven appeared thirteen times. 

 This left 130 days in a common year, and 131 in a leap 

 year, without any Golden Number. There are, therefore, this 

 number of days in the year upon which the first day of an 

 artificial lunation does not occur. But in the reformed calendar, 

 as now given in the Prayer Book, a different plan is adopted. 

 It was considered more convenient to indicate the fourteenth 

 day of the calendar moon (being the day of "full" moon) 

 rather than the first day, and it was considered unnecessary to 

 indicate other fourteenth days except those, nineteen in number, 

 which fall in the respective years between March 21 and 

 April 18, both inclusive. It was found that the fourteenth day 

 of the Easter moon must fall between these limits — hence 

 called the " Paschal Limits " — and that Easter Day must con- 

 sequently fall on one of the thirty-five days, March 22 to 

 April 25, both inclusive. There are thus only thirty-five 

 possible forms of the ecclesiastical almanac. With regard to 

 the accuracy of the Metonic Cycle as a practical means of 



