https://orthodoxwiki.org/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=James+C.&feedformat=atomOrthodoxWiki - User contributions [en]2024-03-28T13:18:46ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://orthodoxwiki.org/index.php?title=Paschalion&diff=121705Paschalion2015-05-06T14:02:00Z<p>James C.: </p>
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<div>[[Image:Pascha.jpg|right|Great and Holy Pascha]]<br />
The '''Paschalion''' of the [[Orthodox Church]] is a set of rules for determining the date of [[Pascha]] that traditionally has been implemented by calendrical tables combining Metonic lunar cycles with the Julian solar year. The rules are attributed to the [[First Ecumenical Council]] (held at [[Nicea]] in 325); the cyclical Paschal tables that emerged in connection with the Council were based on 3rd and 4th century Alexandrian prototypes, and then transposed into Julian dates by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century.[1]<br />
<br />
== Early History ==<br />
The origin of annual festivals in Christianity is obscure. St. Paul (1 Cor. 16.8) and St. Luke (Acts 2.1, 12.3, 20.6, 27.9) refer to Jewish annual festivals expecting their Gentile readers to know what is meant. Chapters 5-10 of John's Gospel is structured around the cycle of Jewish annual festivals, and all the Gospels' passion narratives are set at the time of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. But nowhere are Christian annual observances explicitly mentioned. Then, beginning in the mid-2nd century, evidence appears of Pascha and commemorations of martyrs. The commemorations of martyrs were held on fixed dates in the solar calendar. Pascha was computed according to a lunar calendar. This suggests the possibility that the annual Pascha celebration entered Christianity earlier than martyrs' festivals, and that it may have been part of Christianity's initial Jewish inheritance.<br />
<br />
Initially the date of Pascha was fixed by consulting Jewish informants to learn when the Jewish month of Nisan would fall, and setting Pascha to the third Sunday in Jewish Nisan, the Sunday of Unleavened Bread. But beginning in the third century there are indications that some Christians were becoming dissatisfied with this reliance on the Jewish calendar. The chief complaint was that the third week in Jewish Nisan was sometimes placed before the spring equinox. [[Peter of Alexandria|Peter, Bishop of Alexandria]] (early 4th century A.D.), in a statement preserved in the preface to the [[Chronicon Paschale| ''Chronicon Paschale'']], expresses this view:<blockquote>On the fourteenth day of [the month], being accurately observed after the equinox, the ancients celebrated the Passover, according to the divine command. Whereas the men of the present day now celebrate it before the equinox, and that altogether through negligence and error.</blockquote>Those who held this view began to experiment with independent computations that would always place Pascha in the spring season. Traditionalists, however, felt that the old custom of consulting the Jewish community should continue, even if it sometimes placed Pascha before the equinox. [[Epiphanius]] of Salamis (''Panarion'' 3.1.10) quotes a version of the [[Apostolic Constitutions| ''Apostolic Constitutions'']] used by the sect of the Audiani which represents this school of thought: <blockquote>Do not do your own computations, but instead observe Passover when your brethren from the circumcision do. If they err [in the computation], it is no matter to you.</blockquote><br />
<br />
The controversy was resolved at the Council of Nicea. Although the decision was not recorded as a canon, its synodal letter to the Church in Alexandria conveys “...the good news of the agreement concerning the holy Easter, ...that all our brethren in the East who formerly followed the custom of the Jews are henceforth to celebrate the said most sacred feast of Easter at the same time with the Romans and yourselves.”[2] The Emperor Constantine confirmed this agreement in a letter to bishops that had not attended the Council, announcing two things:<blockquote>(1) ...the most holy festival of Easter should be everywhere celebrated on one and the same day. ...(So) cheerfully accept what is observed with such general unanimity of sentiment in the city of Rome, throughout Italy, Africa, all Egypt, Spain, France, Britain, Libya, the whole of Greece, and the dioceses of Asia, Pontus, and Cilicia; and (2) We have cast aside (the Jewish) way of calculating the date of the festival (because) ...we should never allow Easter to be kept twice in one and the same (solar) year![3]</blockquote><br />
<br />
Thus, the old Quartodeciman custom of consulting the Jewish calculation of Nisan 14 and celebrating Pascha according to that date was formally rejected, and the independent computations long in use at the influential city of Alexandria became the emerging, if still somewhat controversial, consensus. On the other hand, the comments of canonists, preachers, and chroniclers indicate that the old custom of placing Easter in the month of Nisan as computed by the Jewish community continued to have adherents for generations.<br />
<br />
== The Nicene Formula ==<br />
The Alexandrian and Roman methods of determining the date of Pascha were based on three principles: (1) Pascha was always after the vernal equinox, (2) it was to follow, but not coincide with, the first full moon of spring, and (3) it was always to be on a Sunday. A fourth principle – and one enunciated following Nicea I – is implicit in the first three: namely, (4) the date of Pascha was not to depend on the Jewish dates for Passover in any way. This last criterion was met by formulating the Paschalion entirely in terms of astronomical events and the weekly cycle of days.[4]<br />
<br />
One early text that gives an explicit outline of the Nicene formula for dating Pascha is found in a homily from 387 that is widely attributed to St. John Chrysostom: <blockquote>Since we keep the first of times (spring), and the equinox ("isimera"), and after this the fourteenth of the moon, and together with these the three days Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; lacking any of these at one time it is impossible to fulfill the Pascha.[5]</blockquote><br />
<br />
A traditional Paschalion of three elements is set forth in this homily attributed to St. Chrysostom. Its actual operation is clarified by the following passage from a letter traditionally attributed to St. Ambrose, most probably dating from the year 386 when Alexandrian and Roman dates for Pascha did not match, and St. Ambrose chose to follow the Alexandrian date.[6] <blockquote>We must keep the law regarding Easter in such a way that we do not observe the fourteenth as the day of the Resurrection; that day or one very close to it is the day of the passion...[and] it is evident that the day of the Resurrection should be kept after the day of the Passion, [so] the former should not be on the fourteenth of the [lunar] month, but later.[7]</blockquote><br />
<br />
Despite evident divergences in dating Pascha, the basic intention of the Nicene Fathers is conveyed by these late fourth century texts. In summary, that intention was to establish a simple set of rules that would allow Pascha to be dated independently of the Jewish calendar, and to ensure that the basic chronological sequence of Passion and Resurrection as recorded in the Gospels was imitated every year. Insisting on Sunday as the only day suited to commemorating the Resurrection reveals their intention to imitate the chronology of the original event; and their preference for an astronomically determined vernal equinox is evident from the Eastern Church’s early adoption of the Alexandrian Paschal computations based on March 21st rather than March 25th, the conventional date of the vernal equinox on the official Julian and Alexandrian calendars.[8] <br />
<br />
The emergence of differing tabular, computational systems intended to implement the Nicene rules was a complex historical process, leading to the eventual dominance of a system based on calendrical experiments made at Alexandria beginning in the mid-3rd century.[9] According to this system, Pascha is the first Sunday following the date of the Paschal Full Moon (PFM - also called the νομικον φασκα, "nomikon faska" in Greek) for a given year. The computational PFM is not, however, the first full moon following the vernal equinox as determined by direct observation or by accurate astronomical computations. Rather, the computational PFM is designated as the first Ecclesiastical Full Moon (EFM) date that falls on or after March 21 on the Julian calendar. Ecclesiastical Full Moons (EFM) are calendar dates that approximate astronomical full moons using a cycle that repeats every 19 years. March 21 (O.S.Julian) was the date used by the Alexandrians for determining the EFM used in their Paschal tables because it was near the actual date of the vernal equinox in the late 3rd and early 4th century A.D., when Paschal tables were first being compiled. <br />
<br />
=== The Zonaras Proviso ===<br />
The decision of the Nicene council concerning Pascha was that it should be computed independently of any Jewish computations: hence, a Paschalion that is consistent with Nicene principles cannot have any built-in dependence on the Jewish calendar. Nevertheless, possibly as early as the 12th century and certainly in recent times it has been widely believed that Christian Pascha is required always to follow, and never coincide with, the first day of Passover, which is Nisan 15 in the rabbinic Jewish calendar.[10] By the 12th century the errors in the Julian calendar's equinoctial date and age of the moon had accumulated to the degree that Pascha did, in fact, always follow Jewish Nisan 15. This state of affairs continues to the present day, even though the Jewish calendar suffers from a slight solar drift of its own, because the Julian calendar's errors accumulate more rapidly than the Jewish calendar's.<br />
<br />
The 12th century canonist [[Joannes Zonaras]] seems to have been the first to state the principle that Pascha should always follow Jewish Passover (Nisan 15), so the principle is called the “Zonaras Proviso” after him. Zonaras is thought to have derived his new principle from his reading of Apostolic Canon 7, which states: <blockquote>If any Bishop, or Presbyter, or Deacon celebrate the holy day of Easter before the vernal equinox with the Jews, let him be deposed.[11]</blockquote> <br />
<br />
Zonaras, commenting on this Canon, wrote <blockquote>Some say the Spring equinox is the 25th day of March; others, the 25th day of April. I deem that the canon refers to neither the one nor the other. For Pascha is often celebrated before the 25th of April; and there are times when it is celebrated before the 25th of March; so that, (if "Spring equinox" were so understood) Pascha is being celebrated in violation of this canon. Whence it appears that the wise apostles call something else the "Spring equinox." So the whole thrust of the canon is this, that Christians should not celebrate Pascha with the Jews (that is, on the same day). For it is fitting that their feast - which is no feast - is done first; and thus we do our Pascha. If one consecrated to God does this even once, he is removed from orders. The synod in Antioch also ordered this, in their first canon, where they stated that this was decreed concerning the feast of Pascha by the synod of Nicea, although no such canon is found in the canons of the Nicene synod. [See Greek text in footnote.][11]</blockquote><br />
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Thus, Zonaras apparently reads the force of the words "Spring equinox" out of the canon entirely, even though he does not abbreviate the text of Canon 7 the way Aristenus (prior to Zonaras) had done by omitting the words entirely.[12] So what Zonaras probably means is that the astronomical (or computational) vernal equinox is the "something else" known to the "wise Apostles" which makes both proposed calendrical dates incorrect, and the12th century practice of the Church canonical. Because Zonaras saw no reason to be worried about celebrating Pascha before the vernal equinox, he then treated the idea of not celebrating Pascha along with the Jewish Passover as a separate rule. Even so, he (or perhaps Balsamon after him) adds the proviso "that is, on the same day" in an effort to prevent anyone from taking "with the Jews" to mean celebrating Pascha as though it were part of the Jewish feast. Hence, what not being on the same day/date means in practice is not letting the date of Passover determine the date of Pascha. So Zonaras may well be saying nothing new, though his words have been widely taken in an innovative sense.<br />
<br />
The final seeming novelty of Zonaras's commentary is the idea that Pascha is supposed to follow Passover, or at least, "it is fitting" that such a sequence is observed. This, of course, is what necessarily happens whenever the Nicene paschalion is correctly followed, provided "Passover" is understood to mean the one day of 14 Nisan (or 15 Nisan in rabbinic practice) and not the entire eight-day feast of Passover which includes the Feast of Unleavened Bread. But when the dates of Pascha are derived from an inaccurate tabular computation, it could well happen that the day of Pascha would be the same day as the Passover - even though each date was independently calculated. It is this latter situation that Zonaras and his readers were apparently trying to cope with, in their different ways. For what Zonaras says can be taken to mean something like the following: "Their feast - which is no feast - is done first; and thus we do our Pascha [as the perfection of what has gone before in history and has lapsed in grace]." On this understanding, postponing Pascha to avoid its coinciding with the date of Passover would implicitly acknowledge a continuing validity for the Jewish feast, and violate Canon 7 by letting Jewish practice (in a limited, but real sense) sometimes determine the date of Pascha. Many who read this in Zonaras, however, saw only a mandated sequence of separate dates.<br />
<br />
The 14th-century canon lawyer Matthew Blastares also enumerated the paschalion's principles in a way that can be taken to require dependence on the Jewish calendar. <blockquote>First, that it is necessary to celebrate the Pascha after the spring equinox; second, that it is not the same day as the Jewish festival; third, that it is not merely after the equinox, but after the first full moon following the equinox; and fourth, that (it is) the Sunday immediately after the full moon."[13]</blockquote> <br />
If by "the Jewish festival" Blastares simply meant the Paschal Full Moon, then his second principle would be redundant - merely restating the third principle in other words - if it were not for the known divergence between the astronomical Pascal Full Moon and the Ecclesiastical Full Moon. If, on the other hand, he meant the 15th of Nisan on the Rabbinic Jewish calendar (which date for Passover apparently began to supplant 14 Nisan in Inter-testamental times) then, as Zonaras may have done before him, he seemingly has replaced the Nicene rule of independence from the Jewish calendar with a rule that the paschalion must instead depend on it - in order to shun a coincidence of dates. However, it is also possible Blastares (like Zonaras before him) may have meant in his second rule that the date of Pascha is not set by simply adopting the date of Passover, as was the practice of the Quartodeciman churches prior to, and for some time after, the Nicene paschalion was enunciated. If this is the case, he too is saying nothing new.<br />
<br />
== Implementation ==<br />
The following table shows the Julian and Gregorian calendar date of the Julian Paschal Full Moon (PFM) for each year of the 19-year cycle. To determine the position of a given year in the 19-year cycle, add 1 to the A.D. number of the year and divide by 19. The remainder is the year's position in the cycle. If there is no remainder, the year is the 19th of the cycle. Hence 1994 was year 19 of its cycle, and 1995 was year 1 of its cycle.<br />
<br />
The Gregorian calendar equivalences are valid from 1900 to 2099.<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable" border="1"<br />
|-<br />
|Year of cycle<br />
|Julian calendar date of Julian PFM<br />
|Gregorian calendar date of Julian PFM<br />
|-<br />
|1<br />
|April 5<br />
|April 18<br />
|-<br />
|2<br />
|March 25<br />
|April 7<br />
|-<br />
|3<br />
|April 13<br />
|April 26<br />
|-<br />
|4<br />
|April 2<br />
|April 15<br />
|-<br />
|5<br />
|March 22<br />
|April 4<br />
|-<br />
|6<br />
|April 10<br />
|April 23<br />
|-<br />
|7<br />
|March 30<br />
|April 12<br />
|-<br />
|8<br />
|April 18<br />
|May 1<br />
|-<br />
|9<br />
|April 7<br />
|April 20<br />
|-<br />
|10<br />
|March 27<br />
|April 9<br />
|-<br />
|11<br />
|April 15<br />
|April 28<br />
|-<br />
|12<br />
|April 4<br />
|April 17<br />
|-<br />
|13<br />
|March 24<br />
|April 6<br />
|-<br />
|14<br />
|April 12<br />
|April 25<br />
|-<br />
|15<br />
|April 1<br />
|April 14<br />
|-<br />
|16<br />
|March 21<br />
|April 3<br />
|-<br />
|17<br />
|April 9<br />
|April 22<br />
|-<br />
|18<br />
|March 29<br />
|April 11<br />
|-<br />
|19<br />
|April 17<br />
|April 30<br />
|}<br />
<br />
Pascha is always the Sunday ''following'' the Paschal Full Moon. Since the PFM is simply the 14th day of the Paschal lunar month, this means that Pascha is the third Sunday in the Paschal lunar month, and can fall on any date in the lunar month from the 15th (the day after the PFM) to the 21st (seven days after the PFM). That the structure of the Paschal lunar month is modelled on that of the scriptural month of 'Aviv (now called Nisan) should be clear. The Paschal lunar month is analogous to the month of 'Aviv. It is in effect a Christian 'Aviv or Nisan'. The 14th day, the Paschal Full Moon, is analogous to the day of the Passover sacrifice, and the third week, the 15th to the 21st, the week whose Lord's Day is Pascha, is analogous to the Week of Unleavened Bread.<br />
<br />
==Shortcomings of the Julian Paschalion==<br />
===Solar-side flaws===<br />
Because of the inaccuracy of the [[Julian Calendar]]'s solar year, Pascha is drifting later into the year for those who use the Julian Paschalion. Even though for those using the Julian Calendar Pascha will always be sometime in March or April, it will eventually be celebrated in the northern hemisphere in the summer, the autumn, and then the winter. For those using the [[Revised Julian Calendar]], the calendar date of Pascha is drifting along with its astronomical position. In both cases, however, the drift is very slow compared to human lifetimes - it amounts to approximately one week every 1000 years. So, for example, it would take an amount of time longer than all recorded history just for Pascha to end up being celebrated after the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere.<br />
<br />
===Lunar-side flaws===<br />
Additionally the Julian Ecclesiastical Full Moons are deviating further with time from the astronomical full moons: The EFM now falls 3 to 5 days after the corresponding astronomical full moon (see table). <br />
<br />
The [[Gregorian Calendar]], which includes its own revised Paschalion, has neither of these problems.<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable" border="1"<br />
|-<br />
|Gregorian EFM 2008<br />
|Astronomical full moon 2008<br />
(day starting at midnight UT)<br />
|Gregorian calendar date <br />
of Julian EFM 2008<br />
|-<br />
|Jan 22<br />
|Jan 22<br />
|Jan 26<br />
|-<br />
|Feb 20<br />
|Feb 21<br />
|Feb 25<br />
|-<br />
|Mar 22<br />
|Mar 21<br />
|Mar 26<br />
|-<br />
|Apr 20<br />
|Apr 20<br />
|Apr 25<br />
|-<br />
|May 20<br />
|May 20<br />
|May 24<br />
|-<br />
|Jun 18<br />
|Jun 18<br />
|Jun 23<br />
|-<br />
|Jul 18<br />
|Jul 18<br />
|Jul 22<br />
|-<br />
|Aug 16<br />
|Aug 16<br />
|Aug 21<br />
|-<br />
|Sep 15<br />
|Sep 15<br />
|Sep 19<br />
|-<br />
|Oct 14<br />
|Oct 14<br />
|Oct 19<br />
|-<br />
|Nov 13<br />
|Nov 13<br />
|Nov 17<br />
|-<br />
|Dec 12<br />
|Dec 12<br />
|Dec 17<br />
|}<br />
<br />
== The Byzantine Proposal of 1324 ==<br />
In the 14th century Nicephoras Gregoras calculated the current error in dating the vernal equinox to be three days, and proposed a reform of the Julian calendar to Andronicus II. The reform was not adopted, apparently from lack of popular or political support; and in fact would have corrected less than half of the seven-day error that actually existed at that time.[14]<br />
<br />
== The Gregorian Proposal of 1582 ==<br />
In October 1582, the [[Roman Catholic Church]] adopted a major calendar reform designed to correct the Julian calendar's defects. The Julian calendar then in common use was based on an average year of 365.25 days, slightly longer than the mean tropical year of 365.2422 days and the mean vernal equinox year of 365.2424 days. Since 19 Julian years were taken to be equal to 235 lunar months, the average lunar month in the Julian calendar was 29.530851 days, somewhat longer than the astronomical mean synodic month of 29.530589 days. The new calendar eliminated the 10-day drift in the vernal equinox, and the 3-to-4 day deviation in the age of the moon, that had accumulated since the Julian Paschalion had come into use, and laid down rules that would slow the rate of accumulation of errors in the future.<br />
<br />
The new calendar was called the [[Gregorian Calendar|Gregorian]] after its sponsor, Pope Gregory XIII, and Eastern churches refused to adopt it on the grounds that the new Roman tables sometimes placed Pascha on the day of the vernal full moon, instead of after it as the Nicene principles required. In 1583 the Council of Constantinople forbade use of the new calendar and Paschalion, making adherence to the Julian calendar a test of Orthodoxy in territories where Roman Catholic Uniate churches were being established.<br />
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== The Orthodox Proposal of 1923 ==<br />
A [[Revised_Julian_Calendar|congress]] of Orthodox bishops meeting in 1923 under the presidency of Patriarch [[Meletios_IV_(Metaxakis)_of_Constantinople|Meletios IV]] agreed to set Pascha by means of precise astronomical computations referred to the meridian of Jerusalem, using a midnight to midnight day to date the full moon.[15] This agreement was never permanently implemented in any Orthodox diocese. But the Revised Julian calendar, a more accurate version of the Gregorian calendar, which was introduced by the same congress has been adopted by some jurisdictions for celebrating the fixed feasts of the liturgical year.<br />
<br />
== The World Council of Churches Proposal of 1997 ==<br />
A consultation of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant delegates met in Aleppo, Syria and issued an agreed statement recommending that all member churches work toward a common method of dating Pascha based on the three original Nicene principles, but employing astronomical observations from the meridian of Jerusalem instead of any cyclical tabular computation.[16] This was essentially the same proposal as that of 1923, and was not implemented in the proposed year of 2001 when Eastern and Western dates for Pascha coincided. Resistance to such a reform by Orthodox jurisdictions is apparently rooted in respect for a widespread belief that March 21st Julian was designated by the Nicene Fathers to be the only true vernal equinox, and nourished by persistent fears that changing the received tradition for dating Pascha would endanger the integrity Orthodoxy’s witness to the Patristic Tradition by creating a purely “cosmetic” unity with other Churches.[17] And so it is that the Nicene paschalion continues to be differently implemented in practice, despite its original simplicity.<br />
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== East and West Today ==<br />
The Roman Catholic and Protestant West eventually adopted the Gregorian Calendar for civil and ecclesiastical purposes, including the determination of Pascha. The Orthodox East, however, was not so quick to change. Even when the traditionally Orthodox countries began to adopt the Gregorian Calendar for civil purposes, the Orthodox Church retained the [[Julian Calendar]] and original Paschalion. For the sake of convenience, the date of Pascha is often transposed to the coincident date on the Gregorian Calendar for reference. <br />
<br />
Because of the difference in calendars and formulas, Western Easter and Orthodox Pascha do not often coincide. Under current rules, they can differ from each other by 0, 1, 4, or 5 weeks. They are in separate lunations (meaning that they are 4 or 5 weeks apart because their respective cycles identify different lunar months as the Paschal lunar month) in years 3, 8, 11, 14, and 19 of the 19-year cycle, and in the same lunation (0 or 1 week apart) in the other years.<br />
<br />
== Algorithms ==<br />
Many notable mathematicians have developed algorithms for determining the date of Orthodox Pascha over the centuries. This simple and elegant one was devised by the brilliant mathematician Jacques Oudin in the 1940s:<br />
<br />
''N.B. -- In this formula MOD is the modulus function, in which the first number is divided by the second and only the remainder is returned. Further, all division is integer division, in which remainders are discarded. Thus'' <tt>'''22 MOD 7 = 1'''</tt> ''but'' <tt>'''22 / 7 = 3'''.<br />
G = ''year'' MOD 19<br />
I = ((19 * G) + 15) MOD 30<br />
J = (''year'' + (''year''/4) + I) MOD 7<br />
L = I - J<br />
Easter Month = 3 + ((L + 40)/44)<br />
Easter Day = L + 28 - 31 * (Easter Month/4)<br />
</tt>Easter Month will be a number corresponding to a calendar month (e.g., 4 = April) and Easter Day will be the day of that month. Note that this returns the date of Pascha on the Julian calendar. To get the corresponding date on the Gregorian calendar, add 13 days (14 days after March 1, 2100).<br />
<br />
== Online Paschalion Utility ==<br />
The date of Pascha and many Pascha-dependent dates can be found (e.g., the start of Great Lent, Pentecost, etc.) through this online JavaScript [http://www.noeticspace.com/paschalion Paschalion utility] (works best with IE3 or Netscape 3 or above).<br />
<br />
This site allows the user to enter a year and uses Oudin's algorithm to compute the relevant dates. Although the Orthodox (Julian-based) formulas are used, the utility returns the corresponding Gregorian calendar dates. For example, in 2006 Pascha falls on Sunday, April 10, on the Julian calendar. That date corresponds to April 23 on the Gregorian calendar.<br />
<br />
A perpetual Paschalion utility is available [http://cgi.duke.edu/~aa63/cgi-bin/paschallion.cgi here]. The utility was created by [http://www.duke.edu/~aa63/ Aleksandr Andreev] of [http://www.duke.edu/ Duke University] and calculates Pascha and associated feasts for any series of years. It also calculates the numbers used in Paschal calculations which can be found in an Orthodox [[Typicon]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
1. See http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/dionysius_exiguus_easter_01.htm for the Paschal cycle of Dionysius; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysius_Exiguus for an account of the transposition.<br />
<br />
2. See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.vii.ix.html.<br />
<br />
3. Eusebius, Vita Constantine III:18-20, ''Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers'', Vol. 14, pp. 54-55. Also available at http://www.fourthcentury.com/index.php/urkunde-26.<br />
<br />
4. James Campbell, “The Paschalion: An Icon of Time,” ''St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly'', Vol. 28 No. 4 (1984) pp. 245-262. Also available at https://www.academia.edu/8246608/The_Paschalion_An_Icon_of_Time.<br />
<br />
5. Chrysostom, Paschal Homily VII, Migne, ''Patrologiae graecae'' Vol. 59, col. 747A.<br />
<br />
6. Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. I., pp. 328ff.<br />
<br />
7. Ambrose, Letter to the Bishop of Amelia, Fathers of the Church Vol. 26, pp. 193-194 and 199. Latin text: Migne PL 16, 1073B and 1078A.<br />
<br />
8. Until the 6th century the Paschal tables used in Rome were based on the conventional date of March 25th for the vernal equinox. See Jones, “The Development of the Latin Ecclesiastical Calendar” in Bedae, Opera de Temporibus (1943) pp.1-104 for an English overview, or a more detailed account in French s.v. “Paques. les controverses pascales” in Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique (1931) Tome 11.2,1948-70; also available at http://jesusmarie.free.fr/dictionnaire_de_theologie_catholique_lettre_P.html.<br>Please note that Hefele (note 5 above) differs from my more recent sources in saying that in 387 the Romans took March 18 as the vernal equinox in order to arrive at Pascha on March 21. It seems possible that the discrepancy involved the Romans having relied on their tabular EFM date regardless the equinox. This, of course, would have been a very serious breach of the Nicene principles.<br />
<br />
9. The basic system can be found in the “Paschal Canon” of the Alexandrian scholar Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea, which was composed c. 277 A.D. See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf06.vi.iii.ii.i.html and following pages.<br />
<br />
10. ''The Rudder'', Apostolic Canon 7, available at http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/cannons_apostles_rudder.htm . Also ''The Rudder'', Cummings ed. (Chicago: The Orthodox Christian Education Society, 1957). The Rudder's words "after the Passover of the Jews" may simply refer to the astronomical Paschal Full Moon, not to any date in the Jewish calendar. In practice, it is often understood to mean the 15th of Nisan in the Rabbinic Jewish calendar. <br>See for example http://orthodoxwitness.org/over-the-rooftops/how-the-date-of-pascha-is-determined/2/ (Last visited April 15, 2015) where the author states that Pascha in 2015 is set to April 12 2015 to avoid coinciding with "the Jewish Passover" which he dates (incorrectly) to April 5, and that Pascha 2016 is set to May 1 to avoid coinciding with the Jewish Passover which he dates to April 22. This last date corresponds to 14 (not 15) Nisan 5776 and so is the Jewish Passover in a strict sense, but April 22, 2015 is a Friday, not a Sunday. In any case, the author clearly uses "Jewish Passover" to refer to a date on the Jewish calendar, and not to the paschalion's Paschal Full Moon, which falls on Tuesday, April 7 in 2015 and on Tuesday, April 26 in 2016. <br>James Campbell, cited in Reference 4 above, says that the Gregorian paschalion violates the Nicene rule "that Pascha is not to coincide with the full moon, but to follow it" and that it is a mistake to treat this error as a violation of Apostolic Canon 7. (See reference 4 above, text at footnote 14.)<br />
<br />
11. Joannes Zonaras, Commentary on Apostolic Canon 7, Migne, PG 137, 49-50.<br> Ἐαρινὴν ἰσημερίαν τινὲς τὴν κε᾽ φασὶ τοῦ Μαρτίου· τινὲς δἐ τὴν κε᾽ τοῦ Ἀπριλλίου. Οῖμαι δὲ μήτ᾽ ἐκείνην μήτε ταυτην τὸν κανόνα λέγειν· ὡς ὲπι τὸ πολὺ γὰρ τὸ Πάσχα πρὸ τῆς κε᾽ τοῦ Ἀπριλλίου ἑορτάζεσθαι είωθεν· ἔστι δὲ ὅτε καὶ πρὸ τῆσ κε᾽ τοῦ Μαρτίου, ὡς συμβαίνειν (εἰ οὔτως νοοϊτο ἡ ἐαρινὴ ἰσημερία) παρὰ τὸν κανόνα τοῦτον τὸ Πάσχα ἑορτάζεσθαι. Ἔοικεν οὐν ἄλλο τι ἐαρινὴν ἰσεμερίαν τοὺς συνετοὺς ἀποστόλους ὀνομάζειν. Ἡ δὲ πᾶσα τοῦ κανόνα, διαταγὴ τοῦτό ὲστι, τὸ μὴ μετὰ Ἰουδαίων (ἤγουν κατ᾽ αὐτὴν τὴν ἡμέραν) ἑορτάζειν τὀ Πάσχα Χριστιανούς. Χρὴ γὰρ προηγεϊσθαι τὴν ανέορτον ἐκείνων ἑορτὴν, καὶ οὕτω τὸ καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς τελεϊσθαι Πάσχα. Ὁ δὲ μὴ τοῦτο ποιῶν ἱερομένο, καθαιρεθήσεται. Τοὺτο δὲ καὶ ἡ ἐν Ἀντιοχείᾳ σύνοδος ἐν πρώτῳ κανόνι διετάξατο, λέγουσα τῆς ἐν Νικαίᾳ πρώτης συνόδου ὄρον εὶναι περὶ τῆς ἑορτῆς τοῦ Πάσχα· εἰ καὶ μὴ εὑρισκεται ὲν τοῖς κανόσι τῆσ ἐν Νικαίᾳ συνόδου τοιοῦτος κανών.<br>Please note, this text has been translated into English from the Latin parallel translation found in Migne, PG 137.<br />
<br />
12. Aristenus, Commentary on Apostolic Canon 7, Migne, PG 137, 50.<br />
<br />
13. Matthew Blastaris, ''Syntagma Alphabeticum'', Migne, PG 145, 96D-97A.<br />
<br />
14. See Guiland, ''Essai sur Nicephore Gregoras'' (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1926), pp. 282-284. Also, ''Dictionnaire de Théogogie Catholique'' (Paris, 1911) Tome 11, col. 455; and Welborn, "Calendar Reform in the 13th Century" (Chicago: University of Chicago Dissertation, 1935), p. 31.<br />
<br />
15. M. Milankovitch, "Das Ende des julianischen Kalenders und der neue Kalender der orientalischen Kirchen", ''Astronomische Nachrichten'' 220, 379-384(1924).<br />
<br />
16. See World Council of Churches / Middle East Council of Churches Consultation, “Towards a Common Date for Easter” (1997); available at http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/faith-and-order-commission/i-unity-the-church-and-its-mission/towards-a-common-date-for-easter/index?set_language=en.<br />
<br />
17. For an example of this, see Fr. Luke Luhl, “The Proposal for a Common Date to Celebrate Pascha and Easter,” ''Orthodox Christian Information Center'' (1997); available at http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/common_luhl.aspx.<br />
<br />
==See also==<br />
*[[Church Calendar]]<br />
*[[Gaussian Formulae]]<br />
*[[Kyriopascha]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
*[http://www.oca.org/Docs.asp?ID=133&SID=12 Concerning the Date of Pascha and the 1st Ecumenical Council], by Archbishop [[Peter (L'Huillier) of New York]]<br />
*[http://www.chrysostom.org/andrew/texts/parsells-calendar.pdf The Calendar Issue in the Orthodox Church], by John Parsells (PDF)<br />
*[http://www.tondering.dk/claus/calendar.html Frequently Asked Questions about Calendars] by Claus Tondering (everything you ever wanted to know)<br />
*[http://users.chariot.net.au/~gmarts/calmain.htm Calendar and Easter Topics]<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Church Life]]<br />
[[Category:Feasts]]<br />
[[Category:Featured Articles]]<br />
<br />
[[ro:Pascalia]]</div>James C.https://orthodoxwiki.org/index.php?title=Paschalion&diff=121700Paschalion2015-05-05T04:35:03Z<p>James C.: Revisions</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Pascha.jpg|right|Great and Holy Pascha]]<br />
The '''Paschalion''' of the [[Orthodox Church]] is a set of rules for determining the date of [[Pascha]] that traditionally has been implemented by calendrical tables combining Metonic lunar cycles with the Julian solar year. The rules are attributed to the [[First Ecumenical Council]] (held at [[Nicea]] in 325); the cyclical Paschal tables that emerged in connection with the Council were based on 3rd and 4th century Alexandrian prototypes, and then transposed into Julian dates by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century.[1]<br />
<br />
== Early History ==<br />
The origin of annual festivals in Christianity is obscure. St. Paul (1 Cor. 16.8) and St. Luke (Acts 2.1, 12.3, 20.6, 27.9) refer to Jewish annual festivals expecting their Gentile readers to know what is meant. Chapters 5-10 of John's Gospel is structured around the cycle of Jewish annual festivals, and all the Gospels' passion narratives are set at the time of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. But nowhere are Christian annual observances explicitly mentioned. Then, beginning in the mid-2nd century, evidence appears of Pascha and commemorations of martyrs. The commemorations of martyrs were held on fixed dates in the solar calendar. Pascha was computed according to a lunar calendar. This suggests the possibility that the annual Pascha celebration entered Christianity earlier than martyrs' festivals, and that it may have been part of Christianity's initial Jewish inheritance.<br />
<br />
Initially the date of Pascha was fixed by consulting Jewish informants to learn when the Jewish month of Nisan would fall, and setting Pascha to the third Sunday in Jewish Nisan, the Sunday of Unleavened Bread. But beginning in the third century there are indications that some Christians were becoming dissatisfied with this reliance on the Jewish calendar. The chief complaint was that the third week in Jewish Nisan was sometimes placed before the spring equinox. [[Peter of Alexandria|Peter, Bishop of Alexandria]] (early 4th century A.D.), in a statement preserved in the preface to the [[Chronicon Paschale| ''Chronicon Paschale'']], expresses this view:<blockquote>On the fourteenth day of [the month], being accurately observed after the equinox, the ancients celebrated the Passover, according to the divine command. Whereas the men of the present day now celebrate it before the equinox, and that altogether through negligence and error.</blockquote>Those who held this view began to experiment with independent computations that would always place Pascha in the spring season. Traditionalists, however, felt that the old custom of consulting the Jewish community should continue, even if it sometimes placed Pascha before the equinox. [[Epiphanius]] of Salamis (''Panarion'' 3.1.10) quotes a version of the [[Apostolic Constitutions| ''Apostolic Constitutions'']] used by the sect of the Audiani which represents this school of thought: <blockquote>Do not do your own computations, but instead observe Passover when your brethren from the circumcision do. If they err [in the computation], it is no matter to you.</blockquote><br />
<br />
The controversy was resolved at the Council of Nicea. Although the decision was not recorded as a canon, its synodal letter to the Church in Alexandria conveys “...the good news of the agreement concerning the holy Easter, ...that all our brethren in the East who formerly followed the custom of the Jews are henceforth to celebrate the said most sacred feast of Easter at the same time with the Romans and yourselves.”[2] The Emperor Constantine confirmed this agreement in a letter to bishops that had not attended the Council, announcing two things:<blockquote>(1) ...the most holy festival of Easter should be everywhere celebrated on one and the same day. ...(So) cheerfully accept what is observed with such general unanimity of sentiment in the city of Rome, throughout Italy, Africa, all Egypt, Spain, France, Britain, Libya, the whole of Greece, and the dioceses of Asia, Pontus, and Cilicia; and (2) We have cast aside (the Jewish) way of calculating the date of the festival (because) ...we should never allow Easter to be kept twice in one and the same (solar) year![3]</blockquote><br />
<br />
Thus, the old Quartodeciman custom of consulting the Jewish calculation of Nisan 14 and celebrating Pascha according to that date was formally rejected, and the independent computations long in use at the influential city of Alexandria became the emerging, if still somewhat controversial, consensus. On the other hand, the comments of canonists, preachers, and chroniclers indicate that the old custom of placing Easter in the month of Nisan as computed by the Jewish community continued to have adherents for generations.<br />
<br />
== The Nicene Formula ==<br />
The Alexandrian and Roman methods of determining the date of Pascha were based on three principles: (1) Pascha was always after the vernal equinox, (2) it was to follow, but not coincide with, the first full moon of spring, and (3) it was always to be on a Sunday. A fourth principle – and one enunciated following Nicea I – is implicit in the first three: namely, (4) the date of Pascha was not to depend on the Jewish dates for Passover in any way. This last criterion was met by formulating the Paschalion entirely in terms of astronomical events and the weekly cycle of days.[4]<br />
<br />
One early text that gives an explicit outline of the Nicene formula for dating Pascha is found in a homily from 387 that is widely attributed to St. John Chrysostom: <blockquote>Since we keep the first of times (spring), and the equinox ("isimera"), and after this the fourteenth of the moon, and together with these the three days Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; lacking any of these at one time it is impossible to fulfill the Pascha.[5]</blockquote><br />
<br />
A traditional Paschalion of three elements is set forth in this homily attributed to St. Chrysostom. Its actual operation is clarified by the following passage from a letter traditionally attributed to St. Ambrose, most probably dating from the year 386 when Alexandrian and Roman dates for Pascha did not match, and St. Ambrose chose to follow the Alexandrian date.[6] <blockquote>We must keep the law regarding Easter in such a way that we do not observe the fourteenth as the day of the Resurrection; that day or one very close to it is the day of the passion...[and] it is evident that the day of the Resurrection should be kept after the day of the Passion, [so] the former should not be on the fourteenth of the [lunar] month, but later.[7]</blockquote><br />
<br />
Despite evident divergences in dating Pascha, the basic intention of the Nicene Fathers is conveyed by these late fourth century texts. In summary, that intention was to establish a simple set of rules that would allow Pascha to be dated independently of the Jewish calendar, and to ensure that the basic chronological sequence of Passion and Resurrection as recorded in the Gospels was imitated every year. Insisting on Sunday as the only day suited to commemorating the Resurrection reveals their intention to imitate the chronology of the original event; and their preference for an astronomically determined vernal equinox is evident from the Eastern Church’s early adoption of the Alexandrian Paschal computations based on March 21st rather than March 25th, the conventional date of the vernal equinox on the official Julian and Alexandrian calendars.[8] <br />
<br />
The emergence of differing tabular, computational systems intended to implement the Nicene rules was a complex historical process, leading to the eventual dominance of a system based on calendrical experiments made at Alexandria beginning in the mid-3rd century.[9] According to this system, Pascha is the first Sunday following the date of the Paschal Full Moon (PFM - also called the νομικον φασκα, "nomikon faska" in Greek) for a given year. The computational PFM is not, however, the first full moon following the vernal equinox as determined by direct observation or by accurate astronomical computations. Rather, the computational PFM is designated as the first Ecclesiastical Full Moon (EFM) date that falls on or after March 21 on the Julian calendar. Ecclesiastical Full Moons (EFM) are calendar dates that approximate astronomical full moons using a cycle that repeats every 19 years. March 21 (O.S.Julian) was the date used by the Alexandrians for determining the EFM used in their Paschal tables because it was near the actual date of the vernal equinox in the late 3rd and early 4th century A.D., when Paschal tables were first being compiled. <br />
<br />
=== The Zonaras Proviso ===<br />
The decision of the Nicene council concerning Pascha was that it should be computed independently of any Jewish computations: hence, a Paschalion that is consistent with Nicene principles cannot have any built-in dependence on the Jewish calendar. Nevertheless, possibly as early as the 12th century and certainly in recent times it has been widely believed that Christian Pascha is required always to follow, and never coincide with, the first day of Passover, which is Nisan 15 in the rabbinic Jewish calendar.[10] By the 12th century the errors in the Julian calendar's equinoctial date and age of the moon had accumulated to the degree that Pascha did, in fact, always follow Jewish Nisan 15. This state of affairs continues to the present day, even though the Jewish calendar suffers from a slight solar drift of its own, because the Julian calendar's errors accumulate more rapidly than the Jewish calendar's.<br />
<br />
The 12th century canonist [[Joannes Zonaras]] seems to have been the first to state the principle that Pascha should always follow Jewish Passover (Nisan 15), so the principle is called the “Zonaras Proviso” after him. Zonaras is thought to have derived his new principle from his reading of Apostolic Canon 7, which states: <blockquote>If any Bishop, or Presbyter, or Deacon celebrate the holy day of Easter before the vernal equinox with the Jews, let him be deposed.[11]</blockquote> <br />
<br />
Zonaras, commenting on this Canon, wrote <blockquote>Some say the Spring equinox is the 25th day of March; others, the 25th day of April. I deem that the canon refers to neither the one nor the other. For Pascha is often celebrated before the 25th of April; and there are times when it is celebrated before the 25th of March; so that, (if "Spring equinox" were so understood) Pascha is being celebrated in violation of this canon. Whence it appears that the wise apostles call something else the "Spring equinox." So the whole thrust of the canon is this, that Christians should not celebrate Pascha with the Jews (that is, on the same day). For it is fitting that their feast - which is no feast - is done first; and thus we do our Pascha. If one consecrated to God does this even once, he is removed from orders. The synod in Antioch also ordered this, in their first canon, where they stated that this was decreed concerning the feast of Pascha by the synod of Nicea, although no such canon is found in the canons of the Nicene synod. [See Greek text in footnote.][11]</blockquote><br />
<br />
Thus, Zonaras apparently reads the force of the words "Spring equinox" out of the canon entirely, even though he does not abbreviate the text of Canon 7 the way Aristenus (prior to Zonaras) had done by omitting the words entirely.[12] So what Zonaras probably means is that the astronomical (or computational) vernal equinox is the "something else" known to the "wise Apostles" which makes both proposed calendrical dates incorrect, and the12th century practice of the Church canonical. Because Zonaras saw no reason to be worried about celebrating Pascha before the vernal equinox, he then treated the idea of not celebrating Pascha along with the Jewish Passover as a separate rule. Even so, he (or perhaps Balsamon after him) adds the proviso "that is, on the same day" in an effort to prevent anyone from taking "with the Jews" to mean celebrating Pascha as though it were part of the Jewish feast. Hence, what not being on the same day/date means in practice is not letting the date of Passover determine the date of Pascha. So Zonaras may well be saying nothing new, though his words have been widely taken in an innovative sense.<br />
<br />
The final seeming novelty of Zonaras's commentary is the idea that Pascha is supposed to follow Passover, or at least, "it is fitting" that such a sequence is observed. This, of course, is what necessarily happens whenever the Nicene paschalion is correctly followed, provided "Passover" is understood to mean the one day of 14 Nisan (or 15 Nisan in rabbinic practice) and not the entire eight-day feast of Passover which includes the Feast of Unleavened Bread. But when the dates of Pascha are derived from an inaccurate tabular computation, it could well happen that the day of Pascha would be the same day as the Passover - even though each date was independently calculated. It is this latter situation that Zonaras and his readers were apparently trying to cope with, in their different ways. For what Zonaras says can be taken to mean something like the following: "Their feast - which is no feast - is done first; and thus we do our Pascha [as the perfection of what has gone before in history and has lapsed in grace]." On this understanding, postponing Pascha to avoid its coinciding with the date of Passover would implicitly acknowledge a continuing validity for the Jewish feast, and violate Canon 7 by letting Jewish practice (in a limited, but real sense) sometimes determine the date of Pascha. Many who read this in Zonaras, however, saw only a mandated sequence of separate dates.<br />
<br />
The 14th-century canon lawyer Matthew Blastares also enumerated the paschalion's principles in a way that can be taken to require dependence on the Jewish calendar. <blockquote>First, that it is necessary to celebrate the Pascha after the spring equinox; second, that it is not the same day as the Jewish festival; third, that it is not merely after the equinox, but after the first full moon following the equinox; and fourth, that (it is) the Sunday immediately after the full moon."[13]</blockquote> <br />
If by "the Jewish festival" Blastares simply meant the Paschal Full Moon, then his second principle would be redundant - merely restating the third principle in other words - if it were not for the known divergence between the astronomical Pascal Full Moon and the Ecclesiastical Full Moon. If, on the other hand, he meant the 15th of Nisan on the Rabbinic Jewish calendar (which date for Passover apparently began to supplant 14 Nisan in Inter-testamental times) then, as Zonaras may have done before him, he seemingly has replaced the Nicene rule of independence from the Jewish calendar with a rule that the paschalion must instead depend on it - in order to shun a coincidence of dates. However, it is also possible Blastares (like Zonaras before him) may have meant in his second rule that the date of Pascha is not set by simply adopting the date of Passover, as was the practice of the Quartodeciman churches prior to, and for some time after, the Nicene paschalion was enunciated. If this is the case, he too is saying nothing new.<br />
<br />
== Implementation ==<br />
The following table shows the Julian and Gregorian calendar date of the Julian Paschal Full Moon (PFM) for each year of the 19-year cycle. To determine the position of a given year in the 19-year cycle, add 1 to the A.D. number of the year and divide by 19. The remainder is the year's position in the cycle. If there is no remainder, the year is the 19th of the cycle. Hence 1994 was year 19 of its cycle, and 1995 was year 1 of its cycle.<br />
<br />
The Gregorian calendar equivalences are valid from 1900 to 2099.<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable" border="1"<br />
|-<br />
|Year of cycle<br />
|Julian calendar date of Julian PFM<br />
|Gregorian calendar date of Julian PFM<br />
|-<br />
|1<br />
|April 5<br />
|April 18<br />
|-<br />
|2<br />
|March 25<br />
|April 7<br />
|-<br />
|3<br />
|April 13<br />
|April 26<br />
|-<br />
|4<br />
|April 2<br />
|April 15<br />
|-<br />
|5<br />
|March 22<br />
|April 4<br />
|-<br />
|6<br />
|April 10<br />
|April 23<br />
|-<br />
|7<br />
|March 30<br />
|April 12<br />
|-<br />
|8<br />
|April 18<br />
|May 1<br />
|-<br />
|9<br />
|April 7<br />
|April 20<br />
|-<br />
|10<br />
|March 27<br />
|April 9<br />
|-<br />
|11<br />
|April 15<br />
|April 28<br />
|-<br />
|12<br />
|April 4<br />
|April 17<br />
|-<br />
|13<br />
|March 24<br />
|April 6<br />
|-<br />
|14<br />
|April 12<br />
|April 25<br />
|-<br />
|15<br />
|April 1<br />
|April 14<br />
|-<br />
|16<br />
|March 21<br />
|April 3<br />
|-<br />
|17<br />
|April 9<br />
|April 22<br />
|-<br />
|18<br />
|March 29<br />
|April 11<br />
|-<br />
|19<br />
|April 17<br />
|April 30<br />
|}<br />
<br />
Pascha is always the Sunday ''following'' the Paschal Full Moon. Since the PFM is simply the 14th day of the Paschal lunar month, this means that Pascha is the third Sunday in the Paschal lunar month, and can fall on any date in the lunar month from the 15th (the day after the PFM) to the 21st (seven days after the PFM). That the structure of the Paschal lunar month is modelled on that of the scriptural month of 'Aviv (now called Nisan) should be clear. The Paschal lunar month is analogous to the month of 'Aviv. It is in effect a Christian 'Aviv or Nisan'. The 14th day, the Paschal Full Moon, is analogous to the day of the Passover sacrifice, and the third week, the 15th to the 21st, the week whose Lord's Day is Pascha, is analogous to the Week of Unleavened Bread.<br />
<br />
==Shortcomings of the Julian Paschalion==<br />
===Solar-side flaws===<br />
Because of the inaccuracy of the [[Julian Calendar]]'s solar year, Pascha is drifting later into the year for those who use the Julian Paschalion. Even though for those using the Julian Calendar Pascha will always be sometime in March or April, it will eventually be celebrated in the northern hemisphere in the summer, the autumn, and then the winter. For those using the [[Revised Julian Calendar]], the calendar date of Pascha is drifting along with its astronomical position. In both cases, however, the drift is very slow compared to human lifetimes - it amounts to approximately one week every 1000 years. So, for example, it would take an amount of time longer than all recorded history just for Pascha to end up being celebrated after the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere.<br />
<br />
===Lunar-side flaws===<br />
Additionally the Julian Ecclesiastical Full Moons are deviating further with time from the astronomical full moons: The EFM now falls 3 to 5 days after the corresponding astronomical full moon (see table). <br />
<br />
The [[Gregorian Calendar]], which includes its own revised Paschalion, has neither of these problems.<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable" border="1"<br />
|-<br />
|Gregorian EFM 2008<br />
|Astronomical full moon 2008<br />
(day starting at midnight UT)<br />
|Gregorian calendar date <br />
of Julian EFM 2008<br />
|-<br />
|Jan 22<br />
|Jan 22<br />
|Jan 26<br />
|-<br />
|Feb 20<br />
|Feb 21<br />
|Feb 25<br />
|-<br />
|Mar 22<br />
|Mar 21<br />
|Mar 26<br />
|-<br />
|Apr 20<br />
|Apr 20<br />
|Apr 25<br />
|-<br />
|May 20<br />
|May 20<br />
|May 24<br />
|-<br />
|Jun 18<br />
|Jun 18<br />
|Jun 23<br />
|-<br />
|Jul 18<br />
|Jul 18<br />
|Jul 22<br />
|-<br />
|Aug 16<br />
|Aug 16<br />
|Aug 21<br />
|-<br />
|Sep 15<br />
|Sep 15<br />
|Sep 19<br />
|-<br />
|Oct 14<br />
|Oct 14<br />
|Oct 19<br />
|-<br />
|Nov 13<br />
|Nov 13<br />
|Nov 17<br />
|-<br />
|Dec 12<br />
|Dec 12<br />
|Dec 17<br />
|}<br />
<br />
== The Byzantine Proposal of 1324 ==<br />
In the 14th century Nicephoras Gregoras calculated the current error in dating the vernal equinox to be three days, and proposed a reform of the Julian calendar to Andronicus II. The reform was not adopted, apparently from lack of popular or political support; and in fact would have corrected less than half of the seven-day error that actually existed at that time.[14]<br />
<br />
== The Gregorian Proposal of 1582 ==<br />
In October 1582, the [[Roman Catholic Church]] adopted a major calendar reform designed to correct the Julian calendar's defects. The Julian calendar then in common use was based on an average year of 365.25 days, slightly longer than the mean tropical year of 365.2422 days and the mean vernal equinox year of 365.2424 days. Since 19 Julian years were taken to be equal to 235 lunar months, the average lunar month in the Julian calendar was 29.530851 days, somewhat longer than the astronomical mean synodic month of 29.530589 days. The new calendar eliminated the 10-day drift in the vernal equinox, and the 3-to-4 day deviation in the age of the moon, that had accumulated since the Julian Paschalion had come into use, and laid down rules that would slow the rate of accumulation of errors in the future.<br />
<br />
The new calendar was called the [[Gregorian Calendar|Gregorian]] after its sponsor, Pope Gregory XIII, and Eastern churches refused to adopt it on the grounds that the new Roman tables sometimes placed Pascha on the day of the vernal full moon, instead of after it as the Nicene principles required. In 1583 the Council of Constantinople forbade use of the new calendar and Paschalion, making adherence to the Julian calendar a test of Orthodoxy in territories where Roman Catholic Uniate churches were being established.<br />
<br />
== The Orthodox Proposal of 1923 ==<br />
A [[Revised_Julian_Calendar|congress]] of Orthodox bishops meeting in 1923 under the presidency of Patriarch [[Meletios_IV_(Metaxakis)_of_Constantinople|Meletios IV]] agreed to set Pascha by means of precise astronomical computations referred to the meridian of Jerusalem, using a midnight to midnight day to date the full moon.[15] This agreement was never permanently implemented in any Orthodox diocese. But the Revised Julian calendar, a more accurate version of the Gregorian calendar, which was introduced by the same congress has been adopted by some jurisdictions for celebrating the fixed feasts of the liturgical year.<br />
<br />
== The World Council of Churches Proposal of 1997 ==<br />
A consultation of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant delegates met in Aleppo, Syria and issued an agreed statement recommending that all member churches work toward a common method of dating Pascha based on the three original Nicene principles, but employing astronomical observations from the meridian of Jerusalem instead of any cyclical tabular computation.[16] This was essentially the same proposal as that of 1923, and was not implemented in the proposed year of 2001 when Eastern and Western dates for Pascha coincided. Resistance to such a reform by Orthodox jurisdictions is apparently rooted in respect for a widespread belief that March 21st Julian was designated by the Nicene Fathers to be the only true vernal equinox, and nourished by persistent fears that changing the received tradition for dating Pascha would endanger the integrity Orthodoxy’s witness to the Patristic Tradition by creating a purely “cosmetic” unity with other Churches.[17] And so it is that the Nicene paschalion continues to be differently implemented in practice, despite its original simplicity.<br />
<br />
== East and West Today ==<br />
The Roman Catholic and Protestant West eventually adopted the Gregorian Calendar for civil and ecclesiastical purposes, including the determination of Pascha. The Orthodox East, however, was not so quick to change. Even when the traditionally Orthodox countries began to adopt the Gregorian Calendar for civil purposes, the Orthodox Church retained the [[Julian Calendar]] and original Paschalion. For the sake of convenience, the date of Pascha is often transposed to the coincident date on the Gregorian Calendar for reference. <br />
<br />
Because of the difference in calendars and formulas, Western Easter and Orthodox Pascha do not often coincide. Under current rules, they can differ from each other by 0, 1, 4, or 5 weeks. They are in separate lunations (meaning that they are 4 or 5 weeks apart because their respective cycles identify different lunar months as the Paschal lunar month) in years 3, 8, 11, 14, and 19 of the 19-year cycle, and in the same lunation (0 or 1 week apart) in the other years.<br />
<br />
== Algorithms ==<br />
Many notable mathematicians have developed algorithms for determining the date of Orthodox Pascha over the centuries. This simple and elegant one was devised by the brilliant mathematician Jacques Oudin in the 1940s:<br />
<br />
''N.B. -- In this formula MOD is the modulus function, in which the first number is divided by the second and only the remainder is returned. Further, all division is integer division, in which remainders are discarded. Thus'' <tt>'''22 MOD 7 = 1'''</tt> ''but'' <tt>'''22 / 7 = 3'''.<br />
G = ''year'' MOD 19<br />
I = ((19 * G) + 15) MOD 30<br />
J = (''year'' + (''year''/4) + I) MOD 7<br />
L = I - J<br />
Easter Month = 3 + ((L + 40)/44)<br />
Easter Day = L + 28 - 31 * (Easter Month/4)<br />
</tt>Easter Month will be a number corresponding to a calendar month (e.g., 4 = April) and Easter Day will be the day of that month. Note that this returns the date of Pascha on the Julian calendar. To get the corresponding date on the Gregorian calendar, add 13 days (14 days after March 1, 2100).<br />
<br />
== Online Paschalion Utility ==<br />
The date of Pascha and many Pascha-dependent dates can be found (e.g., the start of Great Lent, Pentecost, etc.) through this online JavaScript [http://www.noeticspace.com/paschalion Paschalion utility] (works best with IE3 or Netscape 3 or above).<br />
<br />
This site allows the user to enter a year and uses Oudin's algorithm to compute the relevant dates. Although the Orthodox (Julian-based) formulas are used, the utility returns the corresponding Gregorian calendar dates. For example, in 2006 Pascha falls on Sunday, April 10, on the Julian calendar. That date corresponds to April 23 on the Gregorian calendar.<br />
<br />
A perpetual Paschalion utility is available [http://cgi.duke.edu/~aa63/cgi-bin/paschallion.cgi here]. The utility was created by [http://www.duke.edu/~aa63/ Aleksandr Andreev] of [http://www.duke.edu/ Duke University] and calculates Pascha and associated feasts for any series of years. It also calculates the numbers used in Paschal calculations which can be found in an Orthodox [[Typicon]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
1. See http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/dionysius_exiguus_easter_01.htm for the Paschal cycle of Dionysius; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysius_Exiguus for an account of the transposition.<br />
<br />
2. See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.vii.ix.html.<br />
<br />
3. Eusebius, Vita Constantine III:18-20, ''Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers'', Vol. 14, pp. 54-55. Also available at http://www.fourthcentury.com/index.php/urkunde-26.<br />
<br />
4. James Campbell, “The Paschalion: An Icon of Time,” ''St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly'', Vol. 28 No. 4 (1984) pp. 245-262. Also available at https://www.academia.edu/8246608/The_Paschalion_An_Icon_of_Time.<br />
<br />
5. Chrysostom, Paschal Homily VII, Migne, ''Patrologiae graecae'' Vol. 59, col. 747A.<br />
<br />
6. Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. I., pp. 328ff.<br />
<br />
7. Ambrose, Letter to the Bishop of Amelia, Fathers of the Church Vol. 26, pp. 193-194 and 199. Latin text: Migne PL 16, 1073B and 1078A.<br />
<br />
8. Until the 6th century the Paschal tables used in Rome were based on the conventional date of March 25th for the vernal equinox. See Jones, “The Development of the Latin Ecclesiastical Calendar” in Bedae, Opera de Temporibus (1943) pp.1-104 for an English overview, or a more detailed account in French s.v. “Paques. les controverses pascales” in Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique (1931) Tome 11.2,1948-70; also available at http://jesusmarie.free.fr/dictionnaire_de_theologie_catholique_lettre_P.html.<br>Please note that Hefele (note 5 above) differs from my more recent sources in saying that in 387 the Romans took March 18 as the vernal equinox in order to arrive at Pascha on March 21. It seems possible that the discrepancy involved the Romans having relied on their tabular EFM date regardless the equinox. This, of course, would have been a very serious breach of the Nicene principles.<br />
<br />
9. The basic system can be found in the “Paschal Canon” of the Alexandrian scholar Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea, which was composed c. 277 A.D. See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf06.vi.iii.ii.i.html and following pages.<br />
<br />
10. ''The Rudder'', Apostolic Canon 7, available at http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/cannons_apostles_rudder.htm . Also ''The Rudder'', Cummings ed. (Chicago: The Orthodox Christian Education Society, 1957). The Rudder's words "after the Passover of the Jews" may simply refer to the astronomical Paschal Full Moon, not to any date in the Jewish calendar. In practice, it is often understood to mean the 15th of Nisan in the Rabbinic Jewish calendar. <br>See for example http://orthodoxwitness.org/over-the-rooftops/how-the-date-of-pascha-is-determined/2/ (Last visited April 15, 2015) where the author states that Pascha in 2015 is set to April 12 2015 to avoid coinciding with "the Jewish Passover" which he dates (incorrectly) to April 5, and that Pascha 2016 is set to May 1 to avoid coinciding with the Jewish Passover which he dates to April 22. This last date corresponds to 14 (not 15) Nisan 5776 and so is the Jewish Passover in a strict sense, but April 22, 2015 is a Friday, not a Sunday. In any case, the author clearly uses "Jewish Passover" to refer to a date on the Jewish calendar, and not to the paschalion's Paschal Full Moon, which falls on Tuesday, April 7 in 2015 and on Tuesday, April 26 in 2016. <br>James Campbell, cited in Reference 4 above, says that the Gregorian paschalion violates the Nicene rule "that Pascha is not to coincide with the full moon, but to follow it" and that it is a mistake to treat this error as a violation of Apostolic Canon 7. (See reference 4 above, text at footnote 14.)<br />
<br />
11. Joannes Zonaras, Commentary on Apostolic Canon 7, Migne, PG 137, 49-50.<br> Ἐαρινὴν ἰσημερίαν τινὲς τὴν κε᾽ φασὶ τοῦ Μαρτίου· τινὲς δἐ τὴν κε᾽ τοῦ Ἀπριλλίου. Οῖμαι δὲ μήτ᾽ ἐκείνην μήτε ταυτην τὸν κανόνα λέγειν· ὡς ὲπι τὸ πολὺ γὰρ τὸ Πάσχα πρὸ τῆς κε᾽ τοῦ Ἀπριλλίου ἑορτάζεσθαι είωθεν· ἔστι δὲ ὅτε καὶ πρὸ τῆσ κε᾽ τοῦ Μαρτίου, ὡς συμβαίνειν (εἰ οὔτως νοοϊτο ἡ ἐαρινὴ ἰσημερία) παρὰ τὸν κανόνα τοῦτον τὸ Πάσχα ἑορτάζεσθαι. Ἔοικεν οὐν ἄλλο τι ἐαρινὴν ἰσεμερίαν τοὺς συνετοὺς ἀποστόλους ὀνομάζειν. Ἡ δὲ πᾶσα τοῦ κανόνα, διαταγὴ τοῦτό ὲστι, τὸ μὴ μετὰ Ἰουδαίων (ἤγουν κατ᾽ αὐτὴν τὴν ἡμέραν) ἑορτάζειν τὀ Πάσχα Χριστιανούς. Χρὴ γὰρ προηγεϊσθαι τὴν ανέορτον ἐκείνων ἑορτὴν, καὶ οὕτω τὸ καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς τελεϊσθαι Πάσχα. Ὁ δὲ μὴ τοῦτο ποιῶν ἱερομένο, καθαιρεθήσεται. Τοὺτο δὲ καὶ ἡ ἐν Ἀντιοχείᾳ σύνοδος ἐν πρώτῳ κανόνι διετάξατο, λέγουσα τῆς ἐν Νικαίᾳ πρώτης συνόδου ὄρον εὶναι περὶ τῆς ἑορτῆς τοῦ Πάσχα· εἰ καὶ μὴ εὑρισκεται ὲν τοῖς κανόσι τῆσ ἐν Νικαίᾳ συνόδου τοιοῦτος κανών.<br />
<br />
12. Aristenus, Commentary on Apostolic Canon 7, Migne, PG 137, 50.<br />
<br />
13. Matthew Blastaris, ''Syntagma Alphabeticum'', Migne, PG 145, 96D-97A.<br />
<br />
14. See Guiland, ''Essai sur Nicephore Gregoras'' (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1926), pp. 282-284. Also, ''Dictionnaire de Théogogie Catholique'' (Paris, 1911) Tome 11, col. 455; and Welborn, "Calendar Reform in the 13th Century" (Chicago: University of Chicago Dissertation, 1935), p. 31.<br />
<br />
15. M. Milankovitch, "Das Ende des julianischen Kalenders und der neue Kalender der orientalischen Kirchen", ''Astronomische Nachrichten'' 220, 379-384(1924).<br />
<br />
16. See World Council of Churches / Middle East Council of Churches Consultation, “Towards a Common Date for Easter” (1997); available at http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/faith-and-order-commission/i-unity-the-church-and-its-mission/towards-a-common-date-for-easter/index?set_language=en.<br />
<br />
17. For an example of this, see Fr. Luke Luhl, “The Proposal for a Common Date to Celebrate Pascha and Easter,” ''Orthodox Christian Information Center'' (1997); available at http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/common_luhl.aspx.<br />
<br />
==See also==<br />
*[[Church Calendar]]<br />
*[[Gaussian Formulae]]<br />
*[[Kyriopascha]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
*[http://www.oca.org/Docs.asp?ID=133&SID=12 Concerning the Date of Pascha and the 1st Ecumenical Council], by Archbishop [[Peter (L'Huillier) of New York]]<br />
*[http://www.chrysostom.org/andrew/texts/parsells-calendar.pdf The Calendar Issue in the Orthodox Church], by John Parsells (PDF)<br />
*[http://www.tondering.dk/claus/calendar.html Frequently Asked Questions about Calendars] by Claus Tondering (everything you ever wanted to know)<br />
*[http://users.chariot.net.au/~gmarts/calmain.htm Calendar and Easter Topics]<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Church Life]]<br />
[[Category:Feasts]]<br />
[[Category:Featured Articles]]<br />
<br />
[[ro:Pascalia]]</div>James C.https://orthodoxwiki.org/index.php?title=Paschalion&diff=121676Paschalion2015-04-27T03:48:03Z<p>James C.: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Pascha.jpg|right|Great and Holy Pascha]]<br />
The '''Paschalion''' of the [[Orthodox Church]] is a set of rules for determining the date of [[Pascha]] that traditionally has been implemented by calendrical tables combining Metonic lunar cycles with the Julian solar year. The rules are attributed to the [[First Ecumenical Council]] (held at [[Nicea]] in 325); the cyclical Paschal tables that emerged in connection with the Council were based on 3rd and 4th century Alexandrian prototypes, and then transposed into Julian dates by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century.[1]<br />
<br />
== Early History ==<br />
The origin of annual festivals in Christianity is obscure. St. Paul (1 Cor. 16.8) and St. Luke (Acts 2.1, 12.3, 20.6, 27.9) refer to Jewish annual festivals expecting their Gentile readers to know what is meant. Chapters 5-10 of John's Gospel is structured around the cycle of Jewish annual festivals, and all the Gospels' passion narratives are set at the time of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. But nowhere are Christian annual observances explicitly mentioned. Then, beginning in the mid-2nd century, evidence appears of Pascha and commemorations of martyrs. The commemorations of martyrs were held on fixed dates in the solar calendar. Pascha was computed according to a lunar calendar. This suggests the possibility that the annual Pascha celebration entered Christianity earlier than martyrs' festivals, and that it may have been part of Christianity's initial Jewish inheritance.<br />
<br />
Initially the date of Pascha was fixed by consulting Jewish informants to learn when the Jewish month of Nisan would fall, and setting Pascha to the third Sunday in Jewish Nisan, the Sunday of Unleavened Bread. But beginning in the third century there are indications that some Christians were becoming dissatisfied with this reliance on the Jewish calendar. The chief complaint was that the third week in Jewish Nisan was sometimes placed before the spring equinox. [[Peter of Alexandria|Peter, Bishop of Alexandria]] (early 4th century A.D.), in a statement preserved in the preface to the [[Chronicon Paschale| ''Chronicon Paschale'']], expresses this view:<blockquote>On the fourteenth day of [the month], being accurately observed after the equinox, the ancients celebrated the Passover, according to the divine command. Whereas the men of the present day now celebrate it before the equinox, and that altogether through negligence and error.</blockquote>Those who held this view began to experiment with independent computations that would always place Pascha in the spring season. Traditionalists, however, felt that the old custom of consulting the Jewish community should continue, even if it sometimes placed Pascha before the equinox. [[Epiphanius]] of Salamis (''Panarion'' 3.1.10) quotes a version of the [[Apostolic Constitutions| ''Apostolic Constitutions'']] used by the sect of the Audiani which represents this school of thought: <blockquote>Do not do your own computations, but instead observe Passover when your brethren from the circumcision do. If they err [in the computation], it is no matter to you.</blockquote><br />
<br />
The controversy was resolved at the Council of Nicea. Although the decision was not recorded as a canon, its synodal letter to the Church in Alexandria conveys “...the good news of the agreement concerning the holy Easter, ...that all our brethren in the East who formerly followed the custom of the Jews are henceforth to celebrate the said most sacred feast of Easter at the same time with the Romans and yourselves.”[2] The Emperor Constantine confirmed this agreement in a letter to bishops that had not attended the Council, announcing two things: (1) "...the most holy festival of Easter should be everywhere celebrated on one and the same day. ...(So) cheerfully accept what is observed with such general unanimity of sentiment in the city of Rome, throughout Italy, Africa, all Egypt, Spain, France, Britain, Libya, the whole of Greece, and the dioceses of Asia, Pontus, and Cilicia;" and (2) "We have cast aside (the Jewish) way of calculating the date of the festival (because) ...we should never allow Easter to be kept twice in one and the same (solar) year!"[3] <br />
<br />
Thus, the old custom of consulting the Jewish calculation of Nisan 14 and celebrating Pascha according to that date was formally rejected, and the independent computations long in use at the influential city of Alexandria became the emerging, if still somewhat controversial, consensus. On the other hand, the comments of canonists, preachers, and chroniclers indicate that the old custom of placing Easter in the month of Nisan as computed by the Jewish community continued to have adherents for generations.<br />
<br />
== The Nicene Formula ==<br />
The Alexandrian and Roman methods of determining the date of Pascha were based on three principles: (1) Pascha was always after the vernal equinox, (2) it was to follow, but not coincide with, the first full moon of spring, and (3) it was always to be on a Sunday. A fourth principle – and one enunciated following Nicea I – is implicit in the first three: namely, (4) the date of Pascha was not to depend on the Jewish dates for Passover in any way. This last criterion was met by formulating the Paschalion entirely in terms of astronomical events and the weekly cycle of days.[4]<br />
<br />
The computational system that eventually prevailed was based on calendrical experiments made at Alexandria beginning in the mid-3rd century.[5] According to this system, Pascha is the first Sunday following the date of the Paschal Full Moon (PFM, also called the νομικον φασκα, "nomikon faska" in Greek) for a given year. The computational PFM is not, however, the first full moon following the vernal equinox as determined by direct observation or by high-accuracy astronomical computations. Rather, the PFM is the first Ecclesiastical Full Moon (EFM) date that falls on or after March 21.[6] Ecclesiastical Full Moons are calendar dates that approximate astronomical full moons using a cycle that repeats every 19 years. March 21 was the date used by the Alexandrians for determining the PFM because it was near the date of the vernal equinox in the late 3rd and early 4th century A.D., when Paschal tables were first being compiled. <br />
<br />
=== The Zonaras Proviso ===<br />
The decision of the Nicene council concerning Pascha was that it should be computed independently of any Jewish computations: hence, a Paschalion that is consistent with Nicene principles cannot have any built-in dependence on the Jewish calendar. Nevertheless, possibly as early as the 12th century and certainly in recent times it has been widely believed[7] that Christian Pascha is required always to follow, and never coincide with, the first day of Passover, which is Nisan 15 in the Jewish calendar. By the 12th century the errors in the Julian calendar's equinoctial date and age of the moon had accumulated to the degree that Pascha did, in fact, always follow Jewish Nisan 15. This state of affairs continues to the present day, even though the Jewish calendar suffers from a slight solar drift of its own, because the Julian calendar's errors accumulate more rapidly than the Jewish calendar's.<br />
<br />
The 12th century canonist [[Joannes Zonaras]] seems to have been the first to state the principle that Pascha must always follow Jewish Nisan 15, so the principle is called the “Zonaras Proviso” after him. Zonaras derived his new rule from his reading of Apostolic Canon 7, which states: <blockquote>"If any Bishop, or Presbyter, or Deacon celebrate the holy day of Easter before the vernal equinox with the Jews, let him be deposed."[7]</blockquote> <br />
<br />
Zonaras, commenting on this Canon, wrote <blockquote>Ἐαρινὴν ἰσημερίαν τινὲς τὴν κε᾽ φασὶ τοῦ Μαρτίου· τινὲς δἐ τὴν κε᾽ τοῦ Ἀπριλλίου. Οῖμαι δὲ μήτ᾽ ἐκείνην μήτε ταυτην τὸν κανόνα λέγειν· ὡς ὲπι τὸ πολὺ γὰρ τὸ Πάσχα πρὸ τῆς κε᾽ τοῦ Ἀπριλλίου ἑορτάζεσθαι είωθεν· ἔστι δὲ ὅτε καὶ πρὸ τῆσ κε᾽ τοῦ Μαρτίου, ὡς συμβαίνειν (εἰ οὔτως νοοϊτο ἡ ἐαρινὴ ἰσημερία) παρὰ τὸν κανόνα τοῦτον τὸ Πάσχα ἑορτάζεσθαι. Ἔοικεν οὐν ἄλλο τι ἐαρινὴν ἰσεμερίαν τοὺς συνετοὺς ἀποστόλους ὀνομάζειν. Ἡ δὲ πᾶσα τοῦ κανόνα, διαταγὴ τοῦτό ὲστι, τὸ μὴ μετὰ Ἰουδαίων (ἤγουν κατ᾽ αὐτὴν τὴν ἡμέραν) ἑορτάζειν τὀ Πάσχα Χριστιανούς. Χρὴ γὰρ προηγεϊσθαι τὴν ανέορτον ἐκείνων ἑορτὴν, καὶ οὕτω τὸ καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς τελεϊσθαι Πάσχα. Ὁ δὲ μὴ τοῦτο ποιῶν ἱερομένο, καθαιρεθήσεται. Τοὺτο δὲ καὶ ἡ ἐν Ἀντιοχείᾳ σύνοδος ἐν πρώτῳ κανόνι διετάξατο, λέγουσα τῆς ἐν Νικαίᾳ πρώτης συνόδου ὄρον εὶναι περὶ τῆς ἑορτῆς τοῦ Πάσχα· εἰ καὶ μὴ εὑρισκεται ὲν τοῖς κανόσι τῆσ ἐν Νικαίᾳ συνόδου τοιοῦτος κανών.[8]</blockquote><br />
<br />
which can be read as <blockquote>Some say the Spring equinox is the 25th day of March; others, the 25th day of April. I deem that the canon refers to neither the one nor the other. For Pascha is often celebrated before the 25th of April; and there are times when it is celebrated before the 25th of March; so that, (if "Spring equinox" were so understood) Pascha is being celebrated in violation of this canon. Whence it appears that the wise apostles call something else the "Spring equinox." So the whole thrust of the canon is this, that Christians should not celebrate Pascha with the Jews, that is, on the same day. For it is fitting that their feast (which is no feast) is done first; and thus we do our Pascha. If one consecrated to God does this even once, he is removed from orders. The synod in Antioch also ordered this, in their first canon, where they stated that this was decreed concerning the feast of Pascha by the synod of Nicea, although no such canon is found in the canons of the Nicene synod.</blockquote><br />
<br />
So Zonaras read the word "equinox" out of the canon entirely, deciding that the canon must refer to something else: "Their feast (which is no feast) must be done first; and thus we do our Pascha." If Zonaras was restating the rule that Pascha must always fall after the Paschal Full Moon and never coincide with it, then this reading has no foundation in the 4th century historical context, or in the plain meaning of the sentence: The canon clearly refers to the rule of the equinox, not to the rule of the full moon. If Zonaras meant that the Jewish festival of 15 Nisan, as computed on the Jewish calendar, must precede the Christian Pascha, then he was interpreting the canon to mean almost the opposite of what it means in fact, and replacing the rule of independence with a rule of dependence.<br />
<br />
The 14th-century canon lawyer Matthew Blastares also enumerated the paschalion's principles in a way that can be taken to require dependence on the Jewish calendar. <blockquote>First, that it is necessary to celebrate the Pascha after the spring equinox; second, that it is not the same day as the Jewish festival; third, that it is not merely after the equinox, but after the first full moon following the equinox; and fourth, that (it is) the Sunday immediately after the full moon."[9]</blockquote> <br />
If by "the Jewish festival" Blastares simply meant the Paschal Full Moon or nomikon faska, then his second principle is redundant, merely restating the third principle in other words. If he meant the 15th of Nisan on the Rabbinic Jewish calendar, then, as Zonaras may have done before him, he replaced the Nicene rule of independence from the Jewish calendar with a rule that the paschalion must instead depend on it.<br />
<br />
== Implementation ==<br />
The following table shows the Julian and Gregorian calendar date of the Julian Paschal Full Moon (PFM) for each year of the 19-year cycle. To determine the position of a given year in the 19-year cycle, add 1 to the A.D. number of the year and divide by 19. The remainder is the year's position in the cycle. If there is no remainder, the year is the 19th of the cycle. Hence 1994 was year 19 of its cycle, and 1995 was year 1 of its cycle.<br />
<br />
The Gregorian calendar equivalences are valid from 1900 to 2099.<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable" border="1"<br />
|-<br />
|Year of cycle<br />
|Julian calendar date of Julian PFM<br />
|Gregorian calendar date of Julian PFM<br />
|-<br />
|1<br />
|April 5<br />
|April 18<br />
|-<br />
|2<br />
|March 25<br />
|April 7<br />
|-<br />
|3<br />
|April 13<br />
|April 26<br />
|-<br />
|4<br />
|April 2<br />
|April 15<br />
|-<br />
|5<br />
|March 22<br />
|April 4<br />
|-<br />
|6<br />
|April 10<br />
|April 23<br />
|-<br />
|7<br />
|March 30<br />
|April 12<br />
|-<br />
|8<br />
|April 18<br />
|May 1<br />
|-<br />
|9<br />
|April 7<br />
|April 20<br />
|-<br />
|10<br />
|March 27<br />
|April 9<br />
|-<br />
|11<br />
|April 15<br />
|April 28<br />
|-<br />
|12<br />
|April 4<br />
|April 17<br />
|-<br />
|13<br />
|March 24<br />
|April 6<br />
|-<br />
|14<br />
|April 12<br />
|April 25<br />
|-<br />
|15<br />
|April 1<br />
|April 14<br />
|-<br />
|16<br />
|March 21<br />
|April 3<br />
|-<br />
|17<br />
|April 9<br />
|April 22<br />
|-<br />
|18<br />
|March 29<br />
|April 11<br />
|-<br />
|19<br />
|April 17<br />
|April 30<br />
|}<br />
<br />
Pascha is always the Sunday ''following'' the Paschal Full Moon. Since the PFM is simply the 14th day of the Paschal lunar month, this means that Pascha is the third Sunday in the Paschal lunar month, and can fall on any date in the lunar month from the 15th (the day after the PFM) to the 21st (seven days after the PFM). That the structure of the Paschal lunar month is modelled on that of the scriptural month of 'Aviv (now called Nisan) should be clear. The Paschal lunar month is analogous to the month of 'Aviv. It is in effect a Christian 'Aviv or Nisan'. The 14th day, the Paschal Full Moon, is analogous to the day of the Passover sacrifice, and the third week, the 15th to the 21st, the week whose Lord's Day is Pascha, is analogous to the Week of Unleavened Bread.<br />
<br />
==Shortcomings of the Julian Paschalion==<br />
===Solar-side flaws===<br />
Because of the inaccuracy of the [[Julian Calendar]]'s solar year, Pascha is drifting later into the year for those who use the Julian Paschalion. Even though for those using the Julian Calendar Pascha will always be sometime in March or April, it will eventually be celebrated in the northern hemisphere in the summer, the autumn, and then the winter. For those using the [[Revised Julian Calendar]], the calendar date of Pascha is drifting along with its astronomical position. In both cases, however, the drift is very slow compared to human lifetimes - it amounts to approximately one week every 1000 years. So, for example, it would take an amount of time longer than all recorded history just for Pascha to end up being celebrated after the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere.<br />
<br />
===Lunar-side flaws===<br />
Additionally the Julian Ecclesiastical Full Moons are deviating further with time from the astronomical full moons: The EFM now falls 3 to 5 days after the corresponding astronomical full moon (see table). <br />
<br />
The [[Gregorian Calendar]], which includes its own revised Paschalion, has neither of these problems.<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable" border="1"<br />
|-<br />
|Gregorian EFM 2008<br />
|Astronomical full moon 2008<br />
(day starting at midnight UT)<br />
|Gregorian calendar date <br />
of Julian EFM 2008<br />
|-<br />
|Jan 22<br />
|Jan 22<br />
|Jan 26<br />
|-<br />
|Feb 20<br />
|Feb 21<br />
|Feb 25<br />
|-<br />
|Mar 22<br />
|Mar 21<br />
|Mar 26<br />
|-<br />
|Apr 20<br />
|Apr 20<br />
|Apr 25<br />
|-<br />
|May 20<br />
|May 20<br />
|May 24<br />
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|Jul 18<br />
|Jul 18<br />
|Jul 22<br />
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|Aug 16<br />
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|Aug 21<br />
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|Sep 15<br />
|Sep 15<br />
|Sep 19<br />
|-<br />
|Oct 14<br />
|Oct 14<br />
|Oct 19<br />
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|Nov 13<br />
|Nov 13<br />
|Nov 17<br />
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|Dec 12<br />
|Dec 12<br />
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<br />
== The Byzantine Proposal of 1324 ==<br />
In the 14th century Nicephoras Gregoras calculated the current error in dating the vernal equinox to be three days, and proposed a reform of the Julian calendar to Andronicus II. The reform was not adopted, apparently from lack of popular or political support; and in fact would have corrected less than half of the seven-day error that actually existed at that time.[10]<br />
<br />
== The Gregorian Proposal of 1582 ==<br />
In October 1582, the [[Roman Catholic Church]] adopted a major calendar reform designed to correct the Julian calendar's defects. The Julian calendar then in common use was based on an average year of 365.25 days, slightly longer than the mean tropical year of 365.2422 days and the mean vernal equinox year of 365.2424 days. Since 19 Julian years were taken to be equal to 235 lunar months, the average lunar month in the Julian calendar was 29.530851 days, somewhat longer than the astronomical mean synodic month of 29.530589 days. The new calendar eliminated the 10-day drift in the vernal equinox, and the 3-to-4 day deviation in the age of the moon, that had accumulated since the Julian Paschalion had come into use, and laid down rules that would slow the rate of accumulation of errors in the future.<br />
<br />
The new calendar was called the [[Gregorian Calendar|Gregorian]] after its sponsor, Pope Gregory XIII, and Eastern churches refused to adopt it on the grounds that the new Roman tables sometimes placed Pascha on the day of the vernal full moon, instead of after it as the Nicene principles required. In 1583 the Council of Constantinople forbade use of the new calendar and Paschalion, making adherence to the Julian calendar a test of Orthodoxy in territories where Roman Catholic Uniate churches were being established.<br />
<br />
== The Orthodox Proposal of 1923 ==<br />
A [[Revised_Julian_Calendar|congress]] of Orthodox bishops meeting in 1923 under the presidency of Patriarch [[Meletios_IV_(Metaxakis)_of_Constantinople|Meletios IV]] agreed to set Pascha by means of precise astronomical computations referred to the meridian of Jerusalem, using a midnight to midnight day to date the full moon.[11] This agreement was never permanently implemented in any Orthodox diocese. But the Revised Julian calendar, a more accurate version of the Gregorian calendar, which was introduced by the same congress has been adopted by some jurisdictions for celebrating the fixed feasts of the liturgical year.<br />
<br />
== The World Council of Churches Proposal of 1997 ==<br />
A consultation of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant delegates met in Aleppo, Syria and issued an agreed statement recommending that all member churches work toward a common method of dating Pascha based on the three original Nicene principles, but employing astronomical observations from the meridian of Jerusalem instead of any cyclical tabular computation.[12] This was essentially the same proposal as that of 1923, and was not implemented in the proposed year of 2001 when Eastern and Western dates for Pascha coincided. Resistance to such a reform by Orthodox jurisdictions is apparently rooted in respect for a widespread belief that March 21st Julian was designated by the Nicene Fathers to be the only true vernal equinox, and nourished by persistent fears that changing the received tradition for dating Pascha would endanger the integrity Orthodoxy’s witness to the Patristic Tradition by creating a purely “cosmetic” unity with other Churches.[13]<br />
<br />
== East and West Today ==<br />
The Roman Catholic and Protestant West eventually adopted the Gregorian Calendar for civil and ecclesiastical purposes, including the determination of Pascha. The Orthodox East, however, was not so quick to change. Even when the traditionally Orthodox countries began to adopt the Gregorian Calendar for civil purposes, the Orthodox Church retained the [[Julian Calendar]] and original Paschalion. For the sake of convenience, the date of Pascha is often transposed to the coincident date on the Gregorian Calendar for reference. <br />
<br />
Because of the difference in calendars and formulas, Western Easter and Orthodox Pascha do not often coincide. Under current rules, they can differ from each other by 0, 1, 4, or 5 weeks. They are in separate lunations (meaning that they are 4 or 5 weeks apart because their respective cycles identify different lunar months as the Paschal lunar month) in years 3, 8, 11, 14, and 19 of the 19-year cycle, and in the same lunation (0 or 1 week apart) in the other years.<br />
<br />
== Algorithms ==<br />
Many notable mathematicians have developed algorithms for determining the date of Orthodox Pascha over the centuries. This simple and elegant one was devised by the brilliant mathematician Jacques Oudin in the 1940s:<br />
<br />
''N.B. -- In this formula MOD is the modulus function, in which the first number is divided by the second and only the remainder is returned. Further, all division is integer division, in which remainders are discarded. Thus'' <tt>'''22 MOD 7 = 1'''</tt> ''but'' <tt>'''22 / 7 = 3'''.<br />
G = ''year'' MOD 19<br />
I = ((19 * G) + 15) MOD 30<br />
J = (''year'' + (''year''/4) + I) MOD 7<br />
L = I - J<br />
Easter Month = 3 + ((L + 40)/44)<br />
Easter Day = L + 28 - 31 * (Easter Month/4)<br />
</tt>Easter Month will be a number corresponding to a calendar month (e.g., 4 = April) and Easter Day will be the day of that month. Note that this returns the date of Pascha on the Julian calendar. To get the corresponding date on the Gregorian calendar, add 13 days (14 days after March 1, 2100).<br />
<br />
== Online Paschalion Utility ==<br />
The date of Pascha and many Pascha-dependent dates can be found (e.g., the start of Great Lent, Pentecost, etc.) through this online JavaScript [http://www.noeticspace.com/paschalion Paschalion utility] (works best with IE3 or Netscape 3 or above).<br />
<br />
This site allows the user to enter a year and uses Oudin's algorithm to compute the relevant dates. Although the Orthodox (Julian-based) formulas are used, the utility returns the corresponding Gregorian calendar dates. For example, in 2006 Pascha falls on Sunday, April 10, on the Julian calendar. That date corresponds to April 23 on the Gregorian calendar.<br />
<br />
A perpetual Paschalion utility is available [http://cgi.duke.edu/~aa63/cgi-bin/paschallion.cgi here]. The utility was created by [http://www.duke.edu/~aa63/ Aleksandr Andreev] of [http://www.duke.edu/ Duke University] and calculates Pascha and associated feasts for any series of years. It also calculates the numbers used in Paschal calculations which can be found in an Orthodox [[Typicon]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
1. See http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/dionysius_exiguus_easter_01.htm for the Paschal cycle of Dionysius; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysius_Exiguus for an account of the transposition.<br />
<br />
2. See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.vii.ix.html.<br />
<br />
3. Eusebius, Vita Constantine III:18-20, ''Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers'', Vol. 14, pp. 54-55. Also available at http://www.fourthcentury.com/index.php/urkunde-26.<br />
<br />
4. James Campbell, “The Paschalion: An Icon of Time,” ''St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly'', Vol. 28 No. 4 (1984) pp. 245-262. Also available at https://www.academia.edu/8246608/The_Paschalion_An_Icon_of_Time.<br />
<br />
5. The basic system can be found in the “Paschal Canon” of the Alexandrian scholar Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea, which was composed c. 277 A.D. See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf06.vi.iii.ii.i.html and following pages.<br />
<br />
6. Until the 6th century the Paschal tables used in Rome were based on the conventional date of March 25th for the vernal equinox. Jones, “The Development of the Latin Ecclesiastical Calendar” in Bedae, ''Opera de Temporibus'' (Cambridge: Medieval Academy of America, 1943), pp. 1-104.<br />
<br />
7. ''The Rudder'', Apostolic Canon 7, available at http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/cannons_apostles_rudder.htm . Also ''The Rudder'', Cummings ed. (Chicago: The Orthodox Christian Education Society, 1957). The Rudder's words "after the Passover of the Jews" may simply refer to the paschalion's Paschal Full Moon, not to any date in the Jewish calendar. In practice, it is often understood to mean the 15th of Nisan in the Rabbinic Jewish calendar. See for example http://orthodoxwitness.org/over-the-rooftops/how-the-date-of-pascha-is-determined/2/ (Last visited April 15, 2015) where the author states that Pascha in 2015 is set to April 12 2015 to avoid coinciding with "the Jewish Passover" which he dates (incorrectly) to April 5, and that Pascha 2016 is set to May 1 to avoid coinciding with the Jewish Passover which he dates to April 22. This last date corresponds to 14 (not 15) Nisan 5776 and so is the Jewish Passover in a strict sense, but April 22, 2015 is a Friday, not a Sunday. In any case, the author clearly uses "Jewish Passover" to refer to a date on the Jewish calendar, and not to the paschalion's Paschal Full Moon, which falls on Tuesday, April 7 in 2015 and on Tuesday, April 26 in 2016. James Campbell, cited in Reference 4 above, says that the Gregorian paschalion violates the Nicene rule "that Pascha is not to coincide with the full moon, but to follow it" and that it is a mistake to treat this error as a violation of Apostolic Canon 7. (Reference 4 above, text at footnote 14.)<br />
<br />
8. Joannes Zonaras, Commentary on Apostolic Canon 7, Migne, PG 137, 49-50.<br />
<br />
9. Matthew Blastaris, ''Syntagma Alphabeticum'', Migne, PG 145, 96D-97A.<br />
<br />
10. See Guiland, ''Essai sur Nicephore Gregoras'' (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1926), pp. 282-284. Also, ''Dictionnaire de Théogogie Catholique'' (Paris, 1911) Tome 11, col. 455; and Welborn, "Calendar Reform in the 13th Century" (Chicago: University of Chicago Dissertation, 1935), p. 31.<br />
<br />
11. M. Milankovitch, "Das Ende des julianischen Kalenders und der neue Kalender der orientalischen Kirchen", ''Astronomische Nachrichten'' 220, 379-384(1924).<br />
<br />
12. See World Council of Churches / Middle East Council of Churches Consultation, “Towards a Common Date for Easter” (1997); available at http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/faith-and-order-commission/i-unity-the-church-and-its-mission/towards-a-common-date-for-easter/index?set_language=en.<br />
<br />
13. For an example of this, see Fr. Luke Luhl, “The Proposal for a Common Date to Celebrate Pascha and Easter,” ''Orthodox Christian Information Center'' (1997); available at http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/common_luhl.aspx.<br />
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==See also==<br />
*[[Church Calendar]]<br />
*[[Gaussian Formulae]]<br />
*[[Kyriopascha]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
*[http://www.oca.org/Docs.asp?ID=133&SID=12 Concerning the Date of Pascha and the 1st Ecumenical Council], by Archbishop [[Peter (L'Huillier) of New York]]<br />
*[http://www.chrysostom.org/andrew/texts/parsells-calendar.pdf The Calendar Issue in the Orthodox Church], by John Parsells (PDF)<br />
*[http://www.tondering.dk/claus/calendar.html Frequently Asked Questions about Calendars] by Claus Tondering (everything you ever wanted to know)<br />
*[http://users.chariot.net.au/~gmarts/calmain.htm Calendar and Easter Topics]<br />
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<br />
[[Category:Church Life]]<br />
[[Category:Feasts]]<br />
[[Category:Featured Articles]]<br />
<br />
[[ro:Pascalia]]</div>James C.https://orthodoxwiki.org/index.php?title=Talk:Paschalion&diff=121662Talk:Paschalion2015-04-23T04:06:25Z<p>James C.: Concerns about 2015 revision</p>
<hr />
<div>The "Nicene Formula" section is misleading. One could infer from it that the council itself gave us the detailed formula involving March 20 and the EFM based on the 19-year lunar cycle. This is simply not true. These details were hashed out in the two centuries following the council. They constitute how the Church came to operationalize the council's decision that Pascha was to be observed on the Sunday following the full moon on or after the vernal equinox. But these details did not come from the council itself.--[[User:BALawrence|BALawrence]] 01:08, June 4, 2008 (UTC)<br />
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: Feel free to fix it! :) &mdash;[[User:ASDamick|<font size="3.5" color="green" face="Adobe Garamond Pro, Garamond, Georgia, Times New Roman">Fr. Andrew</font>]] <sup>[[User_talk:ASDamick|<font color="red">talk</font>]]</sup> <small>[[Special:Contributions/ASDamick|<font color="black">contribs</font>]] <font face="Adobe Garamond Pro, Garamond, Georgia, Times New Roman">('''[[User:ASDamick/Wiki-philosophy|THINK!]]''')</font></small> 01:48, June 4, 2008 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The article as a whole would benefit from clarification and supplementation. I have prepared an extensive rewrite which I thought it might be more pleasant and efficient to post here first for comments. Only new sections or sections with extensive edits are shown:<br />
<br />
§ Paschalion<br />
The Paschalion of the Orthodox Church is a set of rules for determining the date of Pascha that traditionally has been implemented by calendrical tables combining Metonic lunar cycles with the Julian solar year. The rules are attributed to the First Ecumenical Council (held at Nicea in 325 A.D.); the cyclical Paschal tables that emerged in connection with the Council were based on 3rd and 4th century Alexandrian prototypes, and then transposed into Julian dates by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century. (Citation 1: See http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/dionysius_exiguus_easter_01.htm for the Paschal cycle of Dionysius; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysius_Exiguus for an account of the transposition.)<br />
<br />
§ Early History (last paragraph)<br />
The controversy was resolved at the Council of Nicea. Although the decision was not recorded as a canon, its synodal letter to the Church in Alexandria conveys “...the good news of the agreement concerning the holy Easter, ...that all our brethren in the East who formerly followed the custom of the Jews are henceforth to celebrate the said most sacred feast of Easter at the same time with the Romans and yourselves.” (Citation 2: See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.vii.ix.html.)<br />
<br />
The Emperor Constantine confirmed this agreement in an epistle to all churches, announcing two things: (1) "...the most holy festival of Easter should be everywhere celebrated on one and the same day. ...[So] cheerfully accept what is observed with such general unanimity of sentiment in the city of Rome, throughout Italy, Africa, all Egypt, Spain, France, Britain, Libya, the whole of Greece, and the dioceses of Asia, Pontus, and Cilicia;" and (2) "We have cast aside [the Jewish] way of calculating the date of the festival [because] ...we should never allow Easter to be kept twice in one and the same [solar] year!" (Citation 3: Eusebius, Vita Constantine III:18-20, ''Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers,'' Vol. 14, pp. 54-55. Also available at http://www.fourthcentury.com/index.php/urkunde-26.)<br />
<br />
Thus, the old custom of consulting the Jewish calculation of 14 Nisan and celebrating Pascha on that date was formally rejected, and the independent computations long in use at the influential city of Alexandria became the emerging, if still somewhat controversial, consensus. On the other hand, the comments of canonists, preachers, and chroniclers indicate that the old Quartodecimian custom of placing Easter in the month of Nisan as computed by the Jewish community continued to have adherents for generations.<br />
<br />
§ The Nicene Formula<br />
The Alexandrian and Roman methods of determining the date of Pascha were based on three principles: (1) Pascha was always after the vernal equinox, (2) it was to follow, but not coincide with, the first full moon of spring, and (3) it was always to be on a Sunday. A fourth principle – and one enunciated following Nicea I – is implicit in the first three: namely, (4) the date of Pascha was not to depend on the Jewish dates for Passover in any way. This last criterion was met by formulating the Paschalion entirely in terms of astronomical events and the weekly cycle of days. (Citation 4: For a fuller discussion, see James Campbell, “The Paschalion: An Icon of Time,” ''St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly,'' Vol. 28 No. 4 (1984) pp. 245-262.)<br />
<br />
One early text that gives an explicit outline of the Nicene formula for dating Pascha is in a homily from 387 A.D. that is attributed to St. John Chrysostom: "Since we keep the first of times [spring], and the equinox [isimera], and after this the fourteenth of the moon, and together with these the three days Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; lacking any of these at one time it is impossible to fulfill the Pascha." (Citation 5: Chrysostom, Paschal Homily VII, Migne, ''Patrologiae graecae'' Vol. 59, col. 747A.) In summarizing the Paschalion, the homily makes no reference to any named month – lunar or solar – nor to any calendrical date – Julian or Jewish. Yet there were many tables of computed Paschal dates circulating in the 4th century.<br />
<br />
The computational system that eventually prevailed was based on calendrical experiments made at Alexandria beginning in the mid-3rd century. (Citation 6: The basic system can be found in the “Paschal Canon” of the Alexandrian scholar Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea, which was composed c. 277 A.D. See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf06.vi.iii.ii.i.html and following pages.) According to this system, Pascha is the first Sunday following the date of the Paschal Full Moon (PFM) for a given year. The computational PFM is not, however, as commonly thought, the first full moon following the vernal equinox. Rather, the PFM is the first Ecclesiastical Full Moon (EFM) date that falls on or after March 21 (or, what is the same thing, the first Ecclesiastical Full Moon that follows March 20). Ecclesiastical Full Moons are calendar dates that approximate astronomical full moons using a cycle that repeats every 19 years. March 21 was the date used by the Alexandrians for determining the PFM because it was near the date of the vernal equinox in the late 3rd and early 4th century A.D., when Paschal tables were first being compiled. This conventional, cyclical Paschalion is called Nicene because some commentators in later generations erroneously attributed it to the Nicene Council and came to treat it as canonical.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, the intention of the Nicene Fathers was to establish a simple set of rules that would allow Pascha to be dated independently of the Jewish calendar, and ensure that the basic chronological sequence of Passion and Resurrection as recorded in the Gospels was imitated every year. Insisting on Sunday as the only day suited to commemorating the Resurrection reveals their intention to imitate the chronology of the original event; and their preference for an astronomically determined vernal equinox is evident from the Eastern Church’s early adoption of the Alexandrian Paschal computations based on March 21st rather than March 25th, the conventional date of the vernal equinox on the Imperial Julian and Alexandrian calendars. (Citation 7: Until the 6th century the Paschal tables used in Rome were based on the conventional date of March 25th for the vernal equinox. Jones, “The Development of the Latin Ecclesiastical Calendar” in Bedae, ''Opera de Temporibus'' (Cambridge: Medieval Academy of America, 1943), pp. 1-104.)<br />
<br />
A thousand years later, the canonist Matthew Blastaris reaffirmed the importance of these four principles in a concise way: "First, that it is necessary to celebrate the Pascha after the spring equinox; second, that it is not the same day as the Jewish festival; third, that it is not merely after the equinox, but after the first full moon following the equinox; and fourth, that [it is] the Sunday immediately after the full moon." (Citation 8: Matthew Blastaris, ''Syntagma Alphabeticum,'' Migne, PG 145, 96D-97A.) Blastaris clearly states that it is the equinox and the full moon that determine the proper Sunday, not March 21st Julian - or Nisan 14/15 on the Hebrew calendar. But his second rule is open to misconstrual.<br />
<br />
The Nicene Council rejected the Quartodecimian practice of celebrating Pascha on “the same day as the Jewish festival [of Passover]” and adopted three rules that prevent that from happening except by coincidence. Yet Blastaris’ second rule is understood by some to mean that the date of Pascha must be moved in order to avoid coinciding with Passover. (Citation 9: See Agapios and Nicodemus, ''The Rudder (Pedalion),'' Masterjohn (tr.) 2006 “Apostolic Canon 7,” p. 115; available at http://orthodoxbahamas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/THE_RUDDER_Copyright__Ralph_J._Masterjohn_2006.pdf.) This reading of Blastaris, however, compromises the independence of the Christian Paschalion from the Jewish festal calendar and lends the so-called “Zonaras Proviso” canonical authority.<br />
<br />
§ The Zonaras Proviso<br />
The decision of the Nicene council concerning Pascha was that it should be computed independently of any Rabbinic computations: hence, a Paschalion that is consistent with Nicene principles cannot have any built-in dependence on the Jewish calendar. <br />
<br />
Nevertheless, since at least the 12th century it has been widely believed that Christian Pascha is required always to follow, and never coincide with, the first day of Passover, which was by then being celebrated on Nisan 15 in the Jewish calendar (that is, on the evening of the 14th day of the lunar month). By the 12th century the errors in the Julian calendar's equinoctial date and age of the moon had accumulated to the degree that Pascha did, in fact, always follow Jewish Nisan 15. This state of affairs continues to the present day, even though the Jewish calendar suffers from a slight solar drift of its own, because the Julian calendar's errors accumulate more rapidly than the Jewish calendar's. <br />
<br />
The 12th century canonist Joannes Zonaras seems to have been the first to state the principle that Pascha must always follow Jewish Nisan 15, so the principle is called the “Zonaras Proviso” after him. Upon examination, it appears that Zonaras derived his new rule from a misconstrual of Apostolic Canon 7, which reads as follows: "If any Bishop, or Presbyter, or Deacon celebrate the holy day of Easter before the vernal equinox with the Jews, let him be deposed." (Citation 10: ''The Rudder,'' Cummings ed. (Chicago: The Orthodox Christian Education Society, 1957), p. 9. Also, Agapios & Nicodemus, ''The Rudder,'' p. 113.)<br />
<br />
Zonaras found two prohibitions in this one statement: first, that Pascha must be celebrated after the vernal equinox; and second, that Pascha must never coincide with the Jewish feast of Passover. Although Zonaras’ second prohibition has no foundation in the 4th century historical context, or in the grammatical meaning of the sentence, it resembles the fourth (implicit) Nicene principle closely enough to be confused with it. That is, the rule that Christians are not to go along “with the Jews” in setting the date of Pascha has been confused with the fear that if Passover happens to coincide with an independently determined Pascha, Christians would be wrongfully praying “with the Jews” just because both are praying on the same day.<br />
<br />
§ The Byzantine Proposal of 1324 A.D.<br />
In the 14th century Nicephoras Gregoras calculated the current error in dating the vernal equinox to be three days, and proposed a reform of the Julian calendar to Andronicus II. The reform was not adopted, apparently from lack of popular or political support; and in fact would have corrected less than half of the seven-day error that actually existed at that time. (Citation 11: See Guiland, ''Essai sur Nicephore Gregoras'' (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1926), pp. 282-284. Also, ' 'Dictionnaire de Théogogie Catholique' ' (Paris, 1911) Tome 11, col. 455; and Welborn, ''Calendar Reform in the 13th Century'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Dissertation, 1935), p. 31.)<br />
<br />
§ The Gregorian Proposal of 1582 A.D.<br />
In October 1582, the Roman Catholic Church adopted a major calendar reform designed to correct the Julian calendar's defects. The Julian calendar then in common use was based on an average year of 365.25 days, slightly longer than the mean tropical year of 365.2422 days and the mean vernal equinox year of 365.2424 days. Since 19 Julian years were taken to be equal to 235 lunar months, the average lunar month in the Julian calendar was 29.530851 days, somewhat longer than the astronomical mean synodic month of 29.530589 days. The new calendar eliminated the 10-day drift in the vernal equinox, and the 3-to-4 day deviation in the age of the moon, that had accumulated since the Julian Paschalion had come into use, and laid down rules that would slow the rate of accumulation of errors in the future.<br />
<br />
The new calendar was called the Gregorian after its sponsor, Pope Gregory XIII, and Eastern churches was refused to adopt it on the grounds that the new Roman tables sometimes placed Pascha on the day of the vernal full moon, instead of after it as the Nicene principles required. In 1583 A.D the Council of Constantinople forbade use of the new calendar and Paschalion, making adherence to the Julian calendar a test of Orthodoxy in territories where Roman Catholic Uniate churches were being established.<br />
<br />
§ The Orthodox Proposal of 1923<br />
A congress of Orthodox bishops meeting in 1923 under the presidency of Patriarch Meletios IV agreed to set Pascha by means of precise astronomical computations referred to the meridian of Jerusalem, using a midnight to midnight day to date the full moon. (Citation 12: M. Milankovitch, "Das Ende des julianischen Kalenders und der neue Kalender der orientalischen Kirchen," ''Astronomische Nachrichten'' 220, 379-384(1924).) This agreement was never permanently implemented in any Orthodox diocese. But the Revised Julian calendar, a more accurate version of the Gregorian calendar, which was introduced by the same congress has been adopted by some jurisdictions for celebrating the fixed feasts of the liturgical year. <br />
<br />
§ The World Council of Churches Proposal of 1997 A.D.<br />
A consultation of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant delegates met in Aleppo, Syria and issued an agreed statement recommending that all member churches work toward a common method of dating Pascha based on the three original Nicene principles, but employing astronomical observations from the meridian of Jerusalem instead of any cyclical tabular computation. (Citation 13: See World Council of Churches / Middle East Council of Churches Consultation, “Towards a Common Date for Easter” (1997); available at http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/faith-and-order-commission/i-unity-the-church-and-its-mission/towards-a-common-date-for-easter/index?set_language=en.)<br />
<br />
This was essentially the same proposal as that of 1923 A.D., and was not implemented in the proposed year of 2001 A.D. when Eastern and Western dates for Pascha coincided. Resistance to such a reform by Orthodox jurisdictions is apparently rooted in respect for a widespread belief that March 21st Julian was designated by the Nicene Fathers to be the only true vernal equinox, and nourished by persistent fears that changing the received tradition for dating Pascha would endanger the integrity Orthodoxy’s witness to the Patristic Tradition by creating a purely “cosmetic” unity with other Churches. (Citation 14: For an example of this, see Fr. Luke Luhl, “The Proposal for a Common Date to Celebrate Pascha and Easter,” ''Orthodox Christian Information Center'' (1997); available at http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/common_luhl.aspx.)<br />
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Here ends the rewrite. I know I've cited my own work once, but it was published in an edited journal thirty years ago so I think it's fair to use it. [[User:James C.|James C.]] 12:24, January 2, 2014 (PST)<br />
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== Using "A.D." ==<br />
<br />
Unless there are "B.C." dates in an article, I am not sure that we need to use "A.D." -- at least not more than once. The article mentions a bishop being in the fourth century A.D., but it should go without saying that all bishops lived "A.D."<br />
<br />
But when we do use it, we should do so according to proper usage by placing the "A.D." before the year, e.g., "A.D. 325." --[[User:Fr Lev|Fr Lev]] 06:19, January 3, 2014 (PST)<br />
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If "A.D." is an optional usage in this context, I would prefer to drop it entirely as being too cumbersome.[[User:James C.|James C.]] 07:02, January 3, 2014 (PST)<br />
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<br />
Dear Mockingbird0:<br />
<br />
I have tried to contact you by email twice through the OrthodoxWiki system, but have not received a copy back of my email (even though I checked off that box on both my submissions) so I'll presume you have not received those messages either. Here are some of the points that concern me regarding your recent changes to the Paschalion article:<br />
<br />
(1) You have deleted what I view as valuable fourth century testimony about how the paschalion endorsed at Nicea I was described. I would like to know what your reasons are for doing that. Here is the deleted text for reference:<br />
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“One early text that gives an explicit outline of the Nicene formula for dating Pascha is in a homily from 387 that is attributed to St. John Chrysostom: <br />
<br />
Since we keep the first of times (spring), and the equinox (''isimera''), and after this the fourteenth of the moon, and together with these the three days Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; lacking any of these at one time it is impossible to fulfill the Pascha. [Chrysostom, Paschal Homily VII, Migne, ''Patrologiae graecae'' Vol. 59, col. 747A.]<br />
<br />
In summarizing the Paschalion, the homily makes no reference to any named month – lunar or solar – nor to any calendrical date – Julian or Jewish. Yet there were many tables of computed Paschal dates circulating in the 4th century.” <br />
<br />
Not only do I think this evidence should be reinstated, but I now see that it makes good sense to also quote another primary fourth century witness – St. Ambrose of Milan – on the same issue. Here is a proposed text:<br />
<br />
“A traditional Paschalion of three elements is set forth in this homily attributed to St. Chrysostom. Its actual operation is clarified by the following passage from a letter attributed to St. Ambrose, most probably dating from the year 386 when Alexandrian and Roman dates for Pascha did not match, and St. Ambrose chose to follow the Alexandrian date [Hefele, History of the Councils, Vol. I., pp. 328ff]:<br />
<br />
We must keep the law regarding Easter in such a way that we do not observe the fourteenth as the day of the Resurrection; that day or one very close to it is the day of the passion...[and] it is evident that the day of the Resurrection should be kept after the day of the Passion, [so] the former should not be on the fourteenth of the [lunar] month, but later. [Ambrose, Letter to the Bishop of Amelia, Fathers of the Church Vol. 26, pp. 193-194 and 199. Latin text: Migne PL 16, 1073B and 1078A.]<br />
<br />
The avoidance of Nisan 14 as an acceptable date for Pascha is a logical extension of the principle that it is the Sunday following the full moon that is to be celebrated.”<br />
<br />
If it is my cautious use of “attributed to” that alarms you, please consider this. It is quite likely the attributions are substantially correct; and if not, the texts provide well-reasoned evidence from the fourth century – and as such should not be passed over.<br />
<br />
(2) You also deleted a passage in which the intentions of the Nicene Fathers are discussed. I assume you think their intentions are unknowable, absent any written memoirs. But it is quite possible to make sound inferences about their intentions based on what we know they knew. The following passage does just that, and therefore should be reinstated:<br />
<br />
“Nonetheless, the intention of the Nicene Fathers was to establish a simple set of rules that would allow Pascha to be dated independently of the Jewish calendar, and ensure that the basic chronological sequence of Passion and Resurrection as recorded in the Gospels was imitated every year. Insisting on Sunday as the only day suited to commemorating the Resurrection reveals their intention to imitate the chronology of the original event; and their preference for an astronomically determined vernal equinox is evident from the Eastern Church’s early adoption of the Alexandrian Paschal computations based on March 21st rather than March 25th, the conventional date of the vernal equinox on the Imperial Julian and Alexandrian calendars. [Until the 6th century the Paschal tables used in Rome were based on the conventional date of March 25th for the vernal equinox. [See Jones, “The Development of the Latin Ecclesiastical Calendar” in Bedae, Opera de Temporibus (1943) pp.1-104 for an English overview, or a more detailed account in French s.v. “Paques. les controverses pascales” in Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique (1931) Tome 11.2,1948-70; also available at http://jesusmarie.free.fr/dictionnaire_de_theologie_catholique_lettre_P.html.]<br />
<br />
Please note that Hefele differs from my sources in saying that in 387 the Romans took March 18 as the vernal equinox in order to arrive at Pascha on March 21. It seems possible that the discrepancy involved the Romans having relied on their tabular EFM date regardless the equinox. This, of course, would have been a very serious breach of the Nicene principles.<br />
<br />
In any case, the distinction between March 21, the Alexandrian vernal equinox (based on observation) and March 25 (the conventional date of the equinox on the Julian calendar) is crucial for grasping the full implications of the Nicene endorsement of the Alexandrian computations. There is only one reasonable inference from these facts: the Nicene Fathers intended the equinoctial date used for setting Pascha to be based on observation, and hence to be adjusted as necessary to conform with the facts of nature. <br />
<br />
(3) Because the above inference is basic and well-founded it should not be omitted, but perhaps repeated in other relevant places. For instance, when it comes to discussing the various contemporary efforts to reform the Julian calendar and paschalion – and contemporary resistance to doing one or the other, or both – I think readers of this article need be told what it is reasonable to believe about the history of this seemingly endless controversy over days. The difference between March 25 and March 21 in the third-fourth centuries is an important part of that history, and a fact that I think might help persuade some of the people on both sides of the controversy to get serious about resolving it.<br />
<br />
(4) Providing a text of Zonaras's Proviso is valuable; but the muddle is not resolved simply by quoting his words. Here are some directions I think analysis has to take:<br />
<br />
(a) The strong possibility that Balsamon added the parenthetial material to Zonaras's commentary has to be investigated. Note that Balsamon explicates Z's enigmatic statement about what the “wise apostles” thought about the equinox by saying they had no calendrical date in mind, but the event itself. Balsamon is also very keen on the idea that “it is fitting” for Passover to come before Pascha and presents a typological explanation of why that is so. [See PG137:47-50 just before Z's commentary.]<br />
<br />
(b) In order to investigate the possibility of interpolations in Z's text, a translation taken directly from the Greek is needed – not a translation of the Latin translation in Migne. Do you know of anyone who would be willing and able to do this? I think the key point is to translate all three commentaries on Canon 7 found in Migne, and to begin with a very literal translation of the text (as best it can be deciphered). For instance, the word “meta” is commonly translated as “with,” when its first meaning is properly “among” or “along with” – neither of which means simple coincidence in time.<br />
<br />
(c) Although it is true that sequence is not mentioned in the Canon itself, but only the equinox, the unfortunate fact is that the problematic situation was one in which Jews were celebrating the Passover before the equinox, and therefore before any Christian celebration of Pascha which was properly dated after the equinox. The sequence is in the Canon de facto, and that seems to have led to its being viewed as a requirement. (Or perhaps as a convenient rationalization for the ever-increasing frequency of late Paschal dates.)<br />
<br />
(d) The role of Aristenus needs to taken into account. Looking at the texts in Migne, it is his that comes earliest in time; and it is his that is the first to completely “read the equinox entirely out of” Canon 7. This presents us with the possibility that Zonaras was trying to correct Aristenus, and that we should at least try to read Z's text as trying not to innovate – even though Z's enigmatic sentences apparently opened the doors to all sorts of innovation and misconstrual. (As when it is suggested the words “vernal equinox” are beyond the comprehension of everyone who is not a “wise apostle.”)<br />
<br />
These are my concerns with the way the Paschalion article currently reads. I look forward to hearing your views.<br />
<br />
James C.</div>James C.https://orthodoxwiki.org/index.php?title=Paschalion&diff=121629Paschalion2015-04-18T00:23:11Z<p>James C.: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Pascha.jpg|right|Great and Holy Pascha]]<br />
The '''Paschalion''' of the [[Orthodox Church]] is a set of rules for determining the date of [[Pascha]] that traditionally has been implemented by calendrical tables combining Metonic lunar cycles with the Julian solar year. The rules are attributed to the [[First Ecumenical Council]] (held at [[Nicea]] in 325); the cyclical Paschal tables that emerged in connection with the Council were based on 3rd and 4th century Alexandrian prototypes, and then transposed into Julian dates by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century.[1]<br />
<br />
== Early History ==<br />
The origin of annual festivals in Christianity is obscure. St. Paul (1 Cor. 16.8) and St. Luke (Acts 2.1, 12.3, 20.6, 27.9) refer to Jewish annual festivals expecting their Gentile readers to know what is meant. Chapters 5-10 of John's Gospel is structured around the cycle of Jewish annual festivals, and all the Gospels' passion narratives are set at the time of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. But nowhere are Christian annual observances explicitly mentioned. Then, beginning in the mid-2nd century, evidence appears of Pascha and commemorations of martyrs. The commemorations of martyrs were held on fixed dates in the solar calendar. Pascha was computed according to a lunar calendar. This suggests the possibility that the annual Pascha celebration entered Christianity earlier than martyrs' festivals, and that it may have been part of Christianity's initial Jewish inheritance.<br />
<br />
Initially the date of Pascha was fixed by consulting Jewish informants to learn when the Jewish month of Nisan would fall, and setting Pascha to the third Sunday in Jewish Nisan, the Sunday of Unleavened Bread. But beginning in the third century there are indications that some Christians were becoming dissatisfied with this reliance on the Jewish calendar. The chief complaint was that the third week in Jewish Nisan was sometimes placed before the spring equinox. [[Peter of Alexandria|Peter, Bishop of Alexandria]] (early 4th century A.D.), in a statement preserved in the preface to the [[Chronicon Paschale| ''Chronicon Paschale'']], expresses this view:<blockquote>On the fourteenth day of [the month], being accurately observed after the equinox, the ancients celebrated the Passover, according to the divine command. Whereas the men of the present day now celebrate it before the equinox, and that altogether through negligence and error.</blockquote>Those who held this view began to experiment with independent computations that would always place Pascha in the spring season. Traditionalists, however, felt that the old custom of consulting the Jewish community should continue, even if it sometimes placed Pascha before the equinox. [[Epiphanius]] of Salamis (''Panarion'' 3.1.10) quotes a version of the [[Apostolic Constitutions| ''Apostolic Constitutions'']] used by the sect of the Audiani which represents this school of thought: <blockquote>Do not do your own computations, but instead observe Passover when your brethren from the circumcision do. If they err [in the computation], it is no matter to you.</blockquote><br />
<br />
The controversy was resolved at the Council of Nicea. Although the decision was not recorded as a canon, its synodal letter to the Church in Alexandria conveys “...the good news of the agreement concerning the holy Easter, ...that all our brethren in the East who formerly followed the custom of the Jews are henceforth to celebrate the said most sacred feast of Easter at the same time with the Romans and yourselves.”[2] The Emperor Constantine confirmed this agreement in a letter to bishops that had not attended the Council, announcing two things: (1) "...the most holy festival of Easter should be everywhere celebrated on one and the same day. ...(So) cheerfully accept what is observed with such general unanimity of sentiment in the city of Rome, throughout Italy, Africa, all Egypt, Spain, France, Britain, Libya, the whole of Greece, and the dioceses of Asia, Pontus, and Cilicia;" and (2) "We have cast aside (the Jewish) way of calculating the date of the festival (because) ...we should never allow Easter to be kept twice in one and the same (solar) year!"[3] <br />
<br />
Thus, the old custom of consulting the Jewish calculation of Nisan 14 and celebrating Pascha according to that date was formally rejected, and the independent computations long in use at the influential city of Alexandria became the emerging, if still somewhat controversial, consensus. On the other hand, the comments of canonists, preachers, and chroniclers indicate that the old custom of placing Easter in the month of Nisan as computed by the Jewish community continued to have adherents for generations.<br />
<br />
== The Nicene Formula ==<br />
The Alexandrian and Roman methods of determining the date of Pascha were based on three principles: (1) Pascha was always after the vernal equinox, (2) it was to follow, but not coincide with, the first full moon of spring, and (3) it was always to be on a Sunday. A fourth principle – and one enunciated following Nicea I – is implicit in the first three: namely, (4) the date of Pascha was not to depend on the Jewish dates for Passover in any way. This last criterion was met by formulating the Paschalion entirely in terms of astronomical events and the weekly cycle of days.[4]<br />
<br />
The computational system that eventually prevailed was based on calendrical experiments made at Alexandria beginning in the mid-3rd century.[5] According to this system, Pascha is the first Sunday following the date of the Paschal Full Moon (PFM, also called the νομικον φασκα, "nomikon faska" in Greek) for a given year. The computational PFM is not, however, the first full moon following the vernal equinox as determined by direct observation or by high-accuracy astronomical computations. Rather, the PFM is the first Ecclesiastical Full Moon (EFM) date that falls on or after March 21.[6] Ecclesiastical Full Moons are calendar dates that approximate astronomical full moons using a cycle that repeats every 19 years. March 21 was the date used by the Alexandrians for determining the PFM because it was near the date of the vernal equinox in the late 3rd and early 4th century A.D., when Paschal tables were first being compiled. <br />
<br />
=== The Zonaras Proviso ===<br />
The decision of the Nicene council concerning Pascha was that it should be computed independently of any Jewish computations: hence, a Paschalion that is consistent with Nicene principles cannot have any built-in dependence on the Jewish calendar. Nevertheless, possibly as early as the 12th century and certainly in recent times it has been widely believed[7] that Christian Pascha is required always to follow, and never coincide with, the first day of Passover, which is Nisan 15 in the Jewish calendar. By the 12th century the errors in the Julian calendar's equinoctial date and age of the moon had accumulated to the degree that Pascha did, in fact, always follow Jewish Nisan 15. This state of affairs continues to the present day, even though the Jewish calendar suffers from a slight solar drift of its own, because the Julian calendar's errors accumulate more rapidly than the Jewish calendar's.<br />
<br />
The 12th century canonist [[Joannes Zonaras]] seems to have been the first to state the principle that Pascha must always follow Jewish Nisan 15, so the principle is called the “Zonaras Proviso” after him. Zonaras derived his new rule from his reading of Apostolic Canon 7, which states: <blockquote>"If any Bishop, or Presbyter, or Deacon celebrate the holy day of Easter before the vernal equinox with the Jews, let him be deposed."[7]</blockquote> <br />
<br />
Zonaras, commenting on this Canon, wrote <blockquote>Ἐαρινὴν ἰσημερίαν τινὲς τὴν κε᾽ φασὶ τοῦ Μαρτίου· τινὲς δἐ τὴν κε᾽ τοῦ Ἀπριλλίου. Οῖμαι δὲ μήτ᾽ ἐκείνην μήτε ταυτην τὸν κανόνα λέγειν· ὡς ὲπι τὸ πολὺ γὰρ τὸ Πάσχα πρὸ τῆς κε᾽ τοῦ Ἀπριλλίου ἑορτάζεσθαι είωθεν· ἔστι δὲ ὅτε καὶ πρὸ τῆσ κε᾽ τοῦ Μαρτίου, ὡς συμβαίνειν (εἰ οὔτως νοοϊτο ἡ ἐαρινὴ ἰσημερία) παρὰ τὸν κανόνα τοῦτον τὸ Πάσχα ἑορτάζεσθαι. Ἔοικεν οὐν ἄλλο τι ἐαρινὴν ἰσεμερίαν τοὺς συνετοὺς ἀποστόλους ὀνομάζειν. Ἡ δὲ πᾶσα τοῦ κανόνα, διαταγὴ τοῦτό ὲστι, τὸ μὴ μετὰ Ἰουδαίων (ἤγουν κατ᾽ αὐτὴν τὴν ἡμέραν) ἑορτάζειν τὀ Πάσχα Χριστιανούς. Χρὴ γὰρ προηγεϊσθαι τὴν ανέορτον ἐκείνων ἑορτὴν, καὶ οὕτω τὸ καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς τελεϊσθαι Πάσχα. Ὁ δὲ μὴ τοῦτο ποιῶν ἱερομένο, καθαιρεθήσεται. Τοὺτο δὲ καὶ ἡ ἐν Ἀντιοχείᾳ σύνοδος ἐν πρώτῳ κανόνι διετάξατο, λέγουσα τῆς ἐν Νικαίᾳ πρώτης συνόδου ὄρον εὶναι περὶ τῆς ἑορτῆς τοῦ Πάσχα· εἰ καὶ μὴ εὑρισκεται ὲν τοῖς κανόσι τῆσ ἐν Νικαίᾳ συνόδου τοιοῦτος κανών.[8]</blockquote><br />
<br />
which can be read as <blockquote>Some say the Spring equinox is the 25th day of March; others, the 25th day of April. I deem that the canon refers to neither the one nor the other. For Pascha is often celebrated before the 25th of April; and there are times when it is celebrated before the 25th of March; so that, (if "Spring equinox" were so understood) Pascha is being celebrated in violation of this canon. Whence it appears that the wise apostles call something else the "Spring equinox." So the whole thrust of the canon is this, that Christians should not celebrate Pascha with the Jews, that is, on the same day. For it is fitting that their feast (which is no feast) is done first; and thus we do our Pascha. If one consecrated to God does this even once, he is removed from orders. The synod in Antioch also ordered this, in their first canon, where they stated that this was decreed concerning the feast of Pascha by the synod of Nicea, although no such canon is found in the canons of the Nicene synod.</blockquote><br />
<br />
So Zonaras read the word "equinox" out of the canon entirely, deciding that the canon must refer to something else: "Their feast (which is no feast) must be done first; and thus we do our Pascha." If Zonaras was restating the rule that Pascha must always fall after the Paschal Full Moon and never coincide with it, then this reading has no foundation in the 4th century historical context, or in the plain meaning of the sentence: The canon clearly refers to the rule of the equinox, not to the rule of the full moon. If Zonaras meant that the Jewish festival of 15 Nisan, as computed on the Jewish calendar, must precede the Christian Pascha, then he was interpreting the canon to mean almost the opposite of what it means in fact, and replacing the rule of independence with a rule of dependence.<br />
<br />
The 14th-century canon lawyer Matthew Blastares also enumerated the paschalion's principles in a way that can be taken to require dependence on the Jewish calendar. <blockquote>First, that it is necessary to celebrate the Pascha after the spring equinox; second, that it is not the same day as the Jewish festival; third, that it is not merely after the equinox, but after the first full moon following the equinox; and fourth, that (it is) the Sunday immediately after the full moon."[9]</blockquote> <br />
If by "the Jewish festival" Blastares simply meant the Paschal Full Moon or nomikon faska, then his second principle is redundant, merely restating the third principle in other words. If he meant the 15th of Nisan on the Rabbinic Jewish calendar, then, as Zonaras may have done before him, he replaced the Nicene rule of independence from the Jewish calendar with a rule that the paschalion must instead depend on it.<br />
<br />
== Implementation ==<br />
The following table shows the Julian and Gregorian calendar date of the Julian Paschal Full Moon (PFM) for each year of the 19-year cycle. To determine the position of a given year in the 19-year cycle, add 1 to the A.D. number of the year and divide by 19. The remainder is the year's position in the cycle. If there is no remainder, the year is the 19th of the cycle. Hence 1994 was year 19 of its cycle, and 1995 was year 1 of its cycle.<br />
<br />
The Gregorian calendar equivalences are valid from 1900 to 2099.<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable" border="1"<br />
|-<br />
|Year of cycle<br />
|Julian calendar date of Julian PFM<br />
|Gregorian calendar date of Julian PFM<br />
|-<br />
|1<br />
|April 5<br />
|April 18<br />
|-<br />
|2<br />
|March 25<br />
|April 7<br />
|-<br />
|3<br />
|April 13<br />
|April 26<br />
|-<br />
|4<br />
|April 2<br />
|April 15<br />
|-<br />
|5<br />
|March 22<br />
|April 4<br />
|-<br />
|6<br />
|April 10<br />
|April 23<br />
|-<br />
|7<br />
|March 30<br />
|April 12<br />
|-<br />
|8<br />
|April 18<br />
|May 1<br />
|-<br />
|9<br />
|April 7<br />
|April 20<br />
|-<br />
|10<br />
|March 27<br />
|April 9<br />
|-<br />
|11<br />
|April 15<br />
|April 28<br />
|-<br />
|12<br />
|April 4<br />
|April 17<br />
|-<br />
|13<br />
|March 24<br />
|April 6<br />
|-<br />
|14<br />
|April 12<br />
|April 25<br />
|-<br />
|15<br />
|April 1<br />
|April 14<br />
|-<br />
|16<br />
|March 21<br />
|April 3<br />
|-<br />
|17<br />
|April 9<br />
|April 22<br />
|-<br />
|18<br />
|March 29<br />
|April 11<br />
|-<br />
|19<br />
|April 17<br />
|April 30<br />
|}<br />
<br />
Pascha is always the Sunday ''following'' the Paschal Full Moon. Since the PFM is simply the 14th day of the Paschal lunar month, this means that Pascha is the third Sunday in the Paschal lunar month, and can fall on any date in the lunar month from the 15th (the day after the PFM) to the 21st (seven days after the PFM). That the structure of the Paschal lunar month is modelled on that of the scriptural month of 'Aviv (now called Nisan) should be clear. The Paschal lunar month is analogous to the month of 'Aviv. It is in effect a Christian 'Aviv or Nisan'. The 14th day, the Paschal Full Moon, is analogous to the day of the Passover sacrifice, and the third week, the 15th to the 21st, the week whose Lord's Day is Pascha, is analogous to the Week of Unleavened Bread.<br />
<br />
==Shortcomings of the Julian Paschalion==<br />
===Solar-side flaws===<br />
Because of the inaccuracy of the [[Julian Calendar]]'s solar year, Pascha is drifting later into the year for those who use the Julian Paschalion. Even though for those using the Julian Calendar Pascha will always be sometime in March or April, it will eventually be celebrated in the northern hemisphere in the summer, the autumn, and then the winter. For those using the [[Revised Julian Calendar]], the calendar date of Pascha is drifting along with its astronomical position. In both cases, however, the drift is very slow compared to human lifetimes - it amounts to approximately one week every 1000 years. So, for example, it would take an amount of time longer than all recorded history just for Pascha to end up being celebrated after the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere.<br />
<br />
===Lunar-side flaws===<br />
Additionally the Julian Ecclesiastical Full Moons are deviating further with time from the astronomical full moons: The EFM now falls 3 to 5 days after the corresponding astronomical full moon (see table). <br />
<br />
The [[Gregorian Calendar]], which includes its own revised Paschalion, has neither of these problems.<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable" border="1"<br />
|-<br />
|Gregorian EFM 2008<br />
|Astronomical full moon 2008<br />
(day starting at midnight UT)<br />
|Gregorian calendar date <br />
of Julian EFM 2008<br />
|-<br />
|Jan 22<br />
|Jan 22<br />
|Jan 26<br />
|-<br />
|Feb 20<br />
|Feb 21<br />
|Feb 25<br />
|-<br />
|Mar 22<br />
|Mar 21<br />
|Mar 26<br />
|-<br />
|Apr 20<br />
|Apr 20<br />
|Apr 25<br />
|-<br />
|May 20<br />
|May 20<br />
|May 24<br />
|-<br />
|Jun 18<br />
|Jun 18<br />
|Jun 23<br />
|-<br />
|Jul 18<br />
|Jul 18<br />
|Jul 22<br />
|-<br />
|Aug 16<br />
|Aug 16<br />
|Aug 21<br />
|-<br />
|Sep 15<br />
|Sep 15<br />
|Sep 19<br />
|-<br />
|Oct 14<br />
|Oct 14<br />
|Oct 19<br />
|-<br />
|Nov 13<br />
|Nov 13<br />
|Nov 17<br />
|-<br />
|Dec 12<br />
|Dec 12<br />
|Dec 17<br />
|}<br />
<br />
== The Byzantine Proposal of 1324 ==<br />
In the 14th century Nicephoras Gregoras calculated the current error in dating the vernal equinox to be three days, and proposed a reform of the Julian calendar to Andronicus II. The reform was not adopted, apparently from lack of popular or political support; and in fact would have corrected less than half of the seven-day error that actually existed at that time.[10]<br />
<br />
== The Gregorian Proposal of 1582 ==<br />
In October 1582, the [[Roman Catholic Church]] adopted a major calendar reform designed to correct the Julian calendar's defects. The Julian calendar then in common use was based on an average year of 365.25 days, slightly longer than the mean tropical year of 365.2422 days and the mean vernal equinox year of 365.2424 days. Since 19 Julian years were taken to be equal to 235 lunar months, the average lunar month in the Julian calendar was 29.530851 days, somewhat longer than the astronomical mean synodic month of 29.530589 days. The new calendar eliminated the 10-day drift in the vernal equinox, and the 3-to-4 day deviation in the age of the moon, that had accumulated since the Julian Paschalion had come into use, and laid down rules that would slow the rate of accumulation of errors in the future.<br />
<br />
The new calendar was called the [[Gregorian Calendar|Gregorian]] after its sponsor, Pope Gregory XIII, and Eastern churches refused to adopt it on the grounds that the new Roman tables sometimes placed Pascha on the day of the vernal full moon, instead of after it as the Nicene principles required. In 1583 the Council of Constantinople forbade use of the new calendar and Paschalion, making adherence to the Julian calendar a test of Orthodoxy in territories where Roman Catholic Uniate churches were being established.<br />
<br />
== The Orthodox Proposal of 1923 ==<br />
A [[Revised_Julian_Calendar|congress]] of Orthodox bishops meeting in 1923 under the presidency of Patriarch [[Meletios_IV_(Metaxakis)_of_Constantinople|Meletios IV]] agreed to set Pascha by means of precise astronomical computations referred to the meridian of Jerusalem, using a midnight to midnight day to date the full moon.[11] This agreement was never permanently implemented in any Orthodox diocese. But the Revised Julian calendar, a more accurate version of the Gregorian calendar, which was introduced by the same congress has been adopted by some jurisdictions for celebrating the fixed feasts of the liturgical year.<br />
<br />
== The World Council of Churches Proposal of 1997 ==<br />
A consultation of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant delegates met in Aleppo, Syria and issued an agreed statement recommending that all member churches work toward a common method of dating Pascha based on the three original Nicene principles, but employing astronomical observations from the meridian of Jerusalem instead of any cyclical tabular computation.[12] This was essentially the same proposal as that of 1923, and was not implemented in the proposed year of 2001 when Eastern and Western dates for Pascha coincided. Resistance to such a reform by Orthodox jurisdictions is apparently rooted in respect for a widespread belief that March 21st Julian was designated by the Nicene Fathers to be the only true vernal equinox, and nourished by persistent fears that changing the received tradition for dating Pascha would endanger the integrity Orthodoxy’s witness to the Patristic Tradition by creating a purely “cosmetic” unity with other Churches.[13]<br />
<br />
== East and West Today ==<br />
The Roman Catholic and Protestant West eventually adopted the Gregorian Calendar for civil and ecclesiastical purposes, including the determination of Pascha. The Orthodox East, however, was not so quick to change. Even when the traditionally Orthodox countries began to adopt the Gregorian Calendar for civil purposes, the Orthodox Church retained the [[Julian Calendar]] and original Paschalion. For the sake of convenience, the date of Pascha is often transposed to the coincident date on the Gregorian Calendar for reference. <br />
<br />
Because of the difference in calendars and formulas, Western Easter and Orthodox Pascha do not often coincide. Under current rules, they can differ from each other by 0, 1, 4, or 5 weeks. They are in separate lunations (meaning that they are 4 or 5 weeks apart because their respective cycles identify different lunar months as the Paschal lunar month) in years 3, 8, 11, 14, and 19 of the 19-year cycle, and in the same lunation (0 or 1 week apart) in the other years.<br />
<br />
== Algorithms ==<br />
Many notable mathematicians have developed algorithms for determining the date of Orthodox Pascha over the centuries. This simple and elegant one was devised by the brilliant mathematician Jacques Oudin in the 1940s:<br />
<br />
''N.B. -- In this formula MOD is the modulus function, in which the first number is divided by the second and only the remainder is returned. Further, all division is integer division, in which remainders are discarded. Thus'' <tt>'''22 MOD 7 = 1'''</tt> ''but'' <tt>'''22 / 7 = 3'''.<br />
G = ''year'' MOD 19<br />
I = ((19 * G) + 15) MOD 30<br />
J = (''year'' + (''year''/4) + I) MOD 7<br />
L = I - J<br />
Easter Month = 3 + ((L + 40)/44)<br />
Easter Day = L + 28 - 31 * (Easter Month/4)<br />
</tt>Easter Month will be a number corresponding to a calendar month (e.g., 4 = April) and Easter Day will be the day of that month. Note that this returns the date of Pascha on the Julian calendar. To get the corresponding date on the Gregorian calendar, add 13 days (14 days after March 1, 2100).<br />
<br />
== Online Paschalion Utility ==<br />
The date of Pascha and many Pascha-dependent dates can be found (e.g., the start of Great Lent, Pentecost, etc.) through this online JavaScript [http://www.noeticspace.com/paschalion Paschalion utility] (works best with IE3 or Netscape 3 or above).<br />
<br />
This site allows the user to enter a year and uses Oudin's algorithm to compute the relevant dates. Although the Orthodox (Julian-based) formulas are used, the utility returns the corresponding Gregorian calendar dates. For example, in 2006 Pascha falls on Sunday, April 10, on the Julian calendar. That date corresponds to April 23 on the Gregorian calendar.<br />
<br />
A perpetual Paschalion utility is available [http://cgi.duke.edu/~aa63/cgi-bin/paschallion.cgi here]. The utility was created by [http://www.duke.edu/~aa63/ Aleksandr Andreev] of [http://www.duke.edu/ Duke University] and calculates Pascha and associated feasts for any series of years. It also calculates the numbers used in Paschal calculations which can be found in an Orthodox [[Typicon]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
1. See http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/dionysius_exiguus_easter_01.htm for the Paschal cycle of Dionysius; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysius_Exiguus for an account of the transposition.<br />
<br />
2. See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.vii.ix.html.<br />
<br />
3. Eusebius, Vita Constantine III:18-20, ''Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers'', Vol. 14, pp. 54-55. Also available at http://www.fourthcentury.com/index.php/urkunde-26.<br />
<br />
4. James Campbell, “The Paschalion: An Icon of Time,” ''St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly'', Vol. 28 No. 4 (1984) pp. 245-262. Also available at https://www.academia.edu/8246608/The_Paschalion_An_Icon_of_Time.<br />
<br />
5. The basic system can be found in the “Paschal Canon” of the Alexandrian scholar Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea, which was composed c. 277 A.D. See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf06.vi.iii.ii.i.html and following pages.<br />
<br />
6. Until the 6th century the Paschal tables used in Rome were based on the conventional date of March 25th for the vernal equinox. Jones, “The Development of the Latin Ecclesiastical Calendar” in Bedae, ''Opera de Temporibus'' (Cambridge: Medieval Academy of America, 1943), pp. 1-104.<br />
<br />
7. ''The Rudder'', Apostolic Canon 7, available at http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/cannons_apostles_rudder.htm . Also ''The Rudder'', Cummings ed. (Chicago: The Orthodox Christian Education Society, 1957). The Rudder's words "after the Passover of the Jews" may simply refer to the paschalion's Paschal Full Moon, not to any date in the Jewish calendar. In practice, it is often understood to mean the 15th of Nisan in the Rabbinic Jewish calendar. See for example http://orthodoxwitness.org/over-the-rooftops/how-the-date-of-pascha-is-determined/2/ (Last visited April 15, 2015) where the author states that Pascha in 2015 is set to April 12 2015 to avoid coinciding with "the Jewish Passover" which he dates (incorrectly) to April 5, and that Pascha 2016 is set to May 1 to avoid coinciding with the Jewish Passover which he dates to April 22. This last date corresponds to 14 (not 15) Nisan 5776 and so is the Jewish Passover in a strict sense, but April 22, 2015 is a Friday, not a Sunday. In any case, the author clearly uses "Jewish Passover" to refer to a date on the Jewish calendar, and not to the paschalion's Paschal Full Moon, which falls on Tuesday, April 7 in 2015 and on Tuesday, April 26 in 2016. James Campbell, cited in Reference 4 above, also indicates that he believes that the "after Passover" rule requires an external reference to the Rabbinic Jewish calendar when he accuses the Gregorian paschalion of violating the rule. (Reference 4 above, text at footnote 14.)<br />
<br />
8. Joannes Zonaras, Commentary on Apostolic Canon 7, Migne, PG 137, 49-50.<br />
<br />
9. Matthew Blastaris, ''Syntagma Alphabeticum'', Migne, PG 145, 96D-97A.<br />
<br />
10. See Guiland, ''Essai sur Nicephore Gregoras'' (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1926), pp. 282-284. Also, ''Dictionnaire de Théogogie Catholique'' (Paris, 1911) Tome 11, col. 455; and Welborn, "Calendar Reform in the 13th Century" (Chicago: University of Chicago Dissertation, 1935), p. 31.<br />
<br />
11. M. Milankovitch, "Das Ende des julianischen Kalenders und der neue Kalender der orientalischen Kirchen", ''Astronomische Nachrichten'' 220, 379-384(1924).<br />
<br />
12. See World Council of Churches / Middle East Council of Churches Consultation, “Towards a Common Date for Easter” (1997); available at http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/faith-and-order-commission/i-unity-the-church-and-its-mission/towards-a-common-date-for-easter/index?set_language=en.<br />
<br />
13. For an example of this, see Fr. Luke Luhl, “The Proposal for a Common Date to Celebrate Pascha and Easter,” ''Orthodox Christian Information Center'' (1997); available at http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/common_luhl.aspx.<br />
<br />
==See also==<br />
*[[Church Calendar]]<br />
*[[Gaussian Formulae]]<br />
*[[Kyriopascha]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
*[http://www.oca.org/Docs.asp?ID=133&SID=12 Concerning the Date of Pascha and the 1st Ecumenical Council], by Archbishop [[Peter (L'Huillier) of New York]]<br />
*[http://www.chrysostom.org/andrew/texts/parsells-calendar.pdf The Calendar Issue in the Orthodox Church], by John Parsells (PDF)<br />
*[http://www.tondering.dk/claus/calendar.html Frequently Asked Questions about Calendars] by Claus Tondering (everything you ever wanted to know)<br />
*[http://users.chariot.net.au/~gmarts/calmain.htm Calendar and Easter Topics]<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Church Life]]<br />
[[Category:Feasts]]<br />
[[Category:Featured Articles]]<br />
<br />
[[ro:Pascalia]]</div>James C.https://orthodoxwiki.org/index.php?title=Paschalion&diff=118048Paschalion2014-01-08T04:06:54Z<p>James C.: Partial rewrite for clarification and supplementation</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Pascha.jpg|right|Great and Holy Pascha]]<br />
The '''Paschalion''' of the [[Orthodox Church]] is a set of rules for determining the date of [[Pascha]] that traditionally has been implemented by calendrical tables combining Metonic lunar cycles with the Julian solar year. The rules are attributed to the [[First Ecumenical Council]] (held at [[Nicea]] in 325); the cyclical Paschal tables that emerged in connection with the Council were based on 3rd and 4th century Alexandrian prototypes, and then transposed into Julian dates by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century.[1]<br />
<br />
== Early History ==<br />
The origin of annual festivals in Christianity is obscure. St. Paul (1 Cor. 16.8) and St. Luke (Acts 2.1, 12.3, 20.6, 27.9) refer to Jewish annual festivals expecting their Gentile readers to know what is meant. Chapters 5-10 of John's Gospel is structured around the cycle of Jewish annual festivals, and all the Gospels' passion narratives are set at the time of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. But nowhere are Christian annual observances explicitly mentioned. Then, beginning in the mid-2nd century, evidence appears of Pascha and commemorations of martyrs. The commemorations of martyrs were held on fixed dates in the solar calendar. Pascha was computed according to a lunar calendar. This suggests the possibility that the annual Pascha celebration entered Christianity earlier than martyrs' festivals, and that it may have been part of Christianity's initial Jewish inheritance.<br />
<br />
Initially the date of Pascha was fixed by consulting Jewish informants to learn when the Jewish month of Nisan would fall, and setting Pascha to the third Sunday in Jewish Nisan, the Sunday of Unleavened Bread. But beginning in the third century there are indications that some Christians were becoming dissatisfied with this reliance on the Jewish calendar. The chief complaint was that the third week in Jewish Nisan was sometimes placed before the spring equinox. [[Peter of Alexandria|Peter, Bishop of Alexandria]] (early 4th century A.D.), in a statement preserved in the preface to the [[Chronicon Paschale| ''Chronicon Paschale'']], expresses this view:<blockquote>On the fourteenth day of [the month], being accurately observed after the equinox, the ancients celebrated the Passover, according to the divine command. Whereas the men of the present day now celebrate it before the equinox, and that altogether through negligence and error.</blockquote>Those who held this view began to experiment with independent computations that would always place Pascha in the spring season. Traditionalists, however, felt that the old custom of consulting the Jewish community should continue, even if it sometimes placed Pascha before the equinox. [[Epiphanius]] of Salamis (''Panarion'' 3.1.10) quotes a version of the [[Apostolic Constitutions| ''Apostolic Constitutions'']] used by the sect of the Audiani which represents this school of thought: <blockquote>Do not do your own computations, but instead observe Passover when your brethren from the circumcision do. If they err [in the computation], it is no matter to you.</blockquote><br />
<br />
The controversy was resolved at the Council of Nicea. Although the decision was not recorded as a canon, its synodal letter to the Church in Alexandria conveys “...the good news of the agreement concerning the holy Easter, ...that all our brethren in the East who formerly followed the custom of the Jews are henceforth to celebrate the said most sacred feast of Easter at the same time with the Romans and yourselves.”[2] The Emperor Constantine confirmed this agreement in an epistle to all churches, announcing two things: (1) "...the most holy festival of Easter should be everywhere celebrated on one and the same day. ...(So) cheerfully accept what is observed with such general unanimity of sentiment in the city of Rome, throughout Italy, Africa, all Egypt, Spain, France, Britain, Libya, the whole of Greece, and the dioceses of Asia, Pontus, and Cilicia;" and (2) "We have cast aside (the Jewish) way of calculating the date of the festival (because) ...we should never allow Easter to be kept twice in one and the same (solar) year!"[3] <br />
<br />
Thus, the old custom of consulting the Jewish calculation of Nisan 14 and celebrating Pascha on that date was formally rejected, and the independent computations long in use at the influential city of Alexandria became the emerging, if still somewhat controversial, consensus. On the other hand, the comments of canonists, preachers, and chroniclers indicate that the old Quartodecimian custom of placing Easter in the month of Nisan as computed by the Jewish community continued to have adherents for generations.<br />
<br />
== The Nicene Formula ==<br />
The Alexandrian and Roman methods of determining the date of Pascha were based on three principles: (1) Pascha was always after the vernal equinox, (2) it was to follow, but not coincide with, the first full moon of spring, and (3) it was always to be on a Sunday. A fourth principle – and one enunciated following Nicea I – is implicit in the first three: namely, (4) the date of Pascha was not to depend on the Jewish dates for Passover in any way. This last criterion was met by formulating the Paschalion entirely in terms of astronomical events and the weekly cycle of days.[4] One early text that gives an explicit outline of the Nicene formula for dating Pascha is in a homily from 387 that is attributed to St. John Chrysostom: "Since we keep the first of times (spring), and the equinox (''isimera''), and after this the fourteenth of the moon, and together with these the three days Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; lacking any of these at one time it is impossible to fulfill the Pascha."[5] In summarizing the Paschalion, the homily makes no reference to any named month – lunar or solar – nor to any calendrical date – Julian or Jewish. Yet there were many tables of computed Paschal dates circulating in the 4th century.<br />
<br />
The computational system that eventually prevailed was based on calendrical experiments made at Alexandria beginning in the mid-3rd century.[6] According to this system, Pascha is the first Sunday following the date of the Paschal Full Moon (PFM) for a given year. The computational PFM is not, however, as commonly thought, the first full moon following the vernal equinox. Rather, the PFM is the first Ecclesiastical Full Moon (EFM) date that falls on or after March 21 (or, what is the same thing, the first Ecclesiastical Full Moon that follows March 20). Ecclesiastical Full Moons are calendar dates that approximate astronomical full moons using a cycle that repeats every 19 years. March 21 was the date used by the Alexandrians for determining the PFM because it was near the date of the vernal equinox in the late 3rd and early 4th century A.D., when Paschal tables were first being compiled. This conventional, cyclical Paschalion is called Nicene because some commentators in later generations erroneously attributed it to the Nicene Council and came to treat it as canonical.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, the intention of the Nicene Fathers was to establish a simple set of rules that would allow Pascha to be dated independently of the Jewish calendar, and ensure that the basic chronological sequence of Passion and Resurrection as recorded in the Gospels was imitated every year. Insisting on Sunday as the only day suited to commemorating the Resurrection reveals their intention to imitate the chronology of the original event; and their preference for an astronomically determined vernal equinox is evident from the Eastern Church’s early adoption of the Alexandrian Paschal computations based on March 21st rather than March 25th, the conventional date of the vernal equinox on the Imperial Julian and Alexandrian calendars.[7] <br />
<br />
A thousand years later, the canonist Matthew Blastaris reaffirmed the importance of these four principles in a concise way: "First, that it is necessary to celebrate the Pascha after the spring equinox; second, that it is not the same day as the Jewish festival; third, that it is not merely after the equinox, but after the first full moon following the equinox; and fourth, that (it is) the Sunday immediately after the full moon."[8] Blastaris clearly states that it is the equinox and the full moon that determine the proper Sunday, not March 21st Julian - or Nisan 14/15 on the Hebrew calendar. But his second rule is open to misconstrual. The Nicene Council rejected the Quartodecimian practice of celebrating Pascha on “the same day as the Jewish festival (of Passover)” and adopted three rules that prevent that from happening except by coincidence. Yet Blastaris’ second rule is understood by some to mean that the date of Pascha must be moved in order to avoid coinciding with Passover.[9] This reading of Blastaris, however, compromises the independence of the Christian Paschalion from the Jewish festal calendar and lends the so-called “Zonaras Proviso” canonical authority.<br />
<br />
=== The Zonaras Proviso ===<br />
The decision of the Nicene council concerning Pascha was that it should be computed independently of any Rabbinic computations: hence, a Paschalion that is consistent with Nicene principles cannot have any built-in dependence on the Jewish calendar. Nevertheless, since at least the 12th century it has been widely believed that Christian Pascha is required always to follow, and never coincide with, the first day of Passover, which was by then being celebrated on Nisan 15 in the Jewish calendar (that is, on the evening of the 14th day of the lunar month). By the 12th century the errors in the Julian calendar's equinoctial date and age of the moon had accumulated to the degree that Pascha did, in fact, always follow Jewish Nisan 15. This state of affairs continues to the present day, even though the Jewish calendar suffers from a slight solar drift of its own, because the Julian calendar's errors accumulate more rapidly than the Jewish calendar's.<br />
<br />
The 12th century canonist [[Joannes Zonaras]] seems to have been the first to state the principle that Pascha must always follow Jewish Nisan 15, so the principle is called the “Zonaras Proviso” after him. Upon examination, it appears that Zonaras derived his new rule from a misconstrual of Apostolic Canon 7, which reads as follows: "If any Bishop, or Presbyter, or Deacon celebrate the holy day of Easter before the vernal equinox with the Jews, let him be deposed."[10] Zonaras found two prohibitions in this one statement: first, that Pascha must be celebrated after the vernal equinox; and second, that Pascha must never coincide with the Jewish feast of Passover. Although Zonaras’ second prohibition has no foundation in the 4th century historical context, or in the grammatical meaning of the sentence, it resembles the fourth (implicit) Nicene principle closely enough to be confused with it. That is, the rule that Christians are not to go along “with the Jews” in setting the date of Pascha has been confused with the fear that if Passover happens to coincide with an independently determined Pascha, Christians would be wrongfully praying “with the Jews” just because both are praying on the same day.<br />
<br />
== Implementation ==<br />
The following table shows the Julian and Gregorian calendar date of the Julian Paschal Full Moon (PFM) for each year of the 19-year cycle. To determine the position of a given year in the 19-year cycle, add 1 to the A.D. number of the year and divide by 19. The remainder is the year's position in the cycle. If there is no remainder, the year is the 19th of the cycle. Hence 1994 was year 19 of its cycle, and 1995 was year 1 of its cycle.<br />
<br />
The Gregorian calendar equivalences are valid from 1900 to 2099.<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable" border="1"<br />
|-<br />
|Year of cycle<br />
|Julian calendar date of Julian PFM<br />
|Gregorian calendar date of Julian PFM<br />
|-<br />
|1<br />
|April 5<br />
|April 18<br />
|-<br />
|2<br />
|March 25<br />
|April 7<br />
|-<br />
|3<br />
|April 13<br />
|April 26<br />
|-<br />
|4<br />
|April 2<br />
|April 15<br />
|-<br />
|5<br />
|March 22<br />
|April 4<br />
|-<br />
|6<br />
|April 10<br />
|April 23<br />
|-<br />
|7<br />
|March 30<br />
|April 12<br />
|-<br />
|8<br />
|April 18<br />
|May 1<br />
|-<br />
|9<br />
|April 7<br />
|April 20<br />
|-<br />
|10<br />
|March 27<br />
|April 9<br />
|-<br />
|11<br />
|April 15<br />
|April 28<br />
|-<br />
|12<br />
|April 4<br />
|April 17<br />
|-<br />
|13<br />
|March 24<br />
|April 6<br />
|-<br />
|14<br />
|April 12<br />
|April 25<br />
|-<br />
|15<br />
|April 1<br />
|April 14<br />
|-<br />
|16<br />
|March 21<br />
|April 3<br />
|-<br />
|17<br />
|April 9<br />
|April 22<br />
|-<br />
|18<br />
|March 29<br />
|April 11<br />
|-<br />
|19<br />
|April 17<br />
|April 30<br />
|}<br />
<br />
Pascha is always the Sunday ''following'' the Paschal Full Moon. Since the PFM is simply the 14th day of the Paschal lunar month, this means that Pascha is the third Sunday in the Paschal lunar month, and can fall on any date in the lunar month from the 15th (the day after the PFM) to the 21st (seven days after the PFM). That the structure of the Paschal lunar month is modelled on that of the scriptural month of 'Aviv (now called Nisan) should be clear. The Paschal lunar month is analogous to the month of 'Aviv. It is in effect a Christian 'Aviv or Nisan'. The 14th day, the Paschal Full Moon, is analogous to the day of the Passover sacrifice, and the third week, the 15th to the 21st, the week whose Lord's Day is Pascha, is analogous to the Week of Unleavened Bread.<br />
<br />
==Shortcomings of the Julian Paschalion==<br />
===Solar-side flaws===<br />
Because of the inaccuracy of the [[Julian Calendar]]'s solar year, Pascha is drifting later into the year for those who use the Julian Paschalion. Even though for those using the Julian Calendar Pascha will always be sometime in March or April, it will eventually be celebrated in the northern hemisphere in the summer, the autumn, and then the winter. For those using the [[Revised Julian Calendar]], the calendar date of Pascha is drifting along with its astronomical position. In both cases, however, the drift is very slow compared to human lifetimes - it amounts to approximately one week every 1000 years. So, for example, it would take an amount of time longer than all recorded history just for Pascha to end up being celebrated after the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere.<br />
<br />
===Lunar-side flaws===<br />
Additionally the Julian Ecclesiastical Full Moons are deviating further with time from the astronomical full moons: The EFM now falls 3 to 5 days after the corresponding astronomical full moon (see table). <br />
<br />
The [[Gregorian Calendar]], which includes its own revised Paschalion, has neither of these problems.<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable" border="1"<br />
|-<br />
|Gregorian EFM 2008<br />
|Astronomical full moon 2008<br />
(day starting at midnight UT)<br />
|Gregorian calendar date <br />
of Julian EFM 2008<br />
|-<br />
|Jan 22<br />
|Jan 22<br />
|Jan 26<br />
|-<br />
|Feb 20<br />
|Feb 21<br />
|Feb 25<br />
|-<br />
|Mar 22<br />
|Mar 21<br />
|Mar 26<br />
|-<br />
|Apr 20<br />
|Apr 20<br />
|Apr 25<br />
|-<br />
|May 20<br />
|May 20<br />
|May 24<br />
|-<br />
|Jun 18<br />
|Jun 18<br />
|Jun 23<br />
|-<br />
|Jul 18<br />
|Jul 18<br />
|Jul 22<br />
|-<br />
|Aug 16<br />
|Aug 16<br />
|Aug 21<br />
|-<br />
|Sep 15<br />
|Sep 15<br />
|Sep 19<br />
|-<br />
|Oct 14<br />
|Oct 14<br />
|Oct 19<br />
|-<br />
|Nov 13<br />
|Nov 13<br />
|Nov 17<br />
|-<br />
|Dec 12<br />
|Dec 12<br />
|Dec 17<br />
|}<br />
<br />
== The Byzantine Proposal of 1324 ==<br />
In the 14th century Nicephoras Gregoras calculated the current error in dating the vernal equinox to be three days, and proposed a reform of the Julian calendar to Andronicus II. The reform was not adopted, apparently from lack of popular or political support; and in fact would have corrected less than half of the seven-day error that actually existed at that time.[11]<br />
<br />
== The Gregorian Proposal of 1582 ==<br />
In October 1582, the [[Roman Catholic Church]] adopted a major calendar reform designed to correct the Julian calendar's defects. The Julian calendar then in common use was based on an average year of 365.25 days, slightly longer than the mean tropical year of 365.2422 days and the mean vernal equinox year of 365.2424 days. Since 19 Julian years were taken to be equal to 235 lunar months, the average lunar month in the Julian calendar was 29.530851 days, somewhat longer than the astronomical mean synodic month of 29.530589 days. The new calendar eliminated the 10-day drift in the vernal equinox, and the 3-to-4 day deviation in the age of the moon, that had accumulated since the Julian Paschalion had come into use, and laid down rules that would slow the rate of accumulation of errors in the future.<br />
<br />
The new calendar was called the [[Gregorian Calendar|Gregorian]] after its sponsor, Pope Gregory XIII, and Eastern churches refused to adopt it on the grounds that the new Roman tables sometimes placed Pascha on the day of the vernal full moon, instead of after it as the Nicene principles required. In 1583 the Council of Constantinople forbade use of the new calendar and Paschalion, making adherence to the Julian calendar a test of Orthodoxy in territories where Roman Catholic Uniate churches were being established.<br />
<br />
== The Orthodox Proposal of 1923 ==<br />
A [[Revised_Julian_Calendar|congress]] of Orthodox bishops meeting in 1923 under the presidency of Patriarch [[Meletios_IV_(Metaxakis)_of_Constantinople|Meletios IV]] agreed to set Pascha by means of precise astronomical computations referred to the meridian of Jerusalem, using a midnight to midnight day to date the full moon.[12] This agreement was never permanently implemented in any Orthodox diocese. But the Revised Julian calendar, a more accurate version of the Gregorian calendar, which was introduced by the same congress has been adopted by some jurisdictions for celebrating the fixed feasts of the liturgical year.<br />
<br />
== The World Council of Churches Proposal of 1997 ==<br />
A consultation of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant delegates met in Aleppo, Syria and issued an agreed statement recommending that all member churches work toward a common method of dating Pascha based on the three original Nicene principles, but employing astronomical observations from the meridian of Jerusalem instead of any cyclical tabular computation.[13] This was essentially the same proposal as that of 1923, and was not implemented in the proposed year of 2001 when Eastern and Western dates for Pascha coincided. Resistance to such a reform by Orthodox jurisdictions is apparently rooted in respect for a widespread belief that March 21st Julian was designated by the Nicene Fathers to be the only true vernal equinox, and nourished by persistent fears that changing the received tradition for dating Pascha would endanger the integrity Orthodoxy’s witness to the Patristic Tradition by creating a purely “cosmetic” unity with other Churches.[14]<br />
<br />
== East and West Today ==<br />
The Roman Catholic and Protestant West eventually adopted the Gregorian Calendar for civil and ecclesiastical purposes, including the determination of Pascha. The Orthodox East, however, was not so quick to change. Even when the traditionally Orthodox countries began to adopt the Gregorian Calendar for civil purposes, the Orthodox Church retained the [[Julian Calendar]] and original Paschalion. For the sake of convenience, the date of Pascha is often transposed to the coincident date on the Gregorian Calendar for reference. <br />
<br />
Because of the difference in calendars and formulas, Western Easter and Orthodox Pascha do not often coincide. Under current rules, they can differ from each other by 0, 1, 4, or 5 weeks. They are in separate lunations (meaning that they are 4 or 5 weeks apart because their respective cycles identify different lunar months as the Paschal lunar month) in years 3, 8, 11, 14, and 19 of the 19-year cycle, and in the same lunation (0 or 1 week apart) in the other years.<br />
<br />
== Algorithms ==<br />
Many notable mathematicians have developed algorithms for determining the date of Orthodox Pascha over the centuries. This simple and elegant one was devised by the brilliant mathematician Jacques Oudin in the 1940s:<br />
<br />
''N.B. -- In this formula MOD is the modulus function, in which the first number is divided by the second and only the remainder is returned. Further, all division is integer division, in which remainders are discarded. Thus'' <tt>'''22 MOD 7 = 1'''</tt> ''but'' <tt>'''22 / 7 = 3'''.<br />
G = ''year'' MOD 19<br />
I = ((19 * G) + 15) MOD 30<br />
J = (''year'' + (''year''/4) + I) MOD 7<br />
L = I - J<br />
Easter Month = 3 + ((L + 40)/44)<br />
Easter Day = L + 28 - 31 * (Easter Month/4)<br />
</tt>Easter Month will be a number corresponding to a calendar month (e.g., 4 = April) and Easter Day will be the day of that month. Note that this returns the date of Pascha on the Julian calendar. To get the corresponding date on the Gregorian calendar, add 13 days (14 days after March 1, 2100).<br />
<br />
== Online Paschalion Utility ==<br />
The date of Pascha and many Pascha-dependent dates can be found (e.g., the start of Great Lent, Pentecost, etc.) through this online JavaScript [http://www.noeticspace.com/paschalion Paschalion utility] (works best with IE3 or Netscape 3 or above).<br />
<br />
This site allows the user to enter a year and uses Oudin's algorithm to compute the relevant dates. Although the Orthodox (Julian-based) formulas are used, the utility returns the corresponding Gregorian calendar dates. For example, in 2006 Pascha falls on Sunday, April 10, on the Julian calendar. That date corresponds to April 23 on the Gregorian calendar.<br />
<br />
A perpetual Paschalion utility is available [http://cgi.duke.edu/~aa63/cgi-bin/paschallion.cgi here]. The utility was created by [http://www.duke.edu/~aa63/ Aleksandr Andreev] of [http://www.duke.edu/ Duke University] and calculates Pascha and associated feasts for any series of years. It also calculates the numbers used in Paschal calculations which can be found in an Orthodox [[Typicon]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
1. See http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/dionysius_exiguus_easter_01.htm for the Paschal cycle of Dionysius; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysius_Exiguus for an account of the transposition.<br />
<br />
2. See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.vii.ix.html.<br />
<br />
3. Eusebius, Vita Constantine III:18-20, ''Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers'', Vol. 14, pp. 54-55. Also available at http://www.fourthcentury.com/index.php/urkunde-26.<br />
<br />
4. James Campbell, “The Paschalion: An Icon of Time,” ''St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly'', Vol. 28 No. 4 (1984) pp. 245-262.<br />
<br />
5. Chrysostom, Paschal Homily VII, Migne, ''Patrologiae graecae'' Vol. 59, col. 747A.<br />
<br />
6. The basic system can be found in the “Paschal Canon” of the Alexandrian scholar Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea, which was composed c. 277 A.D. See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf06.vi.iii.ii.i.html and following pages.<br />
<br />
7. Until the 6th century the Paschal tables used in Rome were based on the conventional date of March 25th for the vernal equinox. Jones, “The Development of the Latin Ecclesiastical Calendar” in Bedae, ''Opera de Temporibus'' (Cambridge: Medieval Academy of America, 1943), pp. 1-104.<br />
<br />
8. Matthew Blastaris, ''Syntagma Alphabeticum'', Migne, PG 145, 96D-97A.<br />
<br />
9. See Agapios and Nicodemus, ''The Rudder (Pedalion)'', Masterjohn (tr.) 2006 “Apostolic Canon 7,” p. 115; available at http://orthodoxbahamas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/THE_RUDDER_Copyright__Ralph_J._Masterjohn_2006.pdf.<br />
<br />
10. ''The Rudder'', Cummings ed. (Chicago: The Orthodox Christian Education Society, 1957), p. 9. Also, Agapios & Nicodemus, ''The Rudder'', p. 113.<br />
<br />
11. See Guiland, ''Essai sur Nicephore Gregoras'' (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1926), pp. 282-284. Also, ''Dictionnaire de Théogogie Catholique'' (Paris, 1911) Tome 11, col. 455; and Welborn, "Calendar Reform in the 13th Century" (Chicago: University of Chicago Dissertation, 1935), p. 31.<br />
<br />
12. M. Milankovitch, "Das Ende des julianischen Kalenders und der neue Kalender der orientalischen Kirchen", ''Astronomische Nachrichten'' 220, 379-384(1924).<br />
<br />
13. See World Council of Churches / Middle East Council of Churches Consultation, “Towards a Common Date for Easter” (1997); available at http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/faith-and-order-commission/i-unity-the-church-and-its-mission/towards-a-common-date-for-easter/index?set_language=en.<br />
<br />
14. For an example of this, see Fr. Luke Luhl, “The Proposal for a Common Date to Celebrate Pascha and Easter,” ''Orthodox Christian Information Center'' (1997); available at http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/common_luhl.aspx.<br />
<br />
==See also==<br />
*[[Church Calendar]]<br />
*[[Gaussian Formulae]]<br />
*[[Kyriopascha]]<br />
<br />
== External links ==<br />
*[http://www.oca.org/Docs.asp?ID=133&SID=12 Concerning the Date of Pascha and the 1st Ecumenical Council], by Archbishop [[Peter (L'Huillier) of New York]]<br />
*[http://www.chrysostom.org/andrew/texts/parsells-calendar.pdf The Calendar Issue in the Orthodox Church], by John Parsells (PDF)<br />
*[http://www.tondering.dk/claus/calendar.html Frequently Asked Questions about Calendars] by Claus Tondering (everything you ever wanted to know)<br />
*[http://users.chariot.net.au/~gmarts/calmain.htm Calendar and Easter Topics]<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Church Life]]<br />
[[Category:Feasts]]<br />
[[Category:Featured Articles]]<br />
<br />
[[ro:Pascalia]]</div>James C.https://orthodoxwiki.org/index.php?title=Talk:Paschalion&diff=118042Talk:Paschalion2014-01-03T15:02:49Z<p>James C.: </p>
<hr />
<div>The "Nicene Formula" section is misleading. One could infer from it that the council itself gave us the detailed formula involving March 20 and the EFM based on the 19-year lunar cycle. This is simply not true. These details were hashed out in the two centuries following the council. They constitute how the Church came to operationalize the council's decision that Pascha was to be observed on the Sunday following the full moon on or after the vernal equinox. But these details did not come from the council itself.--[[User:BALawrence|BALawrence]] 01:08, June 4, 2008 (UTC)<br />
<br />
: Feel free to fix it! :) &mdash;[[User:ASDamick|<font size="3.5" color="green" face="Adobe Garamond Pro, Garamond, Georgia, Times New Roman">Fr. Andrew</font>]] <sup>[[User_talk:ASDamick|<font color="red">talk</font>]]</sup> <small>[[Special:Contributions/ASDamick|<font color="black">contribs</font>]] <font face="Adobe Garamond Pro, Garamond, Georgia, Times New Roman">('''[[User:ASDamick/Wiki-philosophy|THINK!]]''')</font></small> 01:48, June 4, 2008 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The article as a whole would benefit from clarification and supplementation. I have prepared an extensive rewrite which I thought it might be more pleasant and efficient to post here first for comments. Only new sections or sections with extensive edits are shown:<br />
<br />
§ Paschalion<br />
The Paschalion of the Orthodox Church is a set of rules for determining the date of Pascha that traditionally has been implemented by calendrical tables combining Metonic lunar cycles with the Julian solar year. The rules are attributed to the First Ecumenical Council (held at Nicea in 325 A.D.); the cyclical Paschal tables that emerged in connection with the Council were based on 3rd and 4th century Alexandrian prototypes, and then transposed into Julian dates by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century. (Citation 1: See http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/dionysius_exiguus_easter_01.htm for the Paschal cycle of Dionysius; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysius_Exiguus for an account of the transposition.)<br />
<br />
§ Early History (last paragraph)<br />
The controversy was resolved at the Council of Nicea. Although the decision was not recorded as a canon, its synodal letter to the Church in Alexandria conveys “...the good news of the agreement concerning the holy Easter, ...that all our brethren in the East who formerly followed the custom of the Jews are henceforth to celebrate the said most sacred feast of Easter at the same time with the Romans and yourselves.” (Citation 2: See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.vii.ix.html.)<br />
<br />
The Emperor Constantine confirmed this agreement in an epistle to all churches, announcing two things: (1) "...the most holy festival of Easter should be everywhere celebrated on one and the same day. ...[So] cheerfully accept what is observed with such general unanimity of sentiment in the city of Rome, throughout Italy, Africa, all Egypt, Spain, France, Britain, Libya, the whole of Greece, and the dioceses of Asia, Pontus, and Cilicia;" and (2) "We have cast aside [the Jewish] way of calculating the date of the festival [because] ...we should never allow Easter to be kept twice in one and the same [solar] year!" (Citation 3: Eusebius, Vita Constantine III:18-20, ''Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers,'' Vol. 14, pp. 54-55. Also available at http://www.fourthcentury.com/index.php/urkunde-26.)<br />
<br />
Thus, the old custom of consulting the Jewish calculation of 14 Nisan and celebrating Pascha on that date was formally rejected, and the independent computations long in use at the influential city of Alexandria became the emerging, if still somewhat controversial, consensus. On the other hand, the comments of canonists, preachers, and chroniclers indicate that the old Quartodecimian custom of placing Easter in the month of Nisan as computed by the Jewish community continued to have adherents for generations.<br />
<br />
§ The Nicene Formula<br />
The Alexandrian and Roman methods of determining the date of Pascha were based on three principles: (1) Pascha was always after the vernal equinox, (2) it was to follow, but not coincide with, the first full moon of spring, and (3) it was always to be on a Sunday. A fourth principle – and one enunciated following Nicea I – is implicit in the first three: namely, (4) the date of Pascha was not to depend on the Jewish dates for Passover in any way. This last criterion was met by formulating the Paschalion entirely in terms of astronomical events and the weekly cycle of days. (Citation 4: For a fuller discussion, see James Campbell, “The Paschalion: An Icon of Time,” ''St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly,'' Vol. 28 No. 4 (1984) pp. 245-262.)<br />
<br />
One early text that gives an explicit outline of the Nicene formula for dating Pascha is in a homily from 387 A.D. that is attributed to St. John Chrysostom: "Since we keep the first of times [spring], and the equinox [isimera], and after this the fourteenth of the moon, and together with these the three days Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; lacking any of these at one time it is impossible to fulfill the Pascha." (Citation 5: Chrysostom, Paschal Homily VII, Migne, ''Patrologiae graecae'' Vol. 59, col. 747A.) In summarizing the Paschalion, the homily makes no reference to any named month – lunar or solar – nor to any calendrical date – Julian or Jewish. Yet there were many tables of computed Paschal dates circulating in the 4th century.<br />
<br />
The computational system that eventually prevailed was based on calendrical experiments made at Alexandria beginning in the mid-3rd century. (Citation 6: The basic system can be found in the “Paschal Canon” of the Alexandrian scholar Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea, which was composed c. 277 A.D. See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf06.vi.iii.ii.i.html and following pages.) According to this system, Pascha is the first Sunday following the date of the Paschal Full Moon (PFM) for a given year. The computational PFM is not, however, as commonly thought, the first full moon following the vernal equinox. Rather, the PFM is the first Ecclesiastical Full Moon (EFM) date that falls on or after March 21 (or, what is the same thing, the first Ecclesiastical Full Moon that follows March 20). Ecclesiastical Full Moons are calendar dates that approximate astronomical full moons using a cycle that repeats every 19 years. March 21 was the date used by the Alexandrians for determining the PFM because it was near the date of the vernal equinox in the late 3rd and early 4th century A.D., when Paschal tables were first being compiled. This conventional, cyclical Paschalion is called Nicene because some commentators in later generations erroneously attributed it to the Nicene Council and came to treat it as canonical.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, the intention of the Nicene Fathers was to establish a simple set of rules that would allow Pascha to be dated independently of the Jewish calendar, and ensure that the basic chronological sequence of Passion and Resurrection as recorded in the Gospels was imitated every year. Insisting on Sunday as the only day suited to commemorating the Resurrection reveals their intention to imitate the chronology of the original event; and their preference for an astronomically determined vernal equinox is evident from the Eastern Church’s early adoption of the Alexandrian Paschal computations based on March 21st rather than March 25th, the conventional date of the vernal equinox on the Imperial Julian and Alexandrian calendars. (Citation 7: Until the 6th century the Paschal tables used in Rome were based on the conventional date of March 25th for the vernal equinox. Jones, “The Development of the Latin Ecclesiastical Calendar” in Bedae, ''Opera de Temporibus'' (Cambridge: Medieval Academy of America, 1943), pp. 1-104.)<br />
<br />
A thousand years later, the canonist Matthew Blastaris reaffirmed the importance of these four principles in a concise way: "First, that it is necessary to celebrate the Pascha after the spring equinox; second, that it is not the same day as the Jewish festival; third, that it is not merely after the equinox, but after the first full moon following the equinox; and fourth, that [it is] the Sunday immediately after the full moon." (Citation 8: Matthew Blastaris, ''Syntagma Alphabeticum,'' Migne, PG 145, 96D-97A.) Blastaris clearly states that it is the equinox and the full moon that determine the proper Sunday, not March 21st Julian - or Nisan 14/15 on the Hebrew calendar. But his second rule is open to misconstrual.<br />
<br />
The Nicene Council rejected the Quartodecimian practice of celebrating Pascha on “the same day as the Jewish festival [of Passover]” and adopted three rules that prevent that from happening except by coincidence. Yet Blastaris’ second rule is understood by some to mean that the date of Pascha must be moved in order to avoid coinciding with Passover. (Citation 9: See Agapios and Nicodemus, ''The Rudder (Pedalion),'' Masterjohn (tr.) 2006 “Apostolic Canon 7,” p. 115; available at http://orthodoxbahamas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/THE_RUDDER_Copyright__Ralph_J._Masterjohn_2006.pdf.) This reading of Blastaris, however, compromises the independence of the Christian Paschalion from the Jewish festal calendar and lends the so-called “Zonaras Proviso” canonical authority.<br />
<br />
§ The Zonaras Proviso<br />
The decision of the Nicene council concerning Pascha was that it should be computed independently of any Rabbinic computations: hence, a Paschalion that is consistent with Nicene principles cannot have any built-in dependence on the Jewish calendar. <br />
<br />
Nevertheless, since at least the 12th century it has been widely believed that Christian Pascha is required always to follow, and never coincide with, the first day of Passover, which was by then being celebrated on Nisan 15 in the Jewish calendar (that is, on the evening of the 14th day of the lunar month). By the 12th century the errors in the Julian calendar's equinoctial date and age of the moon had accumulated to the degree that Pascha did, in fact, always follow Jewish Nisan 15. This state of affairs continues to the present day, even though the Jewish calendar suffers from a slight solar drift of its own, because the Julian calendar's errors accumulate more rapidly than the Jewish calendar's. <br />
<br />
The 12th century canonist Joannes Zonaras seems to have been the first to state the principle that Pascha must always follow Jewish Nisan 15, so the principle is called the “Zonaras Proviso” after him. Upon examination, it appears that Zonaras derived his new rule from a misconstrual of Apostolic Canon 7, which reads as follows: "If any Bishop, or Presbyter, or Deacon celebrate the holy day of Easter before the vernal equinox with the Jews, let him be deposed." (Citation 10: ''The Rudder,'' Cummings ed. (Chicago: The Orthodox Christian Education Society, 1957), p. 9. Also, Agapios & Nicodemus, ''The Rudder,'' p. 113.)<br />
<br />
Zonaras found two prohibitions in this one statement: first, that Pascha must be celebrated after the vernal equinox; and second, that Pascha must never coincide with the Jewish feast of Passover. Although Zonaras’ second prohibition has no foundation in the 4th century historical context, or in the grammatical meaning of the sentence, it resembles the fourth (implicit) Nicene principle closely enough to be confused with it. That is, the rule that Christians are not to go along “with the Jews” in setting the date of Pascha has been confused with the fear that if Passover happens to coincide with an independently determined Pascha, Christians would be wrongfully praying “with the Jews” just because both are praying on the same day.<br />
<br />
§ The Byzantine Proposal of 1324 A.D.<br />
In the 14th century Nicephoras Gregoras calculated the current error in dating the vernal equinox to be three days, and proposed a reform of the Julian calendar to Andronicus II. The reform was not adopted, apparently from lack of popular or political support; and in fact would have corrected less than half of the seven-day error that actually existed at that time. (Citation 11: See Guiland, ''Essai sur Nicephore Gregoras'' (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1926), pp. 282-284. Also, ' 'Dictionnaire de Théogogie Catholique' ' (Paris, 1911) Tome 11, col. 455; and Welborn, ''Calendar Reform in the 13th Century'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Dissertation, 1935), p. 31.)<br />
<br />
§ The Gregorian Proposal of 1582 A.D.<br />
In October 1582, the Roman Catholic Church adopted a major calendar reform designed to correct the Julian calendar's defects. The Julian calendar then in common use was based on an average year of 365.25 days, slightly longer than the mean tropical year of 365.2422 days and the mean vernal equinox year of 365.2424 days. Since 19 Julian years were taken to be equal to 235 lunar months, the average lunar month in the Julian calendar was 29.530851 days, somewhat longer than the astronomical mean synodic month of 29.530589 days. The new calendar eliminated the 10-day drift in the vernal equinox, and the 3-to-4 day deviation in the age of the moon, that had accumulated since the Julian Paschalion had come into use, and laid down rules that would slow the rate of accumulation of errors in the future.<br />
<br />
The new calendar was called the Gregorian after its sponsor, Pope Gregory XIII, and Eastern churches was refused to adopt it on the grounds that the new Roman tables sometimes placed Pascha on the day of the vernal full moon, instead of after it as the Nicene principles required. In 1583 A.D the Council of Constantinople forbade use of the new calendar and Paschalion, making adherence to the Julian calendar a test of Orthodoxy in territories where Roman Catholic Uniate churches were being established.<br />
<br />
§ The Orthodox Proposal of 1923<br />
A congress of Orthodox bishops meeting in 1923 under the presidency of Patriarch Meletios IV agreed to set Pascha by means of precise astronomical computations referred to the meridian of Jerusalem, using a midnight to midnight day to date the full moon. (Citation 12: M. Milankovitch, "Das Ende des julianischen Kalenders und der neue Kalender der orientalischen Kirchen," ''Astronomische Nachrichten'' 220, 379-384(1924).) This agreement was never permanently implemented in any Orthodox diocese. But the Revised Julian calendar, a more accurate version of the Gregorian calendar, which was introduced by the same congress has been adopted by some jurisdictions for celebrating the fixed feasts of the liturgical year. <br />
<br />
§ The World Council of Churches Proposal of 1997 A.D.<br />
A consultation of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant delegates met in Aleppo, Syria and issued an agreed statement recommending that all member churches work toward a common method of dating Pascha based on the three original Nicene principles, but employing astronomical observations from the meridian of Jerusalem instead of any cyclical tabular computation. (Citation 13: See World Council of Churches / Middle East Council of Churches Consultation, “Towards a Common Date for Easter” (1997); available at http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/faith-and-order-commission/i-unity-the-church-and-its-mission/towards-a-common-date-for-easter/index?set_language=en.)<br />
<br />
This was essentially the same proposal as that of 1923 A.D., and was not implemented in the proposed year of 2001 A.D. when Eastern and Western dates for Pascha coincided. Resistance to such a reform by Orthodox jurisdictions is apparently rooted in respect for a widespread belief that March 21st Julian was designated by the Nicene Fathers to be the only true vernal equinox, and nourished by persistent fears that changing the received tradition for dating Pascha would endanger the integrity Orthodoxy’s witness to the Patristic Tradition by creating a purely “cosmetic” unity with other Churches. (Citation 14: For an example of this, see Fr. Luke Luhl, “The Proposal for a Common Date to Celebrate Pascha and Easter,” ''Orthodox Christian Information Center'' (1997); available at http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/common_luhl.aspx.)<br />
<br />
Here ends the rewrite. I know I've cited my own work once, but it was published in an edited journal thirty years ago so I think it's fair to use it. [[User:James C.|James C.]] 12:24, January 2, 2014 (PST)<br />
<br />
== Using "A.D." ==<br />
<br />
Unless there are "B.C." dates in an article, I am not sure that we need to use "A.D." -- at least not more than once. The article mentions a bishop being in the fourth century A.D., but it should go without saying that all bishops lived "A.D."<br />
<br />
But when we do use it, we should do so according to proper usage by placing the "A.D." before the year, e.g., "A.D. 325." --[[User:Fr Lev|Fr Lev]] 06:19, January 3, 2014 (PST)<br />
<br />
If "A.D." is an optional usage in this context, I would prefer to drop it entirely as being too cumbersome.[[User:James C.|James C.]] 07:02, January 3, 2014 (PST)</div>James C.https://orthodoxwiki.org/index.php?title=Talk:Paschalion&diff=118036Talk:Paschalion2014-01-02T20:24:17Z<p>James C.: A major rewrite for clarity and completeness</p>
<hr />
<div>The "Nicene Formula" section is misleading. One could infer from it that the council itself gave us the detailed formula involving March 20 and the EFM based on the 19-year lunar cycle. This is simply not true. These details were hashed out in the two centuries following the council. They constitute how the Church came to operationalize the council's decision that Pascha was to be observed on the Sunday following the full moon on or after the vernal equinox. But these details did not come from the council itself.--[[User:BALawrence|BALawrence]] 01:08, June 4, 2008 (UTC)<br />
<br />
: Feel free to fix it! :) &mdash;[[User:ASDamick|<font size="3.5" color="green" face="Adobe Garamond Pro, Garamond, Georgia, Times New Roman">Fr. Andrew</font>]] <sup>[[User_talk:ASDamick|<font color="red">talk</font>]]</sup> <small>[[Special:Contributions/ASDamick|<font color="black">contribs</font>]] <font face="Adobe Garamond Pro, Garamond, Georgia, Times New Roman">('''[[User:ASDamick/Wiki-philosophy|THINK!]]''')</font></small> 01:48, June 4, 2008 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The article as a whole would benefit from clarification and supplementation. I have prepared an extensive rewrite which I thought it might be more pleasant and efficient to post here first for comments. Only new sections or sections with extensive edits are shown:<br />
<br />
§ Paschalion<br />
The Paschalion of the Orthodox Church is a set of rules for determining the date of Pascha that traditionally has been implemented by calendrical tables combining Metonic lunar cycles with the Julian solar year. The rules are attributed to the First Ecumenical Council (held at Nicea in 325 A.D.); the cyclical Paschal tables that emerged in connection with the Council were based on 3rd and 4th century Alexandrian prototypes, and then transposed into Julian dates by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century. (Citation 1: See http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/dionysius_exiguus_easter_01.htm for the Paschal cycle of Dionysius; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysius_Exiguus for an account of the transposition.)<br />
<br />
§ Early History (last paragraph)<br />
The controversy was resolved at the Council of Nicea. Although the decision was not recorded as a canon, its synodal letter to the Church in Alexandria conveys “...the good news of the agreement concerning the holy Easter, ...that all our brethren in the East who formerly followed the custom of the Jews are henceforth to celebrate the said most sacred feast of Easter at the same time with the Romans and yourselves.” (Citation 2: See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.vii.ix.html.)<br />
<br />
The Emperor Constantine confirmed this agreement in an epistle to all churches, announcing two things: (1) "...the most holy festival of Easter should be everywhere celebrated on one and the same day. ...[So] cheerfully accept what is observed with such general unanimity of sentiment in the city of Rome, throughout Italy, Africa, all Egypt, Spain, France, Britain, Libya, the whole of Greece, and the dioceses of Asia, Pontus, and Cilicia;" and (2) "We have cast aside [the Jewish] way of calculating the date of the festival [because] ...we should never allow Easter to be kept twice in one and the same [solar] year!" (Citation 3: Eusebius, Vita Constantine III:18-20, ''Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers,'' Vol. 14, pp. 54-55. Also available at http://www.fourthcentury.com/index.php/urkunde-26.)<br />
<br />
Thus, the old custom of consulting the Jewish calculation of 14 Nisan and celebrating Pascha on that date was formally rejected, and the independent computations long in use at the influential city of Alexandria became the emerging, if still somewhat controversial, consensus. On the other hand, the comments of canonists, preachers, and chroniclers indicate that the old Quartodecimian custom of placing Easter in the month of Nisan as computed by the Jewish community continued to have adherents for generations.<br />
<br />
§ The Nicene Formula<br />
The Alexandrian and Roman methods of determining the date of Pascha were based on three principles: (1) Pascha was always after the vernal equinox, (2) it was to follow, but not coincide with, the first full moon of spring, and (3) it was always to be on a Sunday. A fourth principle – and one enunciated following Nicea I – is implicit in the first three: namely, (4) the date of Pascha was not to depend on the Jewish dates for Passover in any way. This last criterion was met by formulating the Paschalion entirely in terms of astronomical events and the weekly cycle of days. (Citation 4: For a fuller discussion, see James Campbell, “The Paschalion: An Icon of Time,” ''St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly,'' Vol. 28 No. 4 (1984) pp. 245-262.)<br />
<br />
One early text that gives an explicit outline of the Nicene formula for dating Pascha is in a homily from 387 A.D. that is attributed to St. John Chrysostom: "Since we keep the first of times [spring], and the equinox [isimera], and after this the fourteenth of the moon, and together with these the three days Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; lacking any of these at one time it is impossible to fulfill the Pascha." (Citation 5: Chrysostom, Paschal Homily VII, Migne, ''Patrologiae graecae'' Vol. 59, col. 747A.) In summarizing the Paschalion, the homily makes no reference to any named month – lunar or solar – nor to any calendrical date – Julian or Jewish. Yet there were many tables of computed Paschal dates circulating in the 4th century.<br />
<br />
The computational system that eventually prevailed was based on calendrical experiments made at Alexandria beginning in the mid-3rd century. (Citation 6: The basic system can be found in the “Paschal Canon” of the Alexandrian scholar Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea, which was composed c. 277 A.D. See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf06.vi.iii.ii.i.html and following pages.) According to this system, Pascha is the first Sunday following the date of the Paschal Full Moon (PFM) for a given year. The computational PFM is not, however, as commonly thought, the first full moon following the vernal equinox. Rather, the PFM is the first Ecclesiastical Full Moon (EFM) date that falls on or after March 21 (or, what is the same thing, the first Ecclesiastical Full Moon that follows March 20). Ecclesiastical Full Moons are calendar dates that approximate astronomical full moons using a cycle that repeats every 19 years. March 21 was the date used by the Alexandrians for determining the PFM because it was near the date of the vernal equinox in the late 3rd and early 4th century A.D., when Paschal tables were first being compiled. This conventional, cyclical Paschalion is called Nicene because some commentators in later generations erroneously attributed it to the Nicene Council and came to treat it as canonical.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, the intention of the Nicene Fathers was to establish a simple set of rules that would allow Pascha to be dated independently of the Jewish calendar, and ensure that the basic chronological sequence of Passion and Resurrection as recorded in the Gospels was imitated every year. Insisting on Sunday as the only day suited to commemorating the Resurrection reveals their intention to imitate the chronology of the original event; and their preference for an astronomically determined vernal equinox is evident from the Eastern Church’s early adoption of the Alexandrian Paschal computations based on March 21st rather than March 25th, the conventional date of the vernal equinox on the Imperial Julian and Alexandrian calendars. (Citation 7: Until the 6th century the Paschal tables used in Rome were based on the conventional date of March 25th for the vernal equinox. Jones, “The Development of the Latin Ecclesiastical Calendar” in Bedae, ''Opera de Temporibus'' (Cambridge: Medieval Academy of America, 1943), pp. 1-104.)<br />
<br />
A thousand years later, the canonist Matthew Blastaris reaffirmed the importance of these four principles in a concise way: "First, that it is necessary to celebrate the Pascha after the spring equinox; second, that it is not the same day as the Jewish festival; third, that it is not merely after the equinox, but after the first full moon following the equinox; and fourth, that [it is] the Sunday immediately after the full moon." (Citation 8: Matthew Blastaris, ''Syntagma Alphabeticum,'' Migne, PG 145, 96D-97A.) Blastaris clearly states that it is the equinox and the full moon that determine the proper Sunday, not March 21st Julian - or Nisan 14/15 on the Hebrew calendar. But his second rule is open to misconstrual.<br />
<br />
The Nicene Council rejected the Quartodecimian practice of celebrating Pascha on “the same day as the Jewish festival [of Passover]” and adopted three rules that prevent that from happening except by coincidence. Yet Blastaris’ second rule is understood by some to mean that the date of Pascha must be moved in order to avoid coinciding with Passover. (Citation 9: See Agapios and Nicodemus, ''The Rudder (Pedalion),'' Masterjohn (tr.) 2006 “Apostolic Canon 7,” p. 115; available at http://orthodoxbahamas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/THE_RUDDER_Copyright__Ralph_J._Masterjohn_2006.pdf.) This reading of Blastaris, however, compromises the independence of the Christian Paschalion from the Jewish festal calendar and lends the so-called “Zonaras Proviso” canonical authority.<br />
<br />
§ The Zonaras Proviso<br />
The decision of the Nicene council concerning Pascha was that it should be computed independently of any Rabbinic computations: hence, a Paschalion that is consistent with Nicene principles cannot have any built-in dependence on the Jewish calendar. <br />
<br />
Nevertheless, since at least the 12th century it has been widely believed that Christian Pascha is required always to follow, and never coincide with, the first day of Passover, which was by then being celebrated on Nisan 15 in the Jewish calendar (that is, on the evening of the 14th day of the lunar month). By the 12th century the errors in the Julian calendar's equinoctial date and age of the moon had accumulated to the degree that Pascha did, in fact, always follow Jewish Nisan 15. This state of affairs continues to the present day, even though the Jewish calendar suffers from a slight solar drift of its own, because the Julian calendar's errors accumulate more rapidly than the Jewish calendar's. <br />
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The 12th century canonist Joannes Zonaras seems to have been the first to state the principle that Pascha must always follow Jewish Nisan 15, so the principle is called the “Zonaras Proviso” after him. Upon examination, it appears that Zonaras derived his new rule from a misconstrual of Apostolic Canon 7, which reads as follows: "If any Bishop, or Presbyter, or Deacon celebrate the holy day of Easter before the vernal equinox with the Jews, let him be deposed." (Citation 10: ''The Rudder,'' Cummings ed. (Chicago: The Orthodox Christian Education Society, 1957), p. 9. Also, Agapios & Nicodemus, ''The Rudder,'' p. 113.)<br />
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Zonaras found two prohibitions in this one statement: first, that Pascha must be celebrated after the vernal equinox; and second, that Pascha must never coincide with the Jewish feast of Passover. Although Zonaras’ second prohibition has no foundation in the 4th century historical context, or in the grammatical meaning of the sentence, it resembles the fourth (implicit) Nicene principle closely enough to be confused with it. That is, the rule that Christians are not to go along “with the Jews” in setting the date of Pascha has been confused with the fear that if Passover happens to coincide with an independently determined Pascha, Christians would be wrongfully praying “with the Jews” just because both are praying on the same day.<br />
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§ The Byzantine Proposal of 1324 A.D.<br />
In the 14th century Nicephoras Gregoras calculated the current error in dating the vernal equinox to be three days, and proposed a reform of the Julian calendar to Andronicus II. The reform was not adopted, apparently from lack of popular or political support; and in fact would have corrected less than half of the seven-day error that actually existed at that time. (Citation 11: See Guiland, ''Essai sur Nicephore Gregoras'' (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1926), pp. 282-284. Also, ' 'Dictionnaire de Théogogie Catholique' ' (Paris, 1911) Tome 11, col. 455; and Welborn, ''Calendar Reform in the 13th Century'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Dissertation, 1935), p. 31.)<br />
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§ The Gregorian Proposal of 1582 A.D.<br />
In October 1582, the Roman Catholic Church adopted a major calendar reform designed to correct the Julian calendar's defects. The Julian calendar then in common use was based on an average year of 365.25 days, slightly longer than the mean tropical year of 365.2422 days and the mean vernal equinox year of 365.2424 days. Since 19 Julian years were taken to be equal to 235 lunar months, the average lunar month in the Julian calendar was 29.530851 days, somewhat longer than the astronomical mean synodic month of 29.530589 days. The new calendar eliminated the 10-day drift in the vernal equinox, and the 3-to-4 day deviation in the age of the moon, that had accumulated since the Julian Paschalion had come into use, and laid down rules that would slow the rate of accumulation of errors in the future.<br />
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The new calendar was called the Gregorian after its sponsor, Pope Gregory XIII, and Eastern churches was refused to adopt it on the grounds that the new Roman tables sometimes placed Pascha on the day of the vernal full moon, instead of after it as the Nicene principles required. In 1583 A.D the Council of Constantinople forbade use of the new calendar and Paschalion, making adherence to the Julian calendar a test of Orthodoxy in territories where Roman Catholic Uniate churches were being established.<br />
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§ The Orthodox Proposal of 1923<br />
A congress of Orthodox bishops meeting in 1923 under the presidency of Patriarch Meletios IV agreed to set Pascha by means of precise astronomical computations referred to the meridian of Jerusalem, using a midnight to midnight day to date the full moon. (Citation 12: M. Milankovitch, "Das Ende des julianischen Kalenders und der neue Kalender der orientalischen Kirchen," ''Astronomische Nachrichten'' 220, 379-384(1924).) This agreement was never permanently implemented in any Orthodox diocese. But the Revised Julian calendar, a more accurate version of the Gregorian calendar, which was introduced by the same congress has been adopted by some jurisdictions for celebrating the fixed feasts of the liturgical year. <br />
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§ The World Council of Churches Proposal of 1997 A.D.<br />
A consultation of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant delegates met in Aleppo, Syria and issued an agreed statement recommending that all member churches work toward a common method of dating Pascha based on the three original Nicene principles, but employing astronomical observations from the meridian of Jerusalem instead of any cyclical tabular computation. (Citation 13: See World Council of Churches / Middle East Council of Churches Consultation, “Towards a Common Date for Easter” (1997); available at http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/faith-and-order-commission/i-unity-the-church-and-its-mission/towards-a-common-date-for-easter/index?set_language=en.)<br />
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This was essentially the same proposal as that of 1923 A.D., and was not implemented in the proposed year of 2001 A.D. when Eastern and Western dates for Pascha coincided. Resistance to such a reform by Orthodox jurisdictions is apparently rooted in respect for a widespread belief that March 21st Julian was designated by the Nicene Fathers to be the only true vernal equinox, and nourished by persistent fears that changing the received tradition for dating Pascha would endanger the integrity Orthodoxy’s witness to the Patristic Tradition by creating a purely “cosmetic” unity with other Churches. (Citation 14: For an example of this, see Fr. Luke Luhl, “The Proposal for a Common Date to Celebrate Pascha and Easter,” ''Orthodox Christian Information Center'' (1997); available at http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/common_luhl.aspx.)<br />
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Here ends the rewrite. I know I've cited my own work once, but it was published in an edited journal thirty years ago so I think it's fair to use it. [[User:James C.|James C.]] 12:24, January 2, 2014 (PST)</div>James C.https://orthodoxwiki.org/index.php?title=User:James_C.&diff=117828User:James C.2013-12-08T22:40:15Z<p>James C.: </p>
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<div>Work experience (1): Zookeeper, 1976-1994; Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago, IL<br />
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Adult baptism, 1979; Church of Our Saviour, Chicago (Episcopalian)<br />
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Received by chrismation, 1981; Holy Trinity Cathedral, Chicago (OCA)<br />
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Parishioner (1): Holy Trinity Cathedral, Chicago (OCA), 1981-2003<br />
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Master of General Studies (Sociology), 1984; Roosevelt University, Chicago<br />
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Publication: "The Paschalion: An Icon of Time" St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 28.4, 1984<br />
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Unpublished study: "A Brief Introduction to the Liturgy of St. Peter – with translations by Fr. James Doyle" 1985-1999<br />
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Master of Arts in Divinity, 1990; The University of Chicago<br />
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Married, 1990; Holy Trinity Cathedral, Chicago (OCA)<br />
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Publication: "Taking Responsibility for Evil: Addiction and Usury in the Light of Repentance" in Chirban (ed.), Ethical Dilemmas: Crises in Faith and Modern Medicine, 1994<br />
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Work experience (2): Landscape Designer, 1997-2008; McHenry County, IL<br />
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Work experience (3): Adjunct Instructor in World Religions 1997-present; McHenry County College, Crystal Lake, IL<br />
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Parishioner (2): Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church, Palatine, IL (OCA), 2003-present<br />
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Publication: "Dispelling the Fog about Direct Taxation," British Journal of American Legal Studies 1.1, 2012<br />
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Publication: "The Qur'anic Revolution in the Condemnation of Usury," in Ellens (ed.), Winning Revolutions 3: The Psychological Dynamics of Economic Revolts, 2013</div>James C.https://orthodoxwiki.org/index.php?title=User:James_C.&diff=117827User:James C.2013-12-08T22:38:59Z<p>James C.: </p>
<hr />
<div>Work experience (1): Zookeeper, 1976-1994; Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago, IL<br />
<br />
Adult baptism, 1979; Church of Our Saviour, Chicago (Episcopalian)<br />
<br />
Received by chrismation, 1981; Holy Trinity Cathedral, Chicago (OCA)<br />
<br />
Parishioner (1): Holy Trinity Cathedral, Chicago (OCA), 1981-2003 <br />
Master of General Studies (Sociology), 1984; Roosevelt University, Chicago<br />
Publication: "The Paschalion: An Icon of Time" St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 28.4, 1984<br />
Unpublished study: "A Brief Introduction to the Liturgy of St. Peter – with translations by Fr. James Doyle" 1985-1999<br />
Master of Arts in Divinity, 1990; The University of Chicago<br />
Married, 1990; Holy Trinity Cathedral, Chicago (OCA)<br />
Publication: "Taking Responsibility for Evil: Addiction and Usury in the Light of Repentance" in Chirban (ed.), Ethical Dilemmas: Crises in Faith and Modern Medicine, 1994<br />
Work experience (2): Landscape Designer, 1997-2008; McHenry County, IL<br />
Work experience (3): Adjunct Instructor in World Religions 1997-present; McHenry County College, Crystal Lake, IL<br />
Parishioner (2): Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church, Palatine, IL (OCA), 2003-present<br />
Publication: "Dispelling the Fog about Direct Taxation," British Journal of American Legal Studies 1.1, 2012<br />
Publication: "The Qur'anic Revolution in the Condemnation of Usury," in Ellens (ed.), Winning Revolutions 3: The Psychological Dynamics of Economic Revolts, 2013</div>James C.