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Dec 29th, 2019
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Joined: May 2007
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It's important to maintain a connection between the Jewish Passover and the Christian Pascha. Both are linked to the solar and lunar cycles, and both should continue to do so. It is not necessary that the old and new Passovers should fall together (Quartodecimanism), but we have come far enough that we should not mind if they do. Proselytizing Judaism poses no threat to the Church. I think you've missed my point. The significance is that the Church rejected the specified (in scripture for Passover) solar/lunar, yearly/monthly, equinox/full-moon reckoning, whereby the feast could occur on any day of the week, with the insistence that for the Christian feast, it must conform to the seven day cycle of the week, that it must be a Sunday. Unity was NOT the unqualified objective. Something like "let's just go along with the Quartodecimans for the sake of unity, you know they'll never change" was not accepted as a solution. Is/was it important that the yearly feast of Pascha be celebrated on a Sunday? I'd say the Church of the 4th century decided it was. Is it likewise important that it actually be on that Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox? If the Sunday part is important enough, shouldn't we want to get it completely right?
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None of this matters for us because we are not the ones who decide the dates of Easter when it comes down to it, it is the Hierarchy who do this, and they know more about this subject than we do. We must not be walking around with the title ''self styled expert'' above our heads because we are not. The Gregorian calendar itself is still "inaccurate" if you read the article. The article being the Aleppo recommendations, Towards a Common Date of Easter [ oikoumene.org]. Aleppo avoids the issue of a calendar and just uses the most accurate astronomical data. In doing so it arbitrarily but with reasonableness must specify some place on earth to make the determination. This is an added element to the rule attributed to Nicaea. Also, since the Aleppo approach can be applied to any calendar, it does not address Nicaea's fixing the date of the vernal equinox to what is now 21 March on the present civil calendar; this is something that the Gregorian reform did implement. Furthermore, all calendar's are inherently approximate to some degree. The Aleppo data does not imply that the Gregorian calendar is not correct just because there are a very few differences. There is a sure test, however, if you can believe your own eyes, and this year the dates for the Gregorian and Julian Paschalion allow a quick evaluation to be made. Both calendars agree that the vernal equinox has occurred though the timing (dates) differs. Next there must be a full moon with the following Sunday being Pascha according to the prescription attributed to Nicaea. So go out tonight and look up at the sky (hopefully clear). Observe the moon. You should find it quite full [in fact full for NEW YORK = Friday * 6th April 2012 * 03:18:42 pm (EDT)]. So the next Sunday, 8 April, is Pascha if one follows the Fathers, the Hierarchy. Go out a week later and make the same observation. How can the Julian date for Pascha in any reasonable way be said to conform to Nicaea given the actual observation of the skys? [What will be observed is shown at Moon Phases April 2012 [ tutiempo.net]. Note the full moon on the 6th followed by a fairly full moon on the following Sunday of the 8th, but a significantly waning moon on Sunday the 15th. Clearly the Sunday of 8 April is the one after the full moon and not the Sunday of 15 April (2 April on the Julian calendar) the date according to the Julian Paschalion.]
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I think the best way to choose a common date for Easter is just to follow the Jewish Passover. Holy Thursday should fall within the Passover since it was a Seder. So this year, the Western Holy Thursday occurs before Passover begins, where as the Orthodox Holy Thursday occurs during during Passover. Next year it will be different. The Western Holy Thursday will occur during Passover and the Orthodox Holy Thursday will occur a whole month after the Passover. This way no one should be offended. We won't be choosing the Orthodox date over the Western date or vis versa.
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It's important to maintain a connection between the Jewish Passover and the Christian Pascha. Both are linked to the solar and lunar cycles, and both should continue to do so. It is not necessary that the old and new Passovers should fall together (Quartodecimanism), but we have come far enough that we should not mind if they do. Proselytizing Judaism poses no threat to the Church. I think you've missed my point. The significance is that the Church rejected the specified (in scripture for Passover) solar/lunar, yearly/monthly, equinox/full-moon reckoning, whereby the feast could occur on any day of the week, with the insistence that for the Christian feast, it must conform to the seven day cycle of the week, that it must be a Sunday. Unity was NOT the unqualified objective. Something like "let's just go along with the Quartodecimans for the sake of unity, you know they'll never change" was not accepted as a solution. Is/was it important that the yearly feast of Pascha be celebrated on a Sunday? I'd say the Church of the 4th century decided it was. Is it likewise important that it actually be on that Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox? If the Sunday part is important enough, shouldn't we want to get it completely right? What happened with the seven day cycle when the switch was made from Julian to Gregorian and ten (or eleven, depending on the year of changeover) were cut from the month of October? Did the date advance from, let us say, Tuesday October 4 to Wednesday October 14? If not, the seven day cycle was broken centuries ago and neither calendar would be correct. This being the Triduum I do not have time or inclination to engage in a research project until Bright Week.
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Answered my own question (thanks, Google and Wikipedia): The seven day cycle was not interrupted when the changeover occurred in 1562--folks went to bed on Friday, woke up on Saturday but it was 10 days later.
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Tex: Christ is in our midst!! He is and always will be!! Welcome to the forum. I think the best way to choose a common date for Easter is just to follow the Jewish Passover. That said, many of our Eastern brethren interpret the calculation mandated by the First Ecumenical Council to preclude any overlap with the Jewish Passover. So your proposal is a non-starter fromt he get-go. Bob Moderator
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Answered my own question (thanks, Google and Wikipedia): The seven day cycle was not interrupted when the changeover occurred in 1562--folks went to bed on Friday, woke up on Saturday but it was 10 days later. That's right -- the year though was 1582 and the jump was Thurs. Oct.4 to Friday Oct.15. The last day of the Julian calendar was Thursday, 4 October 1582 and this was followed by the first day of the Gregorian calendar, Friday, 15 October 1582 (the cycle of weekdays was not affected). [ en.wikipedia.org] The primary source, the Bull Inter Gravissimas ( link [ bluewaterarts.com] ), addresses this but somewhat incidentally in §7: So thus that the vernal equinox, which was fixed by the fathers of the [first] Nicene Council at XII calends April [March 21], is replaced on this date, we prescribe and order that there is removed, from October of the year the 1582, the ten days which go from the third before Nones [the 5th] through the day before the Ides [the 14th] inclusively. The day which will follow IV Nones [the 4th], where one traditionally celebrates Saint Francis [of Assisi] , shall be the Ides of October [the 15th], and there shall be celebrated this day the festival of the martyred Saints Denis [Bishop of Paris, previously confused with Dionysius the Areopagite], Rusticus [a priest of Denis'], and Eleutherius [a deacon of Denis, feast day October 9 for all three], as well as the memory of Saint Mark, [feast day October 7] pope and confessor, and of the martyred Saints Sergius, Bacchus, Marcellus and Apuleius [feast day October 7]. There shall be celebrated the following day, seventeenth calends November [October 16th], the festival of Saint Callistus [Ι], pope and martyr [feast day October 14] ; and then shall come XVI calends November [October 17th], the office and the mass of the 18th Sunday after Pentecost; the Sunday letter shall pass from G to C. Finally shall come the place of the fifteenth calends November [October 18th], the festival of Saint Luke the evangelist [feast day October 18] , after which will follow one another the other feastdays, in the way they are described in the calendar. All bracketed remarks are not in the original but give the corresponding dates for the current calendar numbering. The key directive for the sequence of the days is that Oct. 17 is a Sunday in the new calendar as the Bull notes. The last day of the old calendar was Thursday, Oct. 4. Ten days were omitted, Oct. 5-14, the next day, keeping the sequence, should then be Friday, Oct. 15, then Sat. Oct. 16, followed by Sunday, Oct. 17 just as Pope Gregory stipulated in the Bull. BTW, reading the Bull again, I find it a very well written document, clear, thorough yet succinct. The reform it produced was of the highest quality allowing only the most reasonable of necessary compromises. It is not surprising then that it has become the Earth's common yearly timekeeper: The most widespread civil calendar and de facto international standard is the Gregorian calendar. Though that calendar is associated with the Catholic Church and the papacy, it has been adopted, as a matter of convenience, by many secular and non-Christian countries. [ en.wikipedia.org]
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When England finally switched over in 1757, there were riots in London because workers thought they had been cheated out of ten days' pay. In 1805, the Austrian Army was surrounded at Ulm by the French under Napoleon, because, having failed to account for the ten day difference between the Gregorian Calendar (used by the Austrians) and the Julian Calendar (used by the Russians), they thought the Russian Army would arrive to relieve them before they were trapped.
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When England finally switched over in 1757, there were riots in London because workers thought they had been cheated out of ten days' pay. Not so much the 10 days pay, but the fact that rents were due 10 days sooner--with 10 days fewer wages with which to pay them.
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When England finally switched over in 1757, there were riots in London because workers thought they had been cheated out of ten days' pay. Not so much the 10 days pay, but the fact that rents were due 10 days sooner--with 10 days fewer wages with which to pay them. Apart from how fairly the removal of days was actually taken into account, the Bull foresaw the potential for problems and a directive was give in its §8: But so that this ten days removal does not cause any injury with whomever must carry out monthly or annual payments, it will fall to the judges, in any litigation which could result from it, to take account of the aforementioned removal by deferring ten days the expiration of any payment. [ bluewaterarts.com]
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] Apart from how fairly the removal of days was actually taken into account, the Bull foresaw the potential for problems and a directive was give in its §8: But so that this ten days removal does not cause any injury with whomever must carry out monthly or annual payments, it will fall to the judges, in any litigation which could result from it, to take account of the aforementioned removal by deferring ten days the expiration of any payment. [ bluewaterarts.com] Aye, but it could hardly have been expected that staunchly Protestant England, which had resisted the Gregorian calendar for nearly two centuries on the grounds of rejection of Papal authority, would enthusiatically comply with a section of the Papal Bull that carried real economic consequences.
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When England finally switched over in 1757, there were riots in London because workers thought they had been cheated out of ten days' pay. Not so much the 10 days pay, but the fact that rents were due 10 days sooner--with 10 days fewer wages with which to pay them. By that time the correction had increased to 11 days. There is also some reservation about the report of rioting: Britain and the British Empire (including the eastern part of what is now the United States) adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, by which time it was necessary to correct by 11 days. Wednesday, 2 September 1752 was followed by Thursday, 14 September 1752. Claims that rioters demanded "Give us our eleven days" grew out of a misinterpretation of a painting by William Hogarth. [ en.wikipedia.org] It has been reported in some history books that a number of the public rioted after the calendar change, requesting that their "eleven days" be returned. However, it is very likely this is a myth, being based on only two primary sources: The World, a satirical journal of Lord Chesterfield and a painting by William Hogarth. [ en.wikipedia.org]
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A story like that could be true if it wanted to be.
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