Putland Uncensored
Letters — including some that didn't get past the Editor
Tuesday, March 28, 1995:
Paschal passions
[The original version of the following article, which was rejected by the Australian, was intended for publication on April 15, 1995. This slightly edited version was posted here on December 23, 2007.]
At midnight tonight, Anglican and Catholic churches across Australia will be filled for traditional Easter services. But for the half-million Australians of the Orthodox faith, time marches to a different drum: today is Lazarus Saturday, tomorrow is Palm Sunday, and Easter is still eight days away.
The word Easter is of pagan origin, being a corruption of Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon name for the goddess of spring. The Orthodox prefer the term Pascha, which is simply the New Testament word for Passover, for Christ is regarded as the new Paschal Lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7) and His Resurrection as the new Passover.
For this reason some early Christian communities celebrated the Resurrection on the day of Passover, which could fall on any day of the week. In astronomical terms, Passover was the first full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox. In religious terms, it was the 14th day of the lunar month of Nisan, wherefore those who observed the new Pascha on this day were called Quartodecimans (Latin quartusdecimus = 14th). The most famous Quartodeciman was St. Polycarp, the martyred bishop of Smyrna, who evidently received this tradition from his mentor, the Apostle and Evangelist St. John.
Other Churches, including the prestigious Apostolic sees of Rome and Alexandria, observed the new Pascha on the Sunday after the Jewish Passover, this being the day of the Resurrection according to the Gospels.
In the year 325, the Council of Nicaea endorsed the Roman/Alexandrian practice, emphasizing that the Lord's Pascha should be observed everywhere on the same day, namely the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox. The Resurrection would therefore be celebrated under a waning gibbous moon, which would rise after sunset and before midnight.
Unfortunately the Nicene decree was not as clear as it seemed. To allow for the planning of pre-Paschal services, the lunar months had to be predicted using calendric cycles. Rome and Alexandria used different cycles, the Romans predicting the full moon too soon and the Alexandrians too late. The date of the vernal equinox — when the sun crosses the plane of the earth's equator from south to north — was also disputed, the Romans preferring March 18 (on the Julian calendar) and the Alexandrians March 21. So the two Churches continued to disagree over the date of Pascha.
The Alexandrian calculation proved to be more accurate. It assumed that 19 years equal 235 lunar months, so that the epacts repeat in a 19-year cycle (the epact of a year is the age of the moon on January 1). The 19-year cycle had influential supporters in the West, including St. Ambrose and Pope Leo the Great. In the year 463, Victor of Aquitaine extended the system by combining the 19-year lunar cycle with the 28-year solar cycle (the period after which the first day of the Julian year returns to the same day of the week) to produce a "Paschal Cycle" of 532 years. In 525, the Paschal Cycle was adopted by Pope John I on the advice of the monk Dionysius Exiguus (Denis the Little). Dionysius also counted the first Paschal Cycle from the estimated year of Christ's birth, and thus invented the Christian Era. His system was taken to Canterbury by St. Augustine and ultimately prevailed in the British Isles. By 800, all of Christendom had a common date of Pascha.
Unfortunately the date was inaccurate. The Dionysian system used the Julian year of 365.25 days, which was slightly longer than the true tropical year (equinox to equinox), causing the calendar year to fall behind the tropical year at the rate of one day every 128 years. The 19-Julian-year lunar cycle was also slightly longer than 235 lunar months, causing the predicted full moon to fall behind the actual full moon by one day every 310 years.
These discrepancies were noted by Byzantine astronomers as early as 1382, but no corrective action was agreed upon. In the west, however, the Council of Trent requested a solution, which was eventually provided by the astronomers Luigi Lilio and Christopher Clavius. To return the equinox to March 21, ten days should added to the date. To arrest the “creep” in the date of the equinox, only one in every four centennial years should be a leap year. To correct the error in the Alexandrian lunar cycle, the epact should be increased by one day eight times in 2500 years. Then, to adjust for the new rule concerning leap years, the epact should be reduced by one day in every ordinary centennial year. These proposals were accepted by Pope Gregory XIII, and took effect on 5/15 October, 1582.
Not surprisingly, Gregory's decree was accepted by Catholic governments and rejected by Protestant ones. To seek the support of the Orthodox, Gregory sent a delegation to Constantinople. But in November 1583 a council of Orthodox bishops, including three Patriarchs, rejected Gregory's reforms as uncanonical. Another council confirmed this decision in 1593.
At first sight the Orthodox decision seems incomprehensible, because the new calendar, by computing the equinox and the epacts more accurately, followed the Nicene canons more closely than the old. But this was not the only issue at stake. Nicaea had also decreed that Pascha should be celebrated everywhere on the same day. The common date had been achieved with great difficulty, and had survived the calamitous doctrinal disputes that had divided Christianity into Orthodox, Roman and Protestant factions. Now Pope Gregory, by changing the date of Pascha without prior consultation, had broken the unity of Pascha. The Protestants had not followed him. Even if the Orthodox bishops in Constantinople had been minded to follow, there was no guarantee that they could carry the rest of the Orthodox world with them, because not all Orthodox jurisdictions were represented at their councils. The safe option was to reject the Pope's initiative.
The modern situation is different; for better or worse, all the Protestant Churches have now accepted the new calendar, and only the Orthodox Church makes any use of the old. If the Orthodox Church were to adopt the new calendar today, it would restore the unity which was first broken by Rome.
Acceptance of the western calendar would assist Orthodox ecumenical efforts. Orthodoxy claims to be the one true Christian faith; the Orthodox model of Christian reunion is that non-Orthodox Christians, either individually or collectively, should profess Orthodox beliefs. This is a hard saying which few can hear. When the saying is accompanied by demands to accept a strange calendar, imposing a time barrier between oneself and one's family and culture, even fewer will hear it.
The calendar problem was examined at an inter-Orthodox congress in Constantinople in 1923. Following this congress, most Orthodox jurisdictions adopted the New calendar for the fixed feasts only, i.e. for the feasts that are held on fixed dates and not tied to the date of Pascha. But the Churches of Jerusalem, Russia, Serbia, Georgia and Poland, together with the monasteries of Mt. Athos, made no change. Moreover, the congress did not authorize the use of the New calendar for dating Pascha; there was never any chance that it would do so, because not all Orthodox jurisdictions were represented. In particular, the Church of Russia — by far the largest national Church — was being persecuted on a scale unprecedented in the history of Christianity.
Calendar reform is an emotive subject. Orthodox fundamentalists are not likely to understand the technicalities of equinoxes and epacts. They are much more likely to know that the Gregorian calendar was invented by Roman Catholics and imposed on Russia by the Bolsheviks. Thus the Gregorian calendar seems tainted by heresy and apostasy. The Julian calendar, by default, seems to carry divine authority, although in fact it was invented by pagan astronomers in ancient Rome.
In the Greek Church, the use of two calendars — the new for the fixed feasts and the old for the movable feasts — leads to some liturgical absurdities; for example, a fixed feast can fall before Pascha when the liturgical text assumes that it always follows Pascha. The Old Calendarists cite this problem as proof that we must use the old calendar for both fixed and movable feasts. But, of course, using the new calendar for both purposes would also solve the problem. Only a universal council of the Orthodox Church can settle this argument, because only a universal council can ensure that any new date for Pascha is adopted simultaneously throughout the Orthodox world, preserving the unity demanded by Nicaea.
For the time being, the Orthodox still observe Pascha according to the Alexandrian system. The equinox is reckoned as March 21 on the old calendar, which is April 3 on the new calendar. Thus the first full moon after the true equinox may be missed, delaying Pascha by four weeks. The ecclesiastical full moon is also later than the true full moon, so that the first Sunday after the true full moon may also be missed, causing an additional delay of one week. Hence, in a particular year, the Orthodox Pascha may coincide with the western Easter or may be delayed by one, four or five weeks.
In 1995, the difference is one week — the “Easter moon” will rise for the Catholics and Protestants, but not for the Orthodox.
