In the year 616 an anonymous scholar extended

Dionysius Exiguus' Easter table Dionysius Exiguus's Easter table was constructed in the year 525 by Dionysius Exiguus for the years 532–626. He obtained it from an Easter table attributed to Patriarch Cyril of Alexandria for the years 437–531. The latter was constructed aroun ...

to an Easter table covering the years 532 up to and including 721. Dionysius' table was published in 525 and only a century later accepted by the church of Rome, which from the third century up till then had given preference to go on using her own, relatively inadequate, Easter tables. From about the middle of the seventh century all controversy between Alexandria and Rome as to the correct date of Easter ceased, as both churches were now using identical tables. In the year 725 Bede (Latin name Beda Venerabilis) published a new extension of Dionysius’ Easter table to a great Easter cycle, which is periodic in its entirety and in which consequently not only the sequence of (

Julian calendar The Julian calendar, proposed by Roman consul Julius Caesar in 46 BC, was a reform of the Roman calendar. It took effect on , by edict. It was designed with the aid of Greek mathematicians and astronomers such as Sosigenes of Alexandr ...

) dates of Alexandrian Paschal full moon but also the sequence of (Julian calendar) dates of Alexandrian

Easter Sunday Easter,Traditional names for the feast in English are "Easter Day", as in the ''Book of Common Prayer''; "Easter Sunday", used by James Ussher''The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, Volume 4'') and Samuel Pepys''The Diary of Samuel P ...

is periodic. Bede's Easter cycle contains lunar cycles (of 19 years) as well as solar cycles (of 28 years), and therefore it has a period of 532 years. In the

Byzantine empire The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

thanks to the Paschal cycle of

Annianus of Alexandria Annianus of Alexandria ( grc-gre, italic=yes, Annianos) was a monk who flourished in Alexandria during the bishopric of Theophilus of Alexandria around the beginning of the 5thcentury. He criticized the world history of his contemporary monk Pano ...

at all times the churches were acquainted with the correct date of the next Easter Sunday. It is Beda Venerabilis’ Easter cycle by means of which also the churches in the part of Europe outside the Byzantine empire got that possibility.

References

* Faith Wallis, ''Bede: The Reckoning of Time'' (Liverpool University Press, 2004) * Georges Declercq, ''Anno Domini: The origins of the Christian era'' (Brepols, Turnhout, Belgium, 2000) Chronology Easter date {{time-stub

See also

References