Paschal Lunar Calendars up to Bede

Leofranc Holford-Strevens
Abstract. Once christians had found it necessary to calculate the date of Easter for themselves, they constructed Easter tables based on cycles of 112, 84, or 19 years in accordance with notions of limits
between which the lunar and solar dates of the festival could fall. This paper considers, and seeks to
reconstruct, the lunar calendars underlying the cycles proposed by computists from Hippolytus to
Bede, from which in principle the lunar age of any date in any year could be determined. It also reviews
the attempts made at such reconstruction by medieval scribes.
Keywords: Alexandria, Bede, De ratione conputandi, Easter, embolism, epact, Hippolytus, Latercus, luna
XIIII, lunar calendar, Paschal cycle, Rome, saltus, Supputatio Romana
Leofranc Holford-Strevens,
67 St Bernards Road, Oxford OX2 6EJ
aulus@gellius.demon.co.uk
Peritia 20 (2008) 165208

ISBN 978-2-503-51764-3

The first christians, being Jews, celebrated Passover on 14 Nisan,1 reinterpreting

it to commemorate the redemptive crucifixion; this practice endured amongst
gentile christians in Asia Minor, but elsewhere gave way to a festival on the following Sunday in honour of the triumphant resurrection, which had previously
been understood as celebrated on the Lords Day every week. By the third century, moreover, most christians had decided that they must settle the date for
themselves without reference to what local Jews (if any) were doing; this entailed
establishing the incidence of the First Month and specifically of its fourteenth
day, known in Latin as luna quarta decima or terminus Paschalis, in Greek as 
% , the fourteenth (day), or ^ % % , the Pascha of
the [Jewish] Law, before locating the next Sunday.
Furthermore, once the practice had been established of fasting for a considerable period before Easter, christians could not wait to observe the waxing moon
and appoint the next Sunday for the feast, but had to calculate the incidence of
luna XIIII in advance. It thus became necessary to employ a lunar calendar, which
very few communities outside mainland Greece are known to have still main-

1. Throughout New Testament and patristic times Passover was understood as 14 Nisan, the
day appointed for the slaughter of the Paschal lamb, not as in modern usage the 15th (and in the
Diaspora the 16th).