Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
De controversia Paschali (Author: Cummianus Hibernus)

paragraph 12

Finally I thoroughly examined the cycles of different computations to see what each language thinks about the course of the sun and the moon, and I found cycles that are in disagreement with the one which you hold, although

p.85

diversely one in the day, another in the moon, another in the month, another in the bissextile, another in the epact, and another in the lunar augment (which you call the saltus). The first is that which holy Patrick, our bishop, brought and followed, in which the moon is regularly observed from the fourteenth to the twenty-first, and the equinox from March 21st.1 Secondly, I found Anatolius (whom you extol) who says that those who observe a cycle of eighty-four years can never arrive’’

Ps.-Anatolius, Canon paschalis 1 (Krusch, Studien 1: 317)

at the correct reckoning of

p.87

Easter. Thirdly Theophilus;2 fourth Dionysius;3 fifth Cyril; sixth Morinus;4 seventh Augustine;5 eighth Victorius;6 ninth the monk Pacomius, founder of the monasteries of Egypt, to whom the reckoning of Easter was dictated by an angel7; tenth the nineteen-year cycle of the 318 bishops which is called 'enneacedeciterida' in Greek’’

Ps.-Pacomius, Versus de Pascha (Strecker, MGH PLMA 4/2: 670-671)

in which the Kalends of January and the moons of that same day, the beginnings of the First Month and the fourteenth moons of that month have been correctly noted, as if by a most clear path, leaving aside the shadows of ignorance,’’

for studious men for all times, by which the feast of Easter can with certainty be found. Indeed, I found this cycle contrary in the kalends, the bissextile, the epact, the fourteenth moon, the First Month and the equinox to that one whose author, place and time we are uncertain of. Note, as Cyril says, that the Council of Nicaea ordained the fourteenth

p.89

moons of all years through the nineteen-year cycle’’

Ps.-Cyrillus, Ep. de Pascha (Krusch, Studien 1: 346-349)

(which Victorius made return to where it started through twenty-eight turns with 532 kalends and 133 bissextiles), so that we may not be deceived in the moon of the First Month and so that we should celebrate Easter on the following Sunday, and not keep it on the fourteenth moon with the Jews and heretics who are called Thesserescedecadite. [And it was decided, he says,] in all the synods except the synods of Gangrensis and of Caesaraea that no church or city or any region should act contrary to these things which were laid down concerning Easter in the Nicene Council. And if the Nicene Council had not written the lunar cycle of the First Month, the cycle of the Selenite stone of Persia would suffice as a pattern for the Paschal reckoning, the inner brightness of which waxes and wanes with the moon of the First Month; so that we should not make a common year from an embolismic and an embolismic from a common’’

Ps. Cyrillus, Ep. de Pascha (Krusch, Studien 1: 347-348)

(that is a short lunar year of twelve months from a long, that is a thirteen-month year, in which you falsely celebrate an early moon), so that, in the First Month and in the unity of the Church we might eat the true Lamb of the true Israelite, the immaculate of the immaculate, in one home as it was prescribed. In that month, on a Friday, Cain led Abel the just into the fields to kill him, in the prefiguration of Christ led into Pilate's praetorium, because it is believed that He was conceived in the womb and that He died on the cross that same day. While Adam also died in spirit for his sin in paradise on a Friday, and died in body on the same day.’’

Ps. Cyrillus, Ep. de Pascha (Krusch, Studien 1: 348-349)


p.91