Dating easter

Calculating the Easter Date

Easter Day is the Sunday after the full moon which falls on or after the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere. The date of the equinox is taken as 21 March, and tables are used which follow the mean age of the moon, rather than the actual observed phases. This definition of the date of Easter, though probably not the earliest, was likely already in use around the time of the Council of Nicaea in It derives from the date of the Jewish festival of Passover, which falls on the first Full Moon of the spring. From early on, the Church used tables for the lunar calendar rather than actual observation each year. The tables formulated in the 6th century became normative and continued in use long after their inaccuracy was apparent until new ones were introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in , and adopted in Britain in September The tables which appear in the Book of Common Prayer can be used to determine the date of Easter.

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As a moveable feast , [1] [2] the date of Easter is determined in each year through a calculation known as computus Latin for 'computation'. Determining this date in advance requires a correlation between the lunar months and the solar year , while also accounting for the month, date, and weekday of the Julian or Gregorian calendar. It was originally feasible for the entire Christian Church to receive the date of Easter each year through an annual announcement by the pope. By the early third century, however, communications in the Roman Empire had deteriorated to the point that the church put great value in a system that would allow the clergy to determine the date for themselves, independently yet consistently. In The Reckoning of Time , Bede uses computus as a general term for any sort of calculation, although he refers to the Easter cycles of Theophilus as a "Paschal computus. For this reason, the Catholic Church and Protestant churches which follow the Gregorian calendar celebrate Easter on a different date from that of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy which follow the Julian calendar. It was the drift of 21 March from the observed equinox that led to the Gregorian reform of the calendar , to bring them back into line.

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The controversy over the correct date for Easter began in Early Christianity as early as the 2nd century AD. Discussion and disagreement over the best method of computing the date of Easter Sunday has been ongoing ever since and remains unresolved. Different Christian denominations continue to celebrate Easter on different dates, with Eastern and Western Christian churches being a notable example. Quartodecimanism from the Vulgate Latin quarta decima in Leviticus , [1] meaning fourteenth is the practice of celebrating Easter on the 14th of Nisan at the same time as the Jewish Passover. In an ecumenical council , the First Council of Nicaea , established two rules: independence from the Jewish calendar , and worldwide uniformity.

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When is Easter?

Easter falls on a Sunday between 22 March and 25 April, but working out which Sunday exactly requires an astronomical calculation. The simple standard definition of Easter is that it is the first Sunday after the full Moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox. If the full Moon falls on a Sunday then Easter is the next Sunday. Up to the 8th century AD, there was no uniform method for determining the date of Easter, but the method favoured by the Council of Nicaea in AD gradually became the accepted method. The adoption of the Gregorian calendar requires some modifications to this scheme but it is still basically the same.

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