43. Why the Moon sometimes appears older than its computed age
TRANSLATION
lunar increment) of18, concedes12days, and not11, as is usual, to the¢rst year. And because [the epacts] run out at the end of 30 days, the epact of zero is placed at the beginning of this cycle, but the second year takes an epact of 11. And therefore, as we said, from the ¢fteenth Paschal Moon of the ¢rst [year] of the cycle up to its end, there is no doubt that we ¢nd the days as established above in common and embolismic years.9
Divergence of just this kind compels Victorius to calculate a Moon that matches ours in age only for the ¢rst six years of the 19-year cycle, for thereafter because of the inserted alteration of the ''leap'', his Moon never ceases to be greater by one day than ours, up to the point where we make the insertion at the end of the cycle. Undoubtedly, it seems that this ''leap'' /412/ can be positioned at no better place in the year than on the 12th kalends of April [21 March], because, of course, of the origin of the creation of the stars [i.e. Sun and Moon] which we mentioned before,10 so that the Moon of the month of March which ¢nishes on the 29th day is thenceforward changed to a new Moon. But there are those who aver that we ought rather to do this in the Moon of the month of November,11 so that they can begin the new year with a computation that is free from the other [year], complicating factors of this kind having been cancelled out by the ending of the previous year.
This follows the example of the Egyptians, who are said to have done this in the last month of their year, which is our July. But whether you do it here, there, or anywhere else, it is always necessary, unless I am mistaken, to calculate three Moons of 29 days together.12
43. WHY THE MOON SOMETIMES APPEARS OLDER
THAN ITS COMPUTED AGE
It should be pointed out that the calculation [ratio] of this lunar saltus, by its slowing compounding increase, causes the Moon sometimes to be visibly older than it is reckoned to be, to the point that even at sunset on 9 Dionysius Exiguus, Ep. ad Bonifacium et Bonum (ed. Krusch, Studien II, 84.5^
16).
10 In ch. 6.
11 I.e. the lunar month ending on 25 November in the 19th year of the cycle.
12 The lunar months of the 19-year cycle alternate ''full'' and ''hollow''. So whether you begin the cycle in September or in January, the penultimate lunar month when the saltus takes place (July or November) is ''hollow''. Since the two months on either side are ''hollow'', this produced three ''hollow'' months of 29 days in a row.
THE RECKONING OF TIME
the thirtieth day it does not appear as a thin line in the sky. And the farther the 19-year cycle has advanced, the more frequently [the Moon] will be subject to this, for the evident reason that the ''leap'' of which we have spoken will then be ful¢lled to its maximum extent. But in discussing natural truth [in naturalis assertione ueritatis], which is also a⁄rmed to be true by the Council of Nicaea, this rule is to be observed: that we recognize that the age of the Moon changes in the evening, and not [claim], as some do, that it does so at noon or mid-afternoon.13
/413/ For to be sure, the Moon, which ¢rst rose upon the world at eventide, must always enter upon this or that phase [at eventide], completing each [phase] in 24 hours, even as the Sun, which ¢rst arose in the morning, as the book of Genesis bears witness, completes one day from morning to morning.14 Why should lunar reckoning be calculated from the noon-tide hours, seeing that the Moon had not yet been placed in the heavens, nor gone forth over the Earth? On the contrary, none of the feast-days of the Law began and ended at noon or in the afternoon, but all did so in the evening. Or else perchance it is because sinful Adam was reproached by the Lord in the cool of the afternoon,15 and thrust out from the joys of Paradise. In remembrance of that heavenly life which we changed for the tribulation of this world, the change of the Moon, which imitates our toil by its everlasting waxing and waning, ought speci- ¢cally to be observed at the hour in which we began our exile, so that every day we may be reminded by the hour of the Moon's changing of that verse, a fool changeth as the Moon16 while the wise man shall live as long as the Sun,17 and that we may sigh more ardently for that life, supremely blessed in eternal peace, when the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun, and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days.18 Indeed, because (as it is written) from the Moon is the sign
/414/ of the feast-day,19 and just as the ¢rst light of the Moon was shed upon the world at eventide, so in the Law it is compulsory that every feast-day begin in the evening and end in the evening.20
13 Cf. above, ch. 6.
14 Cf. Prologus Theophili 3 (223^225); Prologus Cyrilli 6 (341^342).
15 Genesis 3.8.
16 Ecclesiasticus 27.11.
17 Psalm 72 (71).5.
18 Isaiah 30.26.
19 Ecclesiasticus 43.7.
20 Cf. Exodus 12.18, and ch. 5 above.
TRANSLATION
The age of a new Moon is more appropriately calculated from the evening hour than from any other time, and it will retain the age which began in the evening until the following evening. Should it befall that the Moon is lit up by the Sun shortly before evening, it must be counted as, and it must be, the ¢rst Moon as soon as the Sun has set, and it will be the ¢rst Moon immediately after sunset, because it has reached the hour when ¢rst it began to shine forth upon the Earth. But if its light appears after sunset, the Moon will not yet have seen its ¢rst day before evening, but ought rather to be counted as the thirtieth Moon. Even if it remains illuminated for 23 hours after sunset, nevertheless it should retain the age which it had at sunset until the next sunset, lest the order of primal Creation be disturbed. Since it sometimes becomes visible six or seven hours after it is [¢rst] illuminated, it is not surprising that as a new Moon, it can appear very conspicuously in the heavens, seeing that it has traversed so many hours. For particularly when the Moon is in Aries, it often happens that on one and the same day it will be seen both in the morning [as the old Moon] and in the evening [as the new Moon], the action of illumination having been e¡ected around noon.
Now if someone, pursuing this question more seriously, were to say that in the company of witnesses he had seen the new Moon, in the same year in which the ''leap'' is inserted /415/ (that is, in the nineteenth year of the 19-year cycle), shine forth two days before the ¢rst [calculated
Moon], that is, on the 4th nones of April [2 April], and since in that same year of the aforementioned cycle the 14th Moon of Easter is marked down for the 15th kalends of May [17 April], and therefore the new Moon could not occur save on the day before the nones of April [4
April], he would demand that we explain the cause of this. At this point, our insigni¢cance, lest it be defeated by its weakness, will run for help to the Fathers', and indeed to God's, authority. We are bolstered by the aid of the authority of the Fathers when we follow the decrees of the Council of Nicaea, which ¢xed the fourteenth Moons of the Paschal feast with such ¢rm stability [¢rma stabilitas] that their 19-year cycle can never waver [uacillare] and never fail. There is no doubt on the part of any computist that within this cycle, the Paschal Moon of the year under discussion will be in its ¢rst day on the 2nd nones of April [4
April]. And therefore it is not proper for any of the faithful to say that it is otherwise. What then? Is it credible that no one amongst the 318 bishops who attended the Council of Nicaea saw that new Moon which we saw on the 4th nones of April [2 April]? No one amongst that
THE RECKONING OF TIME
company of lesser clergy which was party to their deliberations and decisions? Should we not rather understand that when they proclaimed that the Paschal Moon of that year begins on the day before the nones of April, their intention was to avoid by this means another and greater peril, namely, that if they discerned it otherwise, they would dissolve that indissoluble state of common /416/ and embolismic years which they recognized was to be observed by the authority of the divine Law given to the Hebrews? But we also defend the lunar observance to which we hold by means of the particular evidence of divine authority. For we read in the writings of the blessed Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, that the monk Pachomius, famous for deeds of apostolic grace and founder of the monastic communities of Egypt, sent letters to the monasteries over which he ruled, which he had received at the dictation of an angel, in order that they should not make a mistake in calculating the Paschal solemnity, and so that they might know the Moon of the ¢rst month in the common and embolismic year.21 In Cyril's account, we read that had the Council of Nicaea not written down the lunar cycle of the ¢rst month, the cycle of the selenite stone in Persia, whose inner whiteness increases and decreases withtheMoonofthe¢rstmonth, wouldsu⁄ceasamodelforPaschal reckoning.22 We read in what St Paschasinus, bishop of Lilybaeum, wrote to the most blessed Pope Leo, that in the time of Pope Zosimus, although it was the last year of the 19-year cycle, and some refused to celebrate
Easter on the 10th kalends of May [22 April], celebrating instead on the 8th kalends of April [25 March] (that is, taking it for a common instead of an embolismic year), the truth about the Paschal observance was made clear by a multiple miracle /417/ of supernal virtue. He says: A certain very run-down estate called Meltinas is situated high in the mountains in the midst of thick woodlands. There is a church there, exceedingly poor and ramshackle; in its baptistery, on the most holy night of Easter at the hour when baptisms are held, the font is ¢lled of its own accord, although there is no trough or pipe, nor any water at all in the vicinity.
And when the few who are there are consecrated [i.e. baptized], the water disappears even as it came, of its own accord, though there is no drain.
When therefore, under Pope Zosimus of blessed memory, the water did 21 Ep. Cyrilli 5 (346^347); cf. Gennadius, De uiris illustribus 7, ed. W. Herdin
(Leipzig: Teubner, 1879):73.14^17, where the angel dictates a monastic, not a Paschal rule.
Cf. ch. 66, s.a. 4113.
22 Ep. Cyrilli 5 (348). Cf. ch. 28 above.
TRANSLATION
not appear, those who were to be baptized were not consecrated, and they went away. But on that night which dawned onto Sunday, the 10th kalends of May [22 April], the holy font was ¢lled up at the appropriate hour. Thus by this evident miracle it has been made clear what the error of the western lands has been.23
So it is plain that this question of the age of the Moon is an old one, and at one point was even carefully investigated by the zeal of the holy
Pope Leo. It is this very question which has caused the long and serious controversy between the churches of the East and of the West. This also convinced Pope Hilarius, long after the Council of Nicaea, to seek, and Victorius to construct, a new Paschal cycle. In this controversy the aforementioned Pope Leo, keen and eager towin in his struggle with Prosper, a most learned and sagacious man, eventually was glad to be honourably won over by the unanimity of those who stood by the decrees of the Nicene Council. Hence, on this same question, I seek for myself and for my people no better way of acting or speaking that what I know he did,
/418/ who so far excels us in knowledge, merit and authority ^ that is, to follow the sure judgement of the most reverend Fathers in those matters which are doubtful and unsure to us. It is not to be thought that we either understand the variation of the lunar course with greater acuity than the ancients, or that we are able more advantageously [than they] to distinguish what path it is preferable to follow in such variations.
23 Paschasinus of Lilybaeum, Ep. ad Leonem papam 2^3 (249^250). The year to which Paschasinus is referring is AD 417.