In Judaism, the calendar is lunar. Each month, Nisan included, includes the phases of the moon, and the Passover falls on the 14th day of the month, that is full moon. The determination of this date was a secret process carefully guarded in the Jewish temple and later, synagogues, and it was according to this calculation that Christ observed the feast. The early Christians were Jews and the Hebrew tradition was powerful in their minds. A party of such conservatives known as the Quartodecimians thus pressed for a continuance of the Jewish Passover as Easter, even to the point of schism, but they were overruled by the Church as a whole, and for these reasons:
Between the Jewish Passover and the Christian Easter, there were thus a doctrinal and calendrical severance.
On the Church, therefore, fell the duty of setting Easter in the Christian year. The reason for the problems came from the fact that the Hebrew and Christian calenders were in conflict. The earlier calender was lunar in which the unit was a month of about 28.5 days or 342 days in a year. The second was solar in which the unit was a year of about 365.25 days. The lunar reckoning was Babylonian and the solar reckoning was Egyptian. Judaism held to Babylon, Rome adopted Egypt, and the Western World has followed Rome, which is the reason why our modern year differs from the Hebrew observance. In the case of Christmas, the Church ignored the lunar year and no difficulty arose. Christmas comes about four days after December 21, the winter solstice. But with Easter the Church wished to adjust the Hebrew or lunar practice to the solar year, and wranglings were inevitable.
The Clock is Ticking...If there are two clocks ticking, one fast, the other slow, the ticks will be distinct except at the moment when one clock overtakes the other, and the ticks synchronize. In calendars, interval between synchronizations is called a cycle, and over the length of the cycle between the solar and lunar years there was much uncertainty in the days before the telescope was an astronomical instrument.
The Jewish cycle was 84 years, but about the year 222 A.D., Hippolytus recommended a much shorter cycle of 16 years. Rome raised a statue to him with his cycle engraved on the sides, but despite amendment, his cycle fell into disuse and the Church fell back on the Hebrew cycle of 84 years. Emotions were aroused. The Western Christians observed Easter on a Sunday, the Eastern in many cases were Quartodecimanians and preferred the 14th day of the lunar month. It was a foretaste of the schism that was to split the Eastern Orthodox Church from the Roman Catholic.
Anxiety over the date of Easter was thus a reason why Constantine the Great in 325 A.D. summoned the famous Council of Nicaea. It was decided that Easter must be celebrated everywhere on the same day and this day must be a Sunday. It must be the first Sunday after a full moon following the vernal equinox, March 21 with one reservation. In the English prayerbook it is stated thus: "and if the full moon happens upon a Sunday, Easter-day is the Sunday after." The reason for this exception reveals the depth of the division between the Church and the Synagogue. For whenever the full moon fell on a Sunday, Easter would be celebrated on the same day as the Hebrew Passover. Hence, the postponement for a week, to avoid the coincidence.
At Nicaea they had to decide who was to manage the full moon and so announce the date of Easter. This duty was referred to Alexandria, the citadel of astronomy, where the bishop was to declare the dat each year. Travel was slow and the pronouncement had to be made in advance. It had to be based, not on observation of the moon in the sky, but on mathematics.
Many cycles were tried, one of 8 years, the Alexandrine cycle of 19 years, the Roman cycle of 84 years, and the Victorian cycle of 19 x 28 or 532 years, arranged by Victorius of Aquitania (Victorinus) in 457 A.D. at the request of the pope. It meant that Easter was celebrated on different Sundays in different places, and when the pope promulgated the Victorian cycle, the British and Irish churches continued with their cycle of 84 years. Whence arose the fundamental question, more important than the date of Easter itself, whether these churches were under the authority of Rome.
In 664, Oswy or Oswiu, King of Mercia, summoned the famous Synod of Whitby where he decided to throw in his lot with the papacy. A simultaneous observance of Easter throughout Christendom was thus made possible and it continued for nine centuries. At this moment, the Protestant and Roman Catholic Easters coincided. Not so the Eastern Orthodox Church Easter.
The Julian Calendar advanced year by year, beyond the true solar year. In 1582, therefore, Pope Gregory XIII omitted 10 days from that calendar and so brought March 21 back to the correct vernal equinox. He found that Easter was 3 days ahead of the full moon, and the adjustment for Easter was thus 7 days. This resulted in the Gregorian Calendar or New Style, now generally adopted in the modern world. The Eastern Orthodox churches, however, still clung to the Old Style or Julian reckonings, and once more there were two Easters in the ecclesiastical year. This problem of Easter even in the West has yet to be completely solved, and remains a matter for the future.
The date of Easter, though accurately determined, varies from year to year, and Easter is thus a
"movable feast." Easter falls anywhere between March 22 and April 25, a range of 35 days.
Dependent on this variable Easter are 17 weeks of the ecclesiastical calendar or about one third
of the Christian year. These "movable days" are as follows:
Septuagusima Sunday -------9 weeks before Easter
Sexagesima Sunday ---------8 weeks before Easter
Quinquagesima Sunday ------7 weeks before Easter
Quadragestima Sunday ------6 weeks before Easter
Shrove TUesday ------------Eve of Lent
Ash Wednesday -------------Beginning of Lent
Lent ----------------------40 days
Palm Sunday ---------------End of Lent and Beginning of Holy Week
Good Friday
Easter Sunday
Rogation Sunday -----------5 weeks after Easter
Ascension Day -------------40 days after Easter
Whitsunday ----------------7 weeks after Easter
Trinity Sunday ------------8 weeks after Easter
In some countries, for instance, England, this movable Easter has affected secular matters like the sittings of courts and holidays in schools and colleges. The flow of trade, especially in women's clothing, is tidal with Easter. There is thus a movement for a fixed Easter. According to the Vatican there is no canonical objection to fixing the date of Easter, a process which, we have seen, has been going on for centuries. But the view is that the matter is suitable for submission to an ecumenical council, which suggests that at Rome it is regarded as an ecclesiastical matter to be dealt with by ecclesiastical authority. In 1928 the British Parliament passed a permissive statute making Easter the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April. This would leave Easter among movable feasts but would reduce the movability from 35 days to the range between April 9 and 15. The proposed world calendar provides that each day of the year fall perpetually on its own day of the week, Easter might most suitably be allotted to April 8. The acceptance of this reformed calendar would thus synchronize a fixed Easter for all Christendom and, if the synagogue agreed, for Judaism. It has to be added that this apparently ultimate solution to the problem is still not adopted and the problem is ongoing.
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