II.
There is, then, in the first year, the new moon of
the first month, which is the beginning of every cycle of nineteen
years, on the six and twentieth day of the month called by the
Egyptians Phamenoth.1163
| 1163
[The Church’s Easter-calculations created modern astronomy,
which passed to the Arabians from the Church. (See
Whewell’s Inductive Sciences.) They preserved it,
but did not improve it, in Spain. Christianity re-adopted it, and
the presbyter Copernicus new-created it. The court of Rome (not
the Church Catholic) persecuted Galileo; but it did so under the lead
of professional “Science,’” which had darkened the
human mind, from the days of Pythagoras, respecting his more
enlightened system.] |
But, according to the months of the
Macedonians, it is on the two-and-twentieth day of Dystrus. And,
as the
Romans would say, it is on the eleventh day before the Kalends
of April. Now the sun is found on the said six-and-twentieth day
of Phamenoth, not only as having mounted to the first segment, but as
already passing the fourth day in it. And this segment they are
accustomed to call the first dodecatemorion (twelfth part), and the
equinox, and the beginning of months, and the head of
the cycle, and the
starting-point
1164
| 1164 The
word is ἄφεσις, which Valesius makes
equivalent to ἀφετηρια,
the rope or post from which the chariots started in the race, and so =
starting-point.—Tr. |
of the course
of the planets. And the segment before this they call the last of
the months, and the twelfth segment, and the last dodecatemorion, and
the end of the circuit
1165
of the planets. And for this reason, also, we maintain that those
who place the first month in it, and who determine the fourteenth day
of the Paschal season by it, make no trivial or common
blunder.
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