XVI.
Furthermore, as to the proposal subjoined to your
epistle, that I should attempt to introduce into this little book some
notice of the ascent and descent of the sun, which is made out in the
distribution of days and nights. The matter proceeds thus:
In fifteen days and half an hour, the sun ascending by so many minutes,
that is, by four in one day, from the eighth day before the Kalends of
January, i.e., 25th December, to the eighth before the Kalends of
April, i.e., 25th March, an hour is taken up;1191
| 1191
Diminuitur. [This year (1886) we have the lowest possible
Easter.] |
at which date there are twelve hours and a
twelfth. On this day, towards evening, if it happen also to be
the
moon’s fourteenth, the
lamb was sacrificed among the
Jews. But if the number went beyond that, so that it was the
moon’s fifteenth or sixteenth on the evening of the same day, on
the fourteenth day of the second
moon, in the same month, the
Passover
was celebrated; and the people ate
unleavened bread for seven days, up
to the twenty-first day at evening. Hence, if it happens in like
manner to us, that the seventh day before the Kalends of April, 26th
March,
proves to be both the
Lord’s day and the
moon’s
fourteenth, Easter is to be celebrated on the fourteenth. But if
it
proves to be the
moon’s fifteenth or sixteenth, or any day up
to the twentieth, then our regard for the
Lord’s resurrection,
which took place on the
Lord’s day, will lead us to celebrate it
on the same principle; yet this should be done so as that the beginning
of Easter may not pass beyond the close of their festival, that is to
say, the
moon’s twentieth. And therefore we have said that
those parties have
committed no trivial
offence who have ventured
either on anticipating or on going beyond this number, which is given
us in the
divine Scriptures themselves. And from the eighth day
before the Kalends of April, 25th March, to the eighth before the
Kalends of July, 24th June, in fifteen days an hour is taken up:
the sun ascending every day by two minutes and a half, and the sixth
part of a minute. And from the eighth day before the Kalends of
July, 24th June, to the eighth before the Kalends of October, 24th
September, in like manner, in fifteen days and four hours, an hour is
taken up: the sun descending every day by the same number of
minutes. And the space remaining on to the eighth day before the
Kalends of January, 25th December, is determined in a similar number of
hours and minutes. So that thus on the eighth day before the
Kalends of January, for the hour there is the hour and half. For
up to that day and night are distributed. And the twelve hours
which were established at the vernal equinox in the beginning by the
Lord’s dispensation, being distributed over the night on the
eighth before the Kalends of July, the sun ascending through those
eighteen several degrees which we have noted, shall be found conjoined
with the longer space in the twelfth. And, again, the twelve
hours which should be fulfilled at the autumnal equinox in the
sun’s descent, should be found disjoined on the sixth before the
Kalends of January as six hours divided into twelve, the night holding
eighteen divided into twelve. And on the eighth before the
Kalends of July, in like manner, it held six divided into
twelve.
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