On the Computation of Easter 1–16

For a long time, and no short one, we were anxious and troubled, seeking to find, not in worldly writings but in the holy and divine Scriptures, what the first day of the new month was, the month in which the Jews in Egypt were commanded to sacrifice the Passover on the fourteenth day of the moon. And the Most Holy, who saw this, granted it, and we found it. We found it through the boundless goodness and righteousness of almighty God the Father himself, and through the incomparable mercy of Christ his Son, our Lord and God, who for our sins, obedient to his Father, laid down his life; rising with it from the dead on the third day, he promised his disciples eternal life and gave the grace of the Holy Spirit as a pledge to those who believe in his passion and resurrection. In this Spirit the Lord himself reveals deep mysteries and makes plain hidden sacraments to his servants who are willing, that is, who seek with all the strength of faith. And therefore, believing and knowing for certain that God denies nothing, but grants to everyone who wills and desires, as he wills, we committed ourselves to so laborious a task. In it, not forsaken but rather inspired by God himself, we wish to show those who love and seek divine studies that Christians can never stray from the way of truth, nor walk behind the blind and dull Jews as though ignorant of what the day of the Passover is; and, since we plainly begin from God, we wish not only to show the first day on which the lamb was slain in Egypt, but also to set out the days of the Passover of the Jews and of the Christians for time to come. Let us begin, then, dearest brothers, from the reading of Exodus, in which we recognize that God and Lord himself said to Moses and Aaron his brother in the land of Egypt: “This month shall be for you the beginning of months, the first among the months of the year. Speak to the whole congregation of the children of Israel, saying: On the tenth day of this month let each take for themselves, by the houses of their tribes, a sheep for a household; and if they are too few in the household to be enough for a sheep, he shall take with him his nearest neighbor; according to the number of souls each shall reckon what will be enough for him for the sheep. It shall be for you unblemished, perfect, a male a year old; you shall take it from the lambs or from the kids. And it shall be kept by you until the fourteenth day of this month, and the whole multitude of the congregation of the children of Israel shall kill it at evening; and they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintels of the houses in which they eat it; and they shall eat this flesh that night roasted with fire; they shall eat unleavened bread with bitter herbs. You shall not eat of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, the head with the feet and the entrails; you shall leave nothing of it until morning, and you shall not break a bone of it; and whatever is left of it until morning shall be burned with fire. And you shall eat it thus: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staffs in your hands; and you shall eat it in haste, for it is the Lord's Passover.”

God, then, through Moses commanded the whole congregation of the children of Israel in what attire they were to eat the Passover on the fourteenth day of the moon in the new month, which is the beginning of months, the first among the months of the year. He did this, surely, both to show his divinity to us who believe in Christ, and to point out their robbery already then, from the beginning of the world: they who in Egypt, at evening, that is, in the last times of the world, girded and shod, went out against the unblemished Lamb of God on the first day of unleavened bread, at evening, with swords and clubs, and committed against him all that had been foretold by all the prophets. And therefore we, who celebrate the Passover no longer according to the image, as they did, but according to the truth, in commemoration of the passion of the Son of God, must first of all diligently seek with all the strength of our faith nothing else than what the new month is, where it begins, and where it ends. And then we will find that the Passover could not be kept by the Jews themselves either before or after the fourteenth day of the moon is found.

This the holy and divine Scripture of Genesis will plainly begin to show us, saying: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth. The earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss, and the Spirit of God was borne over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. And God divided between the light and the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” By relating and suggesting to us that the Lord himself divided between light and darkness, that is, between day and night, holy Scripture plainly shows that this is the first day and the night that follows it, between which the Maker of all divided equally, that is, faultlessly.

This day is now understood to be 25 March. Counting from this day, some of our predecessors, who wished to show this new month and, having found the fourteenth day of the moon, to set out the day of the Passover according to the Jews, said that this month begins on 15 March and ends on 13 April; and so they stumbled. For although they rightly divided those thirty days into eleven and nineteen, counting eleven backward in a common year and arriving at 15 March, and putting nineteen into the preceding year in which the intercalary month falls and reaching 13 April, in this, as I said, they erred: that they could not truly grasp the first day of the new month. This will be shown truly in the table we have composed, in which no year will be found to fail.

Wishing, then, to show truly where this month begins and where it ends, let us return to Genesis, which has told us that the Lord himself divided between the first day and the first night. From this we recognize that between the second and third day and night it was no one else but the Lord himself who divided, and that from the fourth day he laid this duty on the sun and moon. For these are the two greater lights, of which the Lord said: “Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to shine upon the earth, and let them divide between day and night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years, and let them be for brightness in the firmament of heaven, to shine upon the earth. And so it was done. And God made the two greater lights, the greater light as the beginning of the day and the lesser light as the beginning of the night,” and so on. These are the two lights which received not only this duty, to divide between day and night, but also to be for signs and seasons and days and years.

For this reason, then, the Hebrews of that time who had been found worthy, taught by the Spirit of God, reckoned each year according to the course of the moon. And to keep pace with the course of the sun within sixteen years, they divided the thirty days of the first month into two parts, not equally but according to a reckoning; just as we said above that our predecessors rightly divided them, following the Hebrews, into eleven and nineteen, but did not grasp the first day of the first month and so erred. This first day of the new month, according to the course of the moon waning twelve times, is recognized to be 17 March, on which the moon is found at the same hour in the same state as it was made a year before on 28 March. The Hebrews count the days of that year as 354, up to 16 March. Those who reckon by the course of the sun find that, after eleven and a quarter days, on 27 March, with 365 and a quarter days completed, the year is finished, and so they show the first day of the coming new month to be 28 March. And therefore, reducing the four quarters of four years to one day, every fifth year they insert it not on 28 March but on 25 February, so as not to insert a whole day before the first day of the coming new month and overturn this whole order which the Hebrews of old attained by a sure reckoning, even before Rome itself was founded. The year of the Hebrews, then, divided into twelve months, makes a month of 29½ days; likewise that of the Romans, also divided into twelve parts, makes a month of 30½. So between 29½ and 30½ there is a difference, which is understood to be eleven hours and a quarter of an hour. By these eleven and a quarter hours the sun went ahead when it was made the beginning of the day. So too the moon, which was promised to be made the beginning of the night, ought not to have come into being after sunset and so be seen in the sky, since it was to be seen from the first day and to accompany the one with whom it had received so great a duty. This, then, is why each month the moon, renewed at the fifteenth day, proceeds from the sun. And therefore in a year the sun is found to travel eleven days and a quarter of a day more. And so the moon, which on Wednesday 28 March had been made fifteen days old, was found at the end of the first year, on 28 March, to be 26¼; again, in the second year, with eleven days and a quarter added, it was found 7½ on 28 March; in the third year 18¾ on 28 March; in the fourth year 30 on 28 March; in the fifth year 11¼; in the sixth year 22½; in the seventh year 3¾; but in the eighth year it was found 15 on 28 March, as it had been made at the beginning.

By this reckoning, then, the Hebrews, instructed not by their own but by God's wisdom concerning the course of the moon according to the first rule, in the manner of the Greeks and Egyptians and not according to lunar epacts, could not have erred. And so, when they first sacrificed the Passover in Egypt on Monday 12 April, on the fourteenth of the moon, at the end of their first year they could not celebrate the Passover on 12 April, since they found the moon not fourteen but twenty-five days old. So, seeking the fourteenth, they would have had to add eighteen days and find the fourteenth moon on 30 April. But, so as not to begin keeping the Passover in the second month rather than the first, which runs from 17 March to 15 April, counting back from the moon's twenty-five days, that is, subtracting eleven days of that moon, they found the fourteenth moon on Friday 1 April; that was a common year, and the first. In the second year, again common, on Tuesday 21 March. But in the third year they reckoned otherwise, not counting backward, lest they go beyond 17 March, which is the first day of the first month, and fall into the twelfth month of the past year. For this was the year in which they had to insert not nineteen but, one being subtracted, eighteen days. Who this one day subtracted from nineteen is, we will say by God's grace. For at the first time, when the Passover was kept in Egypt, there was in that year a quarter of a day owing; in the first following year it became a half; with the second year added it became three quarters; and in the third year it became a whole day. This, then, is the third year in the table, in which the leap year and the intercalary month are now placed. In this year the Passover on the fourteenth of the moon is shown to have been on Monday 8 April; in the fourth year, a common year, on Friday 28 March; again in the fifth year, a common year, on the fourteenth of the moon, Tuesday 17 March; in the sixth year, an intercalary year, on Monday 5 April; in the seventh year, a leap year, on Friday 24 March; in the eighth year, an intercalary year, on Thursday 12 April. See, then, how, as we reckoned above that after eight years the fifteenth moon was found again on 28 March, so after eight years the fourteenth moon was found on 12 April, but on a Thursday, not on a Monday as before. And therefore, according to the same table, we show that it returns to its first day not in eight years but in sixteen; and in it we have marked the leap years according to the course of the sun, or by the error of the ignorant. This cycle too, after sixteen years are complete, though it meets the fourteenth moon on its fixed day when the intercalary month is inserted, does not meet Monday but Sunday. So likewise the second sixteen-year cycle when complete falls on Saturday, the third on Friday, the fourth on Thursday. The fifth cycle on Wednesday, the sixth on … ; but the seventh, when it has completed 112 years, returns to 12 April and the moon is found fourteen and the day Monday. These, then, are the 112 years, going round in which and counting the years from the first day of the Passover kept in Egypt, we come down to Christ and show the day of his passion and resurrection.

First, however, let us set out the remaining eight years of the table, for we have counted up to the eighth. In the ninth year, a common year, the fourteenth moon falls on Monday 1 April; again in the tenth year, a common year, on Friday 21 March; in the eleventh year, a leap year with intercalary month, on Thursday 8 April; in the twelfth year, a common year, on Monday 28 March; in the thirteenth year, again common, on Friday 17 March; in the fourteenth year, intercalary, on Thursday 5 April; in the fifteenth year, leap year and common, on Monday 24 March; in the sixteenth year, the intercalary month having been inserted, the fourteenth moon was found again at the head, that is, in the first line, on Sunday 12 April, the day on which we said the Jews first kept the Passover in Egypt.

From there, after forty-one years were complete, up to Joshua the son of Nun, the children of Israel sacrificed the Passover on Saturday 1 April. Hezekiah, 867 years after the exodus from Egypt, in the first year of his reign, celebrated the Passover on Wednesday 8 April. Again Josiah, in the eighteenth year of his reign, 970 years after, sacrificed the Passover on 21 March, on a … day. Ezra, at the time when seven weeks were completed from the restoration and completion of the temple and the restoration of the city of Jerusalem, 1,114 years after, sacrificed the Passover on Saturday 21 March. And Jesus himself, our Lord and Savior, 1,579 years after, ate the Passover with his disciples on Thursday 8 April, and suffered the next day, Friday 9 April.

This is Christ Jesus, who according to the flesh was the son of Abraham, in whose mystery Isaac, born to a father a hundred years old, carried the wood on his shoulders, so that it might be shown by this that the adversaries are overcome and believers obtain salvation through the wood, that is, through the sign of the cross. He is the Abraham to whom God said: “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.” Does anyone, then, obtain mercy in Isaac? No; but every person who believes God is blessed in Christ. And therefore Abraham, who was called a prophet by God the Lord, since he knew clearly that the son born to him at a hundred years was in the sacrament of Christ, who after the third day made death void and bound that strong one, our enemy, counted all his servants born in his house; and because of the birth at a hundred, he tripled the hundred and made the sign T, to which he added eighteen, that is, ιη, in the name of Jesus; and he overcame the adversaries and freed Lot, his brother's son, from their captivity. And rightly the Lord and our Master himself said to the Jews: “If you are children of Abraham, do the works of your father.” But those who heard this from Christ chose to do not the works of Abraham but the wicked works of the devil. And therefore the nations, doing the works of their father Abraham, fighting daily with the sign of the cross and the name of Jesus against the apostate angels, armed with the word of God, free people from the captivity of Satan. He is the Abraham who believed when called at seventy-five years; and although he was foretold by God himself that he would have many children, that is, like the stars of heaven, yet through his only son, whose image that unblemished lamb slain in Egypt bore, both Adam, the first-formed, and every person who believes have obtained mercy from God.

Next let us return to Exodus, that is, to the first day of the Passover, and from there count the years in order down to Christ. In these years we shall find great and wonderful sacraments shown to us. Counting in order, then: from the day they went out of Egypt to the day they had to leave the desert, forty years. Leaving the desert, entering and possessing the land promised them by the Lord, from Joshua son of Nun to Samuel the judge and priest of God, according to the word of the blessed apostle Paul, who, taught by the Spirit of the Lord, related that they completed 450 years. This is the Samuel who by God's command anointed Saul king, who first reigned over the people of the Jews, for forty years. After him David reigned forty years and six months; Solomon his son, forty years; Rehoboam, seventeen years; Abijah, three years; Asa, forty-one years; Jehoshaphat, twenty-five years; Joram, eight years; Ahaziah, one year; Athaliah, forty years; Joash, forty years; Amaziah, twenty-nine years; Uzziah, … years; Jotham, sixteen years; Ahaz, sixteen years; Hezekiah, twenty-nine years; Manasseh, fifty-five years; Amon, two years; Josiah, thirty-one years; Jehoahaz, three months; Jehoiakim, eleven years; Jehoiakim his son, also called Jeconiah, a hundred days. These are 995 years. And Judea was taken by King Nebuchadnezzar, who, having carried Jeconiah away to Babylon, set up Zedekiah as king of Judah in Jerusalem; after eleven years he defeated him, killed his sons before his eyes, and so bereaved Zedekiah himself, and ordered him to be led in chains to Babylon, and put him in the mill, where he also died. Then was fulfilled about him what the Lord had said through the prophet Ezekiel: “And I will spread my net over him, and he shall be caught in the snare, and I will bring him to Babylon, into the land of the Chaldeans, and he shall not see this land, and there he shall die.” Likewise Jeremiah the prophet prophesied about him and all his people, saying: “Thus says the Lord: So will I give up Zedekiah king of Judah and his princes and the remnant in Jerusalem, who are left in this land, and those who dwell in Egypt; and I will make them a scattering in all the kingdoms of the earth, a reproach and a byword and a hatred and a curse, in every place to which I drive them; and I will send upon them famine and death and the sword, until they are consumed from the land that I gave them.”

In the eleventh year of Zedekiah, then, 1,006 years from the exodus were completed. And then the people of the Jews, who had not kept the Law but rather, against God's will, had sacrificed their children to idols, was itself led captive; and their city, which bore the figure of the synagogue, was burned by the enemies and uprooted; and that temple which had been built in the mystery of Adam was itself overthrown from its foundations and leveled to the ground. And so to us, who were foreseen to believe in the last days, a great sacrament, as I said, was shown. For if that people and city deserved to be destroyed, what had the temple of God done to suffer this? Unless, because it is truly clear that it was made, as I said, in the mystery of him who first transgressed God's law and was the father of all sinners; and therefore, since help was to be given not only to Adam but also to all sinners who were foreseen to be future children of Abraham, rightly to the city and temple themselves, before they were overthrown, restoration after seventy years was promised. And this was what was already shown from the beginning of the world in Abraham, the father of faith: when he had completed seventy years from the day of his birth, he could not leave his land unless, in the likeness of the Pentateuch, all of whose commands the people of Israel were not going to keep, five years were added; and so, believing God, it was reckoned to him as righteousness. This is the Abraham of whom we said above that he believed when called at seventy-five years. To these seventy-five years one year is added, and they make seventy-six. Who is this one added? He, of course, who from his seed was called the unblemished lamb a year old. Let us subtract seventy-six from 1,006, then, and 930 years remain, at the completion of which Adam ended his life.

After this let us show the time of the captivity, seventy years. When the 995 years from the exodus to Jeconiah are completed, let us add the eleven years of Zedekiah, which eleven years are counted within the body of the seventy years. Let us see how. From the time Jerusalem was taken, Zedekiah himself reigned eleven years. After him Nebuchadnezzar, who led him in chains into the land of the Chaldeans, twenty-five years; Evil-Merodach, twelve years; Belshazzar, four years; and Darius son of Cyrus, eighteen years. Together these are seventy years. And so Cyrus took over the kingdom of the Medes and Persians. This is the Cyrus at the beginning of whose reign the people of the Jews returned to their land with the treasures of the house of God. From that time we must count the weeks. For we remember that the angel of God said of them to Daniel: “Seventy weeks are shortened upon your people and upon that holy city, so that sin may be finished, and sins may be sealed, and iniquities blotted out, and iniquities expiated, and everlasting righteousness brought back, and vision and prophecy sealed, and the holy of holies anointed. And you shall know and understand from the going forth of the word, that it may be answered and Jerusalem built, until Christ the leader, seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; and the street and the wall shall be restored and built, and the times shall be emptied. And after these sixty-two weeks the anointing shall perish, and there is no judgment in it; and he shall corrupt the city and the holy place with the leader who is to come, and they shall be cut off in a flood, and until the end of the shortened war of destruction. And one week shall confirm the covenant with many; and in the middle of the week my sacrifice and libation shall be taken away, and upon the holy place the abomination of desolations, and until the consummation of time a consummation shall be given upon this desolation.” And one week, he says, shall confirm the covenant with many.

This, then, is the one week which the angel set apart from the seventy and placed in the last times of the world. We recognize that this week has seven years, in which Enoch and Elijah must first come and by their prophecy confirm the gospel, that is, the new covenant, to a great multitude. For so we have heard that the angel said to Daniel: “One week shall confirm the covenant with many. And in the middle of the week,” he says, “my sacrifice and libation shall be taken away.” The middle of the week shows “a time and times and half a time,” which is three years and six months, which according to the Apocalypse are 1,260 days. In these days that Antichrist will cause great devastation; and therefore at that time none of the Christians will be able to offer sacrifice to God, since the Antichrist himself will begin to sit in the temple of God and declare himself God to the ignorant. Him Jesus, our Lord and Savior, must slay with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the presence of his coming, and in him bring the world to its end, as it is written: “And upon the holy place the abomination of desolations, and until the consummation of time a consummation shall be given upon this desolation.”

After this let us return to the seven weeks and then to the sixty-two weeks. These seven weeks contain forty-nine years; when they were completed, at that time Jerusalem was known to be restored, the street through its middle was seen built, and the wall raised around the city strongly protected all that was within. In this city the temple, which had been destroyed in the likeness of Adam, was built again in his name over forty-six years, and in the sacrament of the Holy Spirit was anointed with oil, as had been said by the angel: “that vision and prophecy may be finished and the holy of holies anointed.” That holy of holies, anointed in the image of man, was destroyed again together with the city by our Lord himself in the times of Vespasian, for the unbelief of the Jews. For so it had been written in the same chapter that we are expounding: “And after sixty-two weeks the anointing shall perish, and there is no judgment in it; and he shall corrupt the city and the holy place with the leader who is to come, and they shall be cut off in a flood, and until the end of the shortened war of destruction.” They shall be cut off, he says, in a flood. Of whom is this said? Surely of the Jews themselves, who after the coming of Christ, in that siege and conquest under Vespasian, were cut off and cast out of their city, to which they do not return, not even at the end of the shortened war. And what is this shortened war but the reign of the Antichrist, which is to rise against the Christian people? These are the days of which the Lord says in the gospel: “And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved.”

The temple, then, was restored in the name of the first-formed man, who was called Adam, as we said above, after forty-six years. It is shown to be in the name of Adam because, among the Greeks, the first letter of his name is called alpha, one; the second delta, four; the third again alpha, one; and the fourth mu, forty; and so the number forty-six results. This number of years is reckoned thus: from the day on which the people of the Jews returned to their land, Cyrus reigned over the Persians thirty-one years; after him Cambyses nine years, and forty years were completed. After the forty years Smerdis the Magus reigned seven months, which months are not counted by us. Why? Because in the seventh month of Cyrus they laid the foundations of the temple, and from then until the second year of Darius they did not carry out work on it. Then Haggai and Zechariah prophesied, through whom the Lord exhorted them, and they came together with one mind and completed the remaining work of the temple in four years. This is shown clearly in the first book of Ezra: that in the sixth year of Darius the temple of God was completed in every respect. To the forty let us add the six of Darius, and they make forty-six. To these years three were added in the mystery of Christ's passion and resurrection, and the seventh week was completed. And then the street and the temple and the wall and the city itself were shown to be completed and protected in every respect when the forty-ninth year was complete. But this whole work was being carried out in the sacrament of the church.