Reform of the Easter date

A reform of the Easter date has taken place regionally several times in history and is still being pursued, since the current determination of the Easter date has two fundamental problems:

• The calendar date changes every year . It can fall on any of the 35 days from March 21st to April 25th. Although some Christians do not perceive this as a problem, it leads to considerable effort in coordination with the civil calendar, especially through school holidays, especially since many other holidays from February ( Carnival ) to June ( Ascension Day , Pentecost , Corpus Christi ) depend on the date of Easter Sunday.
• Many Eastern churches continue to calculate the date of Easter traditionally on the basis of the Julian calendar , while others use a modern variant , which for a few centuries corresponds to the Gregorian calendar of the Western churches , which is also used primarily by practically all states and which is based on the corresponding international standard ISO 8601 . As a result, for most of the years Easter is celebrated later in the Orthodox churches of Eastern Europe and Western Asia than in the rest of the Christian world.

There have been various controversies about the “correct” Easter date since ancient times, which ultimately even led to church divisions (schisms), excommunications and even executions for heresy , but most Christian communities and churches agree that Easter is celebrated:

• on a Sunday (by decision of the First Council of Nicaea in 325 ),
• after the northern equinox ( equinox, around March 20 in the Gregorian calendar), i.e. in the astronomical spring in the northern hemisphere ,
• after the first spring full moon .

There is less consensus on the importance of coordinating with

• The Annunciation , which is usually celebrated on March 25th, i.e. 9 months before Christmas , but should not fall during Holy Week (including Palm Sunday ) or Easter week ,
• the 14th day of the Jewish lunar month of Nisan as the earliest possible day,
• the Jewish Passover , which should be before Easter or at least not afterwards.

The discrepancies result mainly from the fact that both the modern Jewish-Hebrew calendar and the Orthodox-Julian and the bourgeois-Gregorian calendar can only approximate the actual astronomical conditions with its computus , since they are completely algorithmic in nature and thus different from some traditional calendars are independent of local observations of the moon phases and seasons . There are also different conventions at the beginning of the day, i. H. instead of midnight, for example, the sunset or sunrise on site or in Jerusalem, and there are various stipulations as to whether the astronomical beginning of spring, full moon and Easter Sunday may fall on the same solar or calendar day, as long as the precisely observed or theoretically calculated times in this day Sequence take place. The exact resolutions of the First Council of Nicaea either have not been preserved or have not been taken at all.

Fixed date

The first problem could be solved by a fixed calendar date or a fixed Sunday. A fixed day of a particular month would be acceptable for most Christians if this were done in an alternative calendar so that Easter always falls on a Sunday.

The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican decided in 1963 to accept a fixed Sunday in the Gregorian calendar as the date of Easter, provided that the other Christian churches were also willing to do so. It was also decided that a more extensive calendar reform should not contain days outside the 7-day weekly cycle - a condition that the world calendar violates.

The Pepuzites , a Christian sect in the 5th century, celebrated Easter on the Sunday after April 6th in the then common Julian calendar. This is the Sunday closest to April 9th. This date was obviously chosen because it corresponded to the 14th day of the month Artemisios in a local calendar, i.e. the 14th day of the first month of spring.

The two most promising suggestions for a fixed Easter date place the festival on the second Sunday in April (8th to 14th, week 14 or 15) or the Sunday after the second Saturday in April (9th to 15th). They only differ if April 1st falls on a Sunday (Sunday letters G and AG). In any case, according to both rules, Easter is in the second quarter of the year, regardless of whether a quarter is specified as 3 months or as 13 weeks (i.e. 91 days). These two proposals are motivated, among other things, by the fact that either April 7, 30 or April 3, 33 is assumed for the historic Good Friday , i.e. the day of Jesus' crucifixion , which is why the day of the resurrection is on the 9th or 5th respectively. April would have fallen.

The Sunday of calendar week n is also the nth Sunday of the year, except in years with the Sunday letters A / AG, B / BA and C / CB in which it is the n + 1th Sunday. Thus, the two most important proposals usually place Easter on the 15th Sunday of the year, but both have exactly one exception: In normal years that start on a Monday (G), April 8th is only the second Sunday of the month the 14th Sunday of the year, and in leap years that begin on a Sunday (AG), April 15th is the Sunday after the second Saturday in April, but is already the 16th Sunday of the year. The latter is of course less common than the former, which is obviously the motivation for this rule in the first place.

The Sunday after the first Wednesday in April is always in calendar week 14, only in leap years that begin on a Thursday (DC) it is in week 15.For the Symmetry454 calendar , due to the frequency distribution of the astronomically correct date, a fixed Easter date is in Week 14 suggested. This is often the same as the rules above, but would be a week earlier in years with Sunday letters DC, D / ED, E / FE and F / GF. Since this weekly calendar has its own switching rule with a cycle of 293 instead of 400 years, its week number does not always correspond to the international standard.

Weeks for currently possible Easter dates; suggested and special dates highlighted

So.	Sunday letter														KW	month
	AG	A.	BA	B.	CB	C.	DC	D.	ED	E.	FE	F.	GF	G
12.	-							22nd		23.		24.		25th	W12	March
13.	25th	26th		27.		28.
							28.	29		30th		31.		01.	W13
14th	01.	02.		03.		04.										April
							04.	05.		06.		07.		08.	W14
15th	08.	09		10.		11.
							11.	12.		13.		14th		15th	W15
16.	15th	16.		17th		18th
							18th	19th		20th		21st		22nd	W16
17th	22nd	23.		24.		25th
	-						25th	-							W17

In 1977, some Orthodox representatives refused to decouple the Easter date from the phases of the moon.

Uniform date

The proposals to solve the second problem, that of uniformity, are also numerous, but have not yet led to ultimate success.

Proposal in 1923

When the New Julian calendar was proposed at the Pan-Orthodox Congress in 1923, this was accompanied by a purely astronomical rule for : Congrès "panorthodox" de Constantinople de 1923 : Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the calendar day (which begins at midnight) on which in Jerusalem (35 ° 13 ′ 47.2 ″ E or UT +02: 20: 55) the first full moon after the vernal equinox can be observed. Full moon and equinox can fall on the same calendar day.

All Orthodox churches rejected this rule, while the Catholic and Protestant churches had no good reason to even consider changing it.

Proposal 1997

In 1997, after a summit meeting in Aleppo, Syria, the World Council of Churches (WCC) proposed a reform of the calculation of Easter: Easter would be celebrated on the meridian of Jerusalem on the first Sunday after the astronomical full moon after the beginning of astronomical spring. The reform should have been implemented from 2001, as the Eastern and Western definitions coincided for the first time this year.

The reform failed. For the Orthodox churches, it would have changed the Easter date almost every year from 2002 onwards, while the Gregorian computus of the Western churches has only deviated from the astronomically more precise definition since then in 2019. Any reform with the aim of increased astronomical correctness necessarily has a stronger impact in the Julian calendar than in the Gregorian calendar. Nevertheless, this perceived disadvantage led to widespread skepticism and rejection among representatives of the Orthodox Church.

Proposals 2008 and 2009

Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox representatives tried again in 2008 and 2009 more intensively and publicly for a consensus for a uniform Easter date. The endeavors are to be seen as a continuation of the results of the conference in Aleppo and they were organized by ecumenical academics from Lviv University .

One reason for the continued efforts was the ecumenical cooperation of the local Orthodox churches with the Greek Catholic Church in Syria and Lebanon.

Suggestions 2014 to 2016

In May 2015, on the anniversary of the meeting of the Catholic Pope Francis and the Coptic Pope Tawadros II , the latter asked the former to resume efforts for a common Easter date.

On June 12, 2015, on an official occasion in Rome, Francis replied that Christianity must come to an agreement. The historian Lucetta Scaraffia wrote in the Vatican L'Osservatore Romano that the offer of the Catholic Pope must be understood as a gift for the unity of the Christian churches and could be the beginning of stronger cooperation.

A week later, Francis met with Ignatius Ephrem II Karim , the Patriarch of Antioch and thus head of the Syrian Orthodox Church. He emphasized that the various Easter dates would weaken the ecumenical movement both internally and externally. In January 2016, Justin Welby , the Archbishop of Canterbury and thus the spiritual leader of the Anglican Church, announced that he was negotiating with Catholic, Coptic and Orthodox representatives about a common and fixed Easter date and that he hoped for a positive result before 2025. He named the second or third Sunday in April in the Gregorian calendar as possible dates.

According to international standards, Easter Sunday ends Holy Week, while according to Christian tradition it begins Easter Week. The public is not aware of any proposal that a fixed calendar week or a fixed Sunday of the year would be the date of Easter.

Web links

• Frequently asked questions about the date of Easter . World Council of Churches (WCC) Faith and Order Commission. January 31, 2007.
• The Orthodox Ecclesiastical Calendar. Notes on the Orthodox Easter ( Memento of March 4, 2000 in the Internet Archive ). January 29, 1998 (Notes on the calculation of the Orthodox Easter date)
• Andrew Bond: An Orthodox article arguing for preservation of the current method of calculating the date of Pascha. In: orthodoxinfo.com (from: The Orthodox Word. September – October 1982, Vol. 32, No. 5, ISSN  0030-5839 , pp. 45–48)
• The Date of Easter: Science offers a solution to ancient religious problem. WCC Press Release: Proposal to Set a Common Date for Easter. In: cua.edu, March 24, 1997

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Paul VI. : Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium. December 4, 1963, accessed on February 29, 2020 ( Appendix: Declaration of the Second Vatican Council on Calendar Reform ). 
2. ^ Sozomenos : Ecclesiastical History. A History of the Church in Nine Books, from A.D. 324 to A.D. 440 . A New Translation from the Greek, with a Memoir of the Author (=  Greek ecclesiastical historians of the first six centuries of the Christian era . Volume 4 ). Samuel Bagster and Sons, London 1846, XVIII. Another heresy originated by the Novatians. Degression concerning the festival of easter, p. 353 (English, scan in Google book search - Some modes of observing easter).
3. ↑ Thomas J Talley: Afterthoughts on The Origins of the Liturgical Year . In: Sean Gallagher u. a. (Ed.): Western Plainchant in the First Millennium . Studies in the Medieval Liturgy and Its Music. tape 1 . Ashgate, Aldershot 2003, ISBN 0-7546-0389-X , pp. 1–10 (English, scan in Google book search).
4. ^ BE Schaefer: Lunar Visibility and the Crucifixion . In: Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society . 31, No. 1, 1990, pp. 53-67. bibcode : 1990QJRAS..31 ... 53S .
5. ↑ Colin J. Humphreys , Waddington WG: Dating the Crucifixion . In: Nature . 306, No. 5945, 1983, ISSN  0028-0836 , pp. 743-746. bibcode : 1983Natur.306..743H . doi : 10.1038 / 306743a0 .  -
   Colin J. Humphreys, WG Waddington: The Date of the Crucifixion . In: Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation . March 1985. Retrieved January 24, 2016.
   Colin J. Humphreys : The Mystery of the Last Supper: Reconstructing the Final Days of Jesus . Cambridge University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-521-73200-0 , p. 193.
6. ^ ^{A b} Ukrainian Catholic University Organizes Seminar on Easter Date. In: byzcath.org, February 19, 2013, accessed February 29, 2020.
7. ↑ M. Milankovitch: The End of the Julian Calendar and the New Calendar of the Oriental Churches . In: Astronomical News . 220, No. 23, 1923, ISSN  0004-6337 , pp. 379-384. bibcode : 1924AN .... 220..379M . doi : 10.1002 / asna.19232202303 .
8. ^ Towards a Common Date of Easter - World Council of Churches / Middle East Council of Churches Consultation Aleppo, Syria, March 5–10, 1997 . World Council of Churches . March 10, 1997.
9. ↑ World Council of Churches Press Release: THE DATE OF EASTER: SCIENCE OFFERS SOLUTION TO ANCIENT RELIGIOUS PROBLEM . March 24, 1997.
10. ↑ Luke Luhl: The Proposal for a Common Date to Celebrate Passover and Easter . Orthodox Christian Information Center. 1997.
11. ^ Luigi Sandri: New attempt to achieve a common date for Easter . In: Ekklesia . December 6, 2008. Retrieved January 24, 2016.
12. ↑ Hope for a common date for Easter affirmed again . In: Ekklesia . May 29, 2009. Retrieved January 24, 2016.
13. ^ Aaron J. Leichman: Ecumenical Christians Look Forward to Shared Easter Dates . June 1, 2009. Retrieved January 24, 2016.
14. ↑ Hopes rise for East-West common Easter. (No longer available online.) In: CathNews. May 29, 2009, archived from the original on February 9, 2013 ; accessed on January 24, 2016 . 
15. ↑ 1982 petition for a unified Easter date ( Memento of June 22, 2006 in the Internet Archive ). In: soufanieh.com, accessed on February 29, 2020.
16. ↑ Christians eye common date for Easter . In: Spero News . December 8, 2008. Retrieved January 24, 2016.
17. ^ Will Pope Francis change the date of Easter? In: Catholic News Agency . June 19, 2015, accessed June 21, 2015.
18. ↑ Laura Ieraci: Pope, Orthodox patriarch express commitment for Unity. In: National Catholic Reporter . June 19, 2015, accessed January 16, 2016 . 
19. ^ Archbishop Justin Welby hopes for a fixed Easter date . Retrieved January 16, 2016.
20. ^ John Bingham, Sophie Jamieson: Easter date to be fixed 'within next five to 10 years' . In: The Telegraph . January 16, 2016. Accessed on January 24, 2016: "He said that Easter should most likely be fixed for the second or third Sunday of April"