To the truly holy and most blessed Apostolic Lord, whom I revere above all others after God, Pope Leo — from Paschasinus, bishop.
I. Paschasinus, Consulted by Leo on the Paschal Cycle, Reports Sicily’s Plight and Acknowledges the Command
I received the writings of your Apostolic Office, delivered by Silanus, deacon of the Church of Panormus, and they brought comfort and remedy to my destitution and to the hardships I was enduring as a result of the bitter captivity of this land. They refreshed my soul with heavenly dew and wiped away all sorrow, venerable lord pope. Your Holiness deigned to command that I, unworthy as I am, inform your sacred ears about the truth of the paschal calculation for the coming year. I could not and should not be wholly disobedient to this pious decree. After long deliberation and inquiry, we find that what was reported to Your Beatitude by the bishop of the Alexandrian Church is true.
II. Paschasinus Supports the Alexandrian Calculation Over the Roman One, Based on the Hebrew Reckoning
The Roman calculation — based on a cycle in its sixty-third year, running from the consulship of Antoninus and Siagrius — caused us doubt, since the seventh day before the Kalends of April would fall on a Sunday with the moon at twenty-two, and the ninth day before the Kalends of May would also be a Sunday with the moon at nineteen, which would be correct. Wavering in this uncertainty, we turned to the Hebrew — that is, the legal — calculation, which the Romans overlook, thereby easily falling into error. The cycle begins with the consulship of Aetius for the second time and of Sigesvultus, and concludes in the year under discussion. Its pattern runs thus: the first two years are common, the third embolismic, the fourth and fifth common, the sixth embolismic, the seventh common, the eighth embolismic. Your Apostolic Wisdom will discern that the eighth year of the cycle must necessarily be embolismic, or the whole reckoning collapses.
III. The Alexandrian Method Avoids the Error Made Under Pope Zosimus, Confirmed by the Sequence of the Cycle
Lest our explanation seem obscure to your beatitude, let us note that among the Hebrews common years have twelve moons, or 354 days, while embolismic years have thirteen moons, or 384 days. The necessity of the embolismic year compels us to adopt the longer reckoning, lest we deviate from the truth. Nor should it seem new or erroneous when the day of the Passion falls on the eleventh day before the Kalends of May — from which, as the Greeks hold, Pascha receives its name, though Hebrew interpreters say Pascha means “passage,” confirmed by John the Evangelist: When the hour came for Jesus to pass from this world to the Father (John 13:1). We ought not fear a date one day later, lest in our effort to avoid it we fall into the greater error that occurred under your predecessor of blessed memory, Pope Zosimus. In the year of Honorius Augustus’s eleventh consulship and Constantius’s second, to avoid holding Pascha on the tenth day before the Kalends of May, it was celebrated on the eighth day before the Kalends of April — treating a common year as embolismic and thereby causing a grave mistake. The truth of this was proven by a mystery of the Holy Spirit’s gift, known to my holy and revered brother Libanius, deacon.
IV. A Miracle at Meltinas Confirms the Correct Paschal Date
A humble estate called Meltinas lies amid steep mountains and very dense forests, where a small and plain church stands. In its baptistery, on the holy night of Pascha at the hour of baptism — with no channel, pipe, or any water source nearby — a font fills of itself. After a few have been baptized, the water departs by the same mysterious means, with no drain. Under your predecessor Zosimus of holy memory, when an error arose among the Westerners, the customary night-time readings were completed at the proper hour; but when the priest sought the baptismal hour, no water came until dawn, and those to be baptized departed unconsecrated. Then, on the night that dawned into the Lord’s Day — the tenth day before the Kalends of May — the sacred font filled at its proper hour, proving by an evident miracle the error of the Western calculation.
As your Apostolic command directed, I have written this as briefly as possible. I humbly beseech that you pray for my lowliness and for the state of the whole world, that we may come to know God — who alone works wonders — and that he may deliver us from trials and mercifully grant relief from temptation, so that we may be able to endure.
Footnotes
- ↩ The phrase post Deum — “after God” — in Paschasinus’s address to Leo is one of the most striking expressions of papal honor in the fifth-century Latin sources. It places Leo immediately below God in the hierarchy of authorities to whom Paschasinus owes reverence — a formulation that reflects not mere courtesy but a considered theological position about the Bishop of Rome’s standing in the Church.
- ↩ Sicily had suffered severely from Vandal raids during this period. Paschasinus’s reference to “bitter captivity” — captivitatis amarissimae — reflects the material devastation wrought on the island’s churches and population by the Vandal incursions of the early 440s.
- ↩ The paschal controversy of 444 turned on whether Easter should be celebrated on April 19 (the Roman reckoning) or on April 22 (the Alexandrian/Hebrew reckoning). The Roman cycle of 84 years had begun to diverge from the more accurate Alexandrian cycle of 19 years. Paschasinus argues in favor of the Alexandrian method — the same method that would eventually prevail throughout the Latin West following the adoption of Dionysius Exiguus’s tables in the sixth century.
Historical Commentary