THE OLD INDICTION CHRONOLOGY
Since we’re mentioning Easter cycles, let us make some observations that concern the entire historical chronology and not just the dating of the Nicaean council. Today we have become so used to the same invariable chronological scale and era, that we simply lack the awareness of there being nothing simple or self-explanatory about this chronological method. When we use a four-digit number for referring to the current year, we aren’t really aware of just how excessive the everyday use of such a large number is.
We spend about ten years at school, and as a result, get more or less used to large numbers. They don’t frighten us anymore – however, this wasn’t the case in the days of yore when the very concept of large numbers and the ability to write them down were a privilege of educated people. Even today we often omit the first two figures when we refer to years – we say and write ’98 instead of 1998, ’99 instead of 1999, etc.
It isn’t hard to realize that during the immutable era chronology wasn’t, and couldn’t possibly have been, the primordial, original method of referring to dates. The overwhelming majority of mediaeval people would simply have been unable to understand it, and a chronology that’s only understood by a small number of educated people makes no sense whatsoever. More specifically, such a method could have been used in a special context, in ancient astronomical tractates, for instance.
But its use would already be impossible in the context of chronicles, since they had to be comprehensible by everyone or nearly everyone. Unlike astronomical rules and observations, past events have always been of interest to rulers and governors, whose deeds were described in chronicles along with those of their predecessors.
The rulers didn’t need to possess special scientific knowledge - moreover, in the Middle Ages they have occasionally been illiterate. The chronicle dates had to be understood by the rulers’ scribes, the monks in monasteries, etc. This meant that the way of referring to dates in chronicles had to correspond to everyday chronology used by the masses – which still is the case in our day.
The inability of the masses of ancient and mediaeval people to handle large numbers can be well illustrated by the history of monetary values. It is known that monetary units in the Middle Ages were much larger than today, and the sums that they operated with were significantly smaller, respectively.
The vast majority of the mediaeval people could not handle large sums of money, due to their inability to handle large numbers. Ergo, they couldn’t handle large numbers in chronology, either, which means they could not have used one based on an immutable era. Such chronology could only develop on a rather high stage of the development of human knowledge.
Apparently, resorting to the immutable era chronology was, by and large, a measure taken out of barest necessity when humanity got into a real quandary regarding what concerned the events of the distant past and their chronology. What we perceive as natural and easy nowadays is a result of habit – one that has been developing for several centuries.
We are thus confronted with a very important question of how the really old documents could represent the dates in written form – the originals, not the forgeries or re-editions of the XVII century.
The answer is well known. One of the most frequently used methods was the count of years since the beginning of a ruler’s reign. It was widely used in ancient times and in the Middle Ages, and is still employed in Japan, for instance, where the count of years begins with the first year of the Emperor’s reign.
This fashion is of little use chronologically speaking if the years of a king’s reign as given in ancient chronicles are long forgotten – so the comprehension of such a date requires translating the years of a king’s reign into the language of modern chronology, possibly comparing them to those of well-known and well-dated ancient kings. It can’t always be done securely and positively, and it requires a large number of these “known and dated kings”.
Despite its simplicity, the method of counting years since the beginning of a king’s reign contains a number of impracticalities. For instance, every change of reign induces a shift in the year number, and a random one at that. Tracing such chronology, even a mere 50-100 years back, may already be a complex task, since it may involve calculating how many years have passed since the third year of the second king preceding the last one.
This involves recollecting the years of the last couple of reigns and their sequence, which may not be very convenient in quotidian use. Apart from that, one has to consider the fact that during political turmoil and frequent ruler changes, such “chronology” stops functioning altogether.
This is why old chronicles had another method of counting years; a much more sophisticated one. This method didn’t require the knowledge of large numbers, but it also did not depend on the names and reigns of kings and provided for a much smoother count of years, without any sudden shifts or leaps. It could also serve for a long time – theoretically, a span of about eight thousand years could be covered.
This method is very closely related to the clerical Paschalia and the Julian calendar. Let us refer to it as the indiction method, or one of counting years by indictions. Let us elaborate on that.
The year number wasn’t given as one large number, the way it is today, but rather a sequence of three small numbers. These numbers had their own names – the indiction, the Circle for Sun, and the Circle for Moon. Each one of them grew by a quotient of 1 every year, but would return to its minimal value upon reaching its maximal. That is to say, it got back to one, and would then start growing by a quotient of one every year yet again.
Thus, instead one theoretically infinite year counter that we use today, the indiction method involved three finite cyclical counters and referred to the year as to a series of small numbers, each one of which had to contain itself within its specific boundaries. Those were:
- the indiction that grew from 1 to 15 and then got thrown back to 1;
- the Circle for Sun that grew from 1 to 28 and then got thrown back to 28;
- The Circle for Moon that grew from 1 to 19 and then got thrown back to 1.
A scribe that used the indiction chronology could write, “This event happened in the 14th indiction, the Circle for Sun equalling 16, and the Circle for Moon equalling 19. The next year something else happened in the 15th indiction, with the Circle for Sun equalling 17, and the Circle for Moon equalling 1. The year after that the following had happened, and it took place in the 1st indiction, with the Circle for Sun equalling 18, and the Circle for Moon equalling 2”. And so on, and so forth.
Since the limiting numbers in the indiction chronology (15, 28, and 19) are all mutually non-divisible, any of their combinations may only recur after a number of years equalling the product of these numbers: 7,980 = 15 x 18 x 19. Thus, the recurrence of an indiction date can only happen after 7,980 years, which means that the indiction chronology can give a perfectly unequivocal date for any year within the span of 7,980 years.
The indiction method is closely related to the Julian calendar, the Paschalia, and the Christian Easter. It looks as though it was invented together with the Paschalia and the Easter tables. The reason is that two cycles out of the three used by indiction dates, namely the Circle for Sun and the Circle for Moon, were derived from the Julian calendar, its leap years, weekdays, and division into months.
Both cycles bear a direct relation to defining the Easter as the Sunday after the first full moon in spring. Hence, the chronological method of indiction is largely based on the calendar indices given by the Paschalia and is intrinsically derived from the latter.
It is known that the indiction chronology was used in ancient texts. It is considered to have been mainly used in mediaeval Byzantine opuses written “a long time ago”. But the indiction values had been used for referring to festive dates as recently as the XVII and even the XVIII centuries, along with the datings “since the Genesis” or “since Christ”.
The indiction dates have another peculiarity in what concerns the dates belonging to an unknown epoch. The indiction dates per se, without sophisticated calculations, tell nothing about how far away they are from the epoch contemporary to the scribe, or indeed from any other date, indiction or not.
Moreover, a distant indiction date tells nothing about whether it is from the past or from the future. Indiction dates aren’t ordered in any way at all. In order to understand which one of the two indiction dates precedes the other, one has to perform complex calculations, which are next to impossible without a calculator, and a programmable one, to boot.
As a result, the mediaeval chronologer studying an ancient chronicle could even make a mistake in whether the events described happened a long time ago, or belong to a prophecy about the distant future. As a result, prophecies about the future that were rather common in the Middle Ages could become mixed up with accounts of past events during later copying.
Most probably, the indiction dates were replaced by the chronology since Genesis, precisely in this era, that is, the epoch of the attempts to define the correct chronology of ancient times. This apparently happened in the XIV-XV centuries.
The beginning of the first “global” era must have been computed using the existing system of indiction dates as a foundation that is based on the Paschalia. Namely, the year was computed whose indiction, Circle for Sun, and the Circle for Moon had all equalled 1. Such a “remarkable” year only repeats itself once in 15 x 28 x 19 = 7,980 years.
Naturally, the closest such year in the past was selected. That happened to be the first year of the Russian and Byzantine era since Adam or since Genesis. Other calculations based on other cycles similar to those of the indiction chronology could give different initial reference points. This must be how quite a number of eras “since Genesis” came to existence.
Apparently, such calculations were first performed around 1409 AD, when the previous Great Indiction had ended, and the next one had commenced. That is, several decades prior to 1492 AD that happened to have been the 7,000th, or the last one according to the “true” era, computed by the mediaeval chronologists. This is why the End of Times perceived as the end of the world was scheduled for 1492 AD.
THE NICAEAN COUNCIL OF 325 AD CONTRADICTS THE PASCHALIA
There is a traditional consensual opinion according to which the Paschalia church calendar was canonized during the first Ecumenical Council in Nicaea. Nobody seem to be aware, however, that all of this blatantly contradicts Scaliger’s dating of the Nicaean council – 325 AD, and the epoch of the IV century AD in general.
The matter here is that the Paschalia consists of a number of calendarian and astronomical tables. The time of their compilation can be calculated from their contents qv below. In other words, the Paschalia can be dated by its astronomical contents. We see that the resulting dating of the Paschalia contradicts the dating of the Nicaean Council as the IV century AD.
The contradiction had been discovered a long time ago, and it was mentioned in the beginning of the XX century by Easter table specialists. However, to this day, there has been no comprehensive explanation of this phenomenon given.
What seems to be the matter here? The answer is probably that Scaliger’s dating of the first Nicaean Council is involved, and it’s extremely important for chronology. This is what the chronology of church history is based upon to a great extent, which is the same as saying entire mediaeval history, starting with the alleged IV century AD at least.
The erroneous (as we understand now) Scaliger’s dating of the Nicaean Council was used for the preparation of the famous Gregorian calendar reform as well. Specialists were naturally cautious of touching this sore spot of Scaliger’s chronology, being well aware of the significance of the issue for the entire concept of mediaeval history.
The alteration in the dating of the Nicaean Council leads to a complete revision of the entire scale of Scaliger’s chronology between the IV and XIV centuries AD. Apparently, this is precisely why those of the specialists who had noticed serious discrepancies between the contents of the Paschalia and the dating of the Nicaean Council were too timid to make conclusions, preferring the stance of obmutescence - as if the problem was completely nonexistent.
THE RULES FOR CELEBRATING EASTER
Let us turn to the canonical mediaeval ecclesial tractate - Matthew Vlastar’s Collection of Rules Devised by Holy Fathers, or The Alphabet Syntagma, [518], [17]. This rather voluminous book represents the rendition of the rules formulated by the Ecclesial and local Councils of the Orthodox Church.
Matthew Vlastar is considered to have been a Holy Hierarch from Thessalonica, and written his tractate in the XIV century [17], page 18. Today’s copies are of a much later date, of course. A large part of Vlastar’s Collection of Rules Devised by Holy Fathers contains the rules for celebrating Easter. Among other things, it says the following:
“The Easter Rules makes the two following restrictions: it should not be celebrated together with the Judaists, and it can only be celebrated after the spring equinox. Two more had to be added later, namely: celebrate after the first full moon after the equinox, but not any day – it should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the equinox. All of these restrictions, except for the last one, are still valid (in times of Matthew Vlastar – the XIV century – Auth.), although nowadays we often celebrate on the Sunday that comes later. Namely, we always count two days after the Lawful Easter (that is, the Passover, or the full moon – Auth.) and end up with the subsequent Sunday. This didn’t happen out of ignorance or lack of skill on the part of the Elders, but due to lunar motion” [518], part П, chapter 7, also see [17].
Let us emphasize that the quoted Collection of Rules Devised by Holy Fathers is a canonical mediaeval clerical volume, which gives it all the more authority, since we know that up until the XVII century, the Orthodox Church was very meticulous about the immutability of canonical literature and kept the texts exactly the way they were; with any alteration a complicated and widely discussed issue that would not have passed unnoticed.
This means that we can hope for Matthew Vlastar’s text to give us a precise enough account of the opinions held by the Constantinople scientists of the XIV century, in regard to the Easter issue. As we can see, Matthew Vlastar tells us the following:
In addition to the two Apostolic Easter rules, namely:
1) Not celebrating Easter together with the Judaists.
2) Only celebrating Easter after the spring equinox.
The Elders of the Council that introduced the Paschalia added two more rules for certainty, since the previous two do not define Easter day explicitly enough:
3) Only celebrating Easter after the first full moon in a given spring. That is, after the Passover that is often called “Lawful Easter” in Christian clerical literature – that is, Easter celebrated in accordance with the Law of Moses – or, alternatively, that of “the 14th Moon”.
4) Easter cannot be celebrated on any weekday; the celebration is to occur on the first Sunday following this full moon, or the Passover.