How exactly does the date for Easter work?
Hi Acolcres! Roughly, BUT NOT ALWAYS, Easter is the first Sunday after the full moon after the spring equinox. The reason for the exception is that the Church calculates the official date of Easter by a more complicated formula, involving the use of “Golden Numbers” that usually, but not every time, coincides with the full moon after the equinox. In medieval times, churchly astronomers had difficulty calculating with precision the dates of the equinox and of the full moon. (Consider that until 1582, the calendar had fallen eleven days behind the seasons because they imperfectly understood leap years.) Because they needed to know years in advance when Easter would be, they devised a system of Golden Numbers to pick when the paschal full moon would be. Remember, at this time they didn’t even know that the earth revolves around the sun, Arabic numerals were just reaching Spain for the first time, and the mathematicians of the age felt the same about handling fractions as today’s Grade-IVs
