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Mc Carthy, Daniel P., “Easter principles and a fifth-century lunar cycle used in the British Isles”, Journal for the History of Astronomy 24 (1993): 204–224.

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Article
“Easter principles and a fifth-century lunar cycle used in the British Isles”
Periodical
Volume
24
Pages
204–224
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Abstract (cited)
The computational principles underlying the Paschal table, or latercus, found in the manuscript Padua, Bibl. Antoniana I.27 f. 76r–77v, are closely analysed and the details of the mechansims of its embolism, bissextile and saltus are resolved as closely as possible. With this information it is possible to eliminate all of the scribal errors from the table and, thus restored, the table is presented in full. From this can be seen that the Padua latercus preserves an 84-year lunar cycle with a 14-year saltus, a lunar term from luna 14 to 20, and a Paschal term from 26 March to 23 April. Thus it emerges that this latercus is an example of the Paschal cycle known to have been employed by the British, Scots and Picts between the fifth and eighth centuries and which was at the centre of the Paschal controversy debated in Whitby in AD 664, as Bede relates in length in his Historia ecclesiastica. It is the first such example reported for over 1200 years.
(source: author)
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Easter controversy computistics
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Contributors
Dennis Groenewegen
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March 2016, last updated: January 2019
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