FRAGMENTS
Months according to the Jews. 1. Nisan. 2. Jar. 3. Sivan. 4. Thamuz. 5. Ab. 6. Elul. 7. Tisri. 8. Marchsouan. 9. Chasleu. 10. Tebeth. 11. Sabat. 12. Adar.
Months according to the Macedonians. A 1. Taurus. 2. Geminus. 3. Cancer. 4. Leo. 5. Virgo. 6. Libra. 7. Scorpius. 8. Sagittarius. 9. Capricornus. 10. Hydria. 11. Pisces. 12. Aries.
Months according to the Greeks. 1. Xanthicus. 2. Artemisius. 3. Dæsius. 4. Panemus. 5. Lous. 6. Gorpiæus. 7. Hyperberetæus. 8. Dius. 9. Appellæus. 10. Audinæus. 11. Peritius. 12. Dystrus.
Months according to the Egyptians. 1. Pharmuthi. 2. Pachon. 3. Pauni. 4. Epiphi. 5. Mesori. 6. Thoth. 7. Paophi. 8. Athyr. 9. Chœak. 10. Tybi. 11. Mechir. 12. Phanemoth. B
NOTES (1) According to the Macedonians: namely the Europeans, not the Asiatics. The Macedonians, who under Alexander the Great occupied Asia and Syria—concerning whose solar year Ussher wrote a dissertation, as did subsequently the most eminent Cardinal Noris. The Athenians called their months by other names.
ADMONITION ON THE PASCHAL CANON
The Paschal Canon, or table for finding the day of Easter, which I exhibit here, I have found in two Royal codices, as well as in chapter 10 of the Computus of Isaac Argyrus, which Petavius published in his *Uranologia*; others also have codices from various European libraries, and everywhere the name of Saint John of Damascus is prefixed to it. In the Royal [codex]: "This is the Paschal Canon of Saint John of Damascus." In another: "Paschal Canon, composed by the grace of God by our holy Father, the Damascene." Finally, in Argyrus, chapter 10: "Table of the venerable and great Easter, established by our holy and God-bearing Father John Damascene." That our John Damascene is its author, I could not prove better than by citing the judgment of the most learned Petavius, in which he notes the carelessness and lack of precision of Isaac Argyrus regarding this Canon, on page 320. "The Paschal Canon," he says, "which he proposed in chapter 10, and whose Paschal boundaries Nicephorus anticipated by two days, he suspects was composed 608 years before he set forth these things. Because he claims it is delayed by two days from the Jewish Passover; yet he asserts that those two days have not yet been fully completed: but that three hours remain of them, to exhaust which thirty-eight years are required. Since at the beginning of the cycle (this is the Dionysian year of Christ 1373) the Jewish full moon falls three hours evenly after the rising of the sun on the 8th day of April. It was the Constantinopolitan year 6881. Therefore after thirty-eight years, namely in the year 6919, which is 1411 Dionysian, a full *proleipsis* (anticipation) of two days will occur, he says." Such is Argyrus. And indeed, truly in that year which he mentions, 1373 of Christ, the Jewish full moon happened about three hours after sunrise. It was the Jewish year 5133, whose Tisri began on August 30, the second day of the week, in the year of Christ 1372, with the Roman solar cycle IX, letter D. C. For its character was 2, 3, 606. But the Nisan character was 5, 20, 757, day of the week on account of the shift; March 25, Roman solar cycle X, letter... in the year of Christ 1373. Therefore the full moon occurred on April 8, the 6th day of the week... after sunrise. For the Jewish calculation begins from sunset. But the man's amazing stupidity: who has not noticed that the Paschal boundaries which are described in this table, to which the Damascene is inscribed as author, are none other than the Nicene ones, which Theophilus, Cyril, and the Catholics subsequently used. But Isaac thinks that Canon was composed and the boundaries established around the year of Christ 765. For with 608 subtracted from 1373, there exists the year 765. Certainly John of Damascus lived in this century, who could have been the creator of this resourceful table: yet he did not institute the boundaries. But that which I warned of before deceived Argyrus. He thought that at the time when the Paschal boundaries were fixed, the full moon fell on them: which did indeed happen in the age of the holy Damascene; when long ago, in the Nicene century, the full moons occurred almost two days earlier. John of Jerusalem reports in his Life that the Damascene was very skilled in astronomy, and says this can be gathered from those few things which he wrote for the education of the less learned: among which, indeed, was this Paschal Canon. Moreover, the occasion for composing, or rather transcribing, this may perhaps have been given to our Damascene by the dissension of the heretics from the Catholics, which Theophanes reports to have happened in the year of Copronymus, that the Catholics celebrated Easter on the sixth day of April, the heretics on the 13th, which however the most learned Antonius Pagi observes should be rejected to the year of the same Copronymus and of Christ 759, and that our Gauls, according to the Victorian cycle, along with the Alexandrians, celebrated the festival of Easter just the same, and thus even with the Coptic Jacobites, whom the Syrians of the same sect imitated.