The Library
1780 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
101–200
1 work
c. 190; survives in fragment
Greek
Polycrates of Ephesus · c. 130–196
A courteous refusal: the churches of Asia will keep Easter on the fourteenth of Nisan as their fathers did, whatever Rome prefers, and Polycrates lists the graves that prove it.
201–300
1 work
c. 235; recovered at Tura in 1941
Greek
Peri Pascha
Origen of Alexandria · c. 185 – c. 253
An argument that pascha does not mean passion, as everyone was saying, but passage — and that the lamb eaten in haste with the loins girded is the Word consumed by a soul already on the road out.
301–400
1 work
329–373
Greek
Athanasius of Alexandria · c. 296–373
Annual letters announcing the date of Easter and offering pastoral instruction — the thirty-ninth of which lists the books of scripture that may be read in church.
401–500
2 works
c. 407
Latin
In Epistulam Ioannis ad Parthos
Augustine of Hippo · 354 – 430
Ten sermons preached in Easter week on a letter about love, to a congregation split by the Donatist schism. The seventh contains the sentence everything else in Augustine has to be read against: love, and do what you will.
414–442
Greek
Cyril of Alexandria · c. 376 – 444
Twenty-nine annual letters announcing the date of Easter and the beginning of the Lenten fast to the churches of Egypt, each expanding into a treatise — on fasting, on the incarnation, on why Jews and Greeks read the same signs differently.
501–600
2 works
525
Latin
Dionysius Exiguus · c. 470–c. 544
A continuation of the Alexandrian Easter cycle in which the compiler declined to number years from the persecuting emperor Diocletian and counted instead from the incarnation.
c. 595–613
Latin
Columbanus · c. 543–615
Letters to three popes and to his own monks, defending the Irish Easter calculation and addressing the bishop of Rome with startling directness.
601–700
2 works
c. 630
Greek
Chronicon Paschale
Anonymous
A world chronicle from Adam to 628, organised around the Easter cycle, with a detailed eyewitness account of the Avar siege of Constantinople.
c. 632–633
Latin
Cummian · 7th century
An Irish abbot explains why, after a year shut in with the computistical texts, he has abandoned the Irish Easter reckoning for the Roman one.
701–800
2 works
725
Latin
De Temporum Ratione
The Venerable Bede · c. 673–735
A complete treatment of time — the day, the moon, the tides, the Easter cycle — closing with a world chronicle and an account of the six ages.
c. 730–749
Greek
John of Damascus · c. 675 – c. 749
The canon sung at the Orthodox Easter midnight service — the day of resurrection, let us be radiant, O people — together with the funeral idiomela, which ask what earthly sweetness remains unmixed with grief, and answer that all is weaker than a shadow.
1001–1100
1 work
c. 1040
Latin
Wipo of Burgundy · c. 995–c. 1050
An Easter sequence in dialogue form, asking Mary Magdalene what she saw on the way and letting her answer.
12 of 1780 works