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Dionysius Exiguus ('''Dennis the Little''' or '''Dennis the Short''', meaning humble) (c. 470 – c. 544) was a sixth century monk born in Scythia Minor , in what is now the territory of Dobruja , Romania , and a member of the so called " Scythian Monks " community. Since about 500 he had lived in Rome , where, as a learned member of the Vatican's Curia , he translated from Greek into Latin 401 ecclesiastical canons, including the apostolical canons and the decrees of the councils of Nicaea , Constantinople , Chalcedon and Sardis, and also a collection of the Decretal s of the popes from Siricius to Anastasius II . These collections had great authority in the West and still guide church administrations. Dionysius also wrote a treatise on elementary mathematics. Bede and 'Felix' elevated him to an Abbot (a leader of monks) even though Dionysius' friend Cassiodorus stated in ''Institutiones'' that he was still only a monk late in life. ANNO DOMINI Dionysius is best-known as the inventor of the Anno Domini era, which is used to number the years of both the Gregorian Calendar and the Julian Calendar . He used it to identify the several Easters in his Easter Table , but did not use it to date any historical event. When he devised his table, Julian calendar years were identified by naming the Consul s who held office that year — he himself stated that the "present year" was "the consulship of Probus Junior Probus ", which he also stated was 525 years "since the incarnation [conception] of our Lord Jesus Christ". How he arrived at that number is unknown. He invented a new system of numbering years to replace the Diocletian years that had been used in an old Easter table because he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians. The Anno Domini era became dominant in Western Europe only after it was used by the Venerable Bede to date the events in his Ecclesiastical History Of The English People , completed in 731. EASTER TABLES In 525, Dionysius prepared a table of the future dates of Easter and a set of "arguments" explaining their calculation ( Computus ) on his own initiative, not at the request of Pope John . Note well that only the first nine arguments are by Dionysius — arguments 10 to 16 as well as the second paragraphs of 3 and 4 and the third paragraph of 9 are later interpolations. Arguments 11 and 12 imply that these were interpolated in the year 675, shortly before Bede. He introduced his tables and arguments via a letter to a bishop Petronius (also written in 525) and added another explanatory letter (written in 526). These works in volume 67 of the 217 volume '' Patrologia Latina '' also include a letter from Bishop Proterius Of Alexandria to Pope Leo (written before 457). Though not named by Dionysius, this collection was recently called his ''Liber de Paschate'' (''Book on Easter'') by Audette. He ignored the existing tables used by the Church of Rome, which were prepared in 457 by Victorius Of Aquitaine , complaining that they did not obey Alexandria n principles, without actually acknowledging their existence. To be sure that his own tables were correct, he simply extended a set of tables prepared in Alexandria that had circulated in the West in Latin, but were never used in the West to determine the date of Easter (however, they were used in the Byzantine Empire , in Greek). The Latin tables were prepared by a subordinate of Bishop Cyril Of Alexandria shortly before Cyril's death in 444. They covered a period of 95 years or five decennovenal (19-year) cycles with years dated in the Diocletian Era, whose first year was 285 (the modern historical year in progress at Easter). Diocletian years were advantageous because their division by 19 yielded a remainder equal to the year of the decennovenal cycle (1–19). The Epact (the age of the moon on 22 March ) of all first decennovenal years was zero, making Dionysius the first known medieval Latin writer to use a precursor of the Number Zero . The Latin word ''nulla'' meaning ''nothing'' was used because no Roman Numeral for zero existed. To determine the decennovenal year, the Dionysian year plus one was divided by 19. If the result was zero (to be replaced by 19), it was represented by the Latin word ''nihil'', also meaning ''nothing''. Both "zeros" continued to be used by (among others) Beda Venerabilis , by whose extension of Dionysius Exiguus’ Easter table to a great Easter Cycle all future Julian Calendar dates of Easter Sunday were fixed unambiguously at last. However, in medieval Europe one had to wait as late as the second millennium before one got dispose of the number zero itself, which had come into being around the year 600 in India . Dionysius copied the last decennovenal cycle of the Cyrillian table ending with Diocletion 247, and then added a new 95-year table with numbered ''Anni Domini Nostri Jesu Christi'' (''Years of our Lord Jesus Christ'') because, as he explained to Petronius, he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians. The only reason he gave for beginning his new 95-year table with the year 532 was that six years were still left in the Cyrillian table after the year during which he wrote. For the latter year he only stated that it was 525 years after the Incarnation of Christ, without stating when the latter event occurred in any other calendar. He did ''not'' realize that the dates of the Alexandrian Easter repeated after 532 years, despite his apparent knowledge of the Victorian 532-year 'cycle', indicating only that Easter did not repeat after 95 years. He knew that Victorian Easters did not agree with Alexandrian Easters, thus he no doubt assumed that they had no bearing on any Alexandrian cycle. Furthermore, he obviously did not realize that simply multiplying 19 (the decennovenal cycle) by 4 (the cycle of leap years) by 7 (the week) fixed the Alexandrian cycle at 532 years, otherwise he would have stated such a simple fact. No evidence exists that the Church of Rome accepted the Dionysian tables until the tenth century, although it is possible that they were accepted sometime during the sixth century. Most of the British Church accepted them after the Synod Of Whitby in 664, although quite a few individual churches and monasteries refused to accept them, the last holdout finally accepting them during the early tenth century. The Church of the Franks ( France ) accepted them during the late ninth century under the tutelage of Alcuin , after he arrived from Britain. Ever since the second century, some bishoprics in the Eastern Roman Empire had counted years from the birth of Christ, but there was no agreement on the correct epoch — for the modern year numbers. Although Dionysius stated that the , his Last Supper . Then and now, the Seder was eaten after sundown at the beginning of Nisan 15. Because Dionysius's method of computing Easter used dates in the Julian calendar, it is also called the Julian Easter. This Easter is still used by almost all Orthodox churches. The Gregorian Easter still uses the same definition, but relative to its own solar and lunar dates. NOTES REFERENCES
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