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| Raphael - Resurrection of Christ |
The first
Ecumenical Council was held in Nicaea, Asia Minor, in 325, convened by Emperor
Constantine. Ecumenical councils could not be held before that date, for Christians
were persecuted and had to meet in secret. This first Council had very
important consequences: Aryanism, which denied the divinity of Christ, was
condemned; the version of the creed still recited in mass today was defined;
and the Council established the algorithm to calculate the
date of Easter, which is still in use. This algorithm is so
complicated that Donald Knuth included a program to perform it in his famous
and classic computer encyclopedia, The Art of Computer
Programming.
Easter was
fixed on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox,
which that year fell in March 21st. To calculate the exact date one must take
into account that the solar cycle (the year) contains 365.2421988 days, while
the lunar cycle (the phases of the moon) lasts 29.530588 days, two numbers with
many figures that do not have a simple relationship with one another, so the
calculation is quite complex.
