Easter letter

The Festal Letters or Easter Letters are a series of annual letters by which the Bishops of Alexandria, in conformity with a decision of the First Council of Nicaea, announced the date on which Easter was to be celebrated. The council chose Alexandria because of its famous school of astronomy,[1] and the date of Easter depends on the spring equinox and the phases of the moon.

The most famous of those letters are those authored by Athanasius, a collection of which was rediscovered in a Syriac translation in 1842.[2] Festal Letters of other Bishops of Alexandria, including Cyril have also been preserved.[3]

  1. ^ "NPNF2-04. Athanasius: Select Works and Letters".
  2. ^ William Cureton (editor), The Festal Letters of Athanasius (Society for the Publication of Oriental Texts, London, 1848)
  3. ^ Ebied, R. Y.; Wickham, L. R., eds. (1975). A Collection of Unpublished Syriac Letters of Cyril of Alexandria (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium). Louvain. p. 52. ISBN 978-9-04290401-9. Retrieved 8 January 2021.